Brain-Compatible Learning Strategies for ELLs

1. Classroom Environment

Approaches for Classroom Environment

Printable version found in the Course Objectives | Research | Materials folder

Adapted from Brain Compatible Strategies, Eric Jensen, 2004

Engaging the Spatial-Episodic Memory

To tap into the brain’s parallel visual system and record as much information as possible via what is seen and where you see it, teach students to contextualize their learning. When they contextualize it, they move it from theory to practice. In doing so, they sort, compare, contrast, retrieve, imagine, and all sorts of other brain activities occur that help the information retrieval process. Here are some suggestions for contextualizing learning and increasing what students remember.

• Change the classroom seating from time to time, rearrange the desks from facing one another, to circles, to placement along the sides in a sort of box. Change the seating for different learning circumstances.
• Teach outdoors when possible, under a tree on a nice afternoon or in the bleachers. A change in environment will help their brains sort incoming data into another context, and thus they’ll remember it longer.
• Use props, costumes and music to effectuate tone, voice, or emphasize something important. They won’t forget you did it, and they’ll never forget why!
• Plan events and themes that are curriculum-related and coincide with holidays, seasons, or other school milestones.

Visual and Peripheral Impact

The brain registers over 36,000 images per hour. Just our eyes alone can take in thirty million pieces of information per second. It makes using moving images and audio for instruction particularly powerful. “The effects of direct instruction diminish after about two weeks but the effects of your visuals and peripherals continue to increase during the same time period” (p. 18). Studies continue to reinforce the important influence of posters, symbols, pictures and drawings displayed throughout the classroom. Below are some suggestions for harnessing the power of visuals and peripherals:

• Use posters to display colorful and inspirational messages, reinforcement of process, teamwork protocols, discoveries, achievements of historical figures or anything else positive. Have students contribute to them with ideas, or make them and swap them out throughout the year.
• Organize the content of a lesson into a poster and have students copy it down in ways that are personally meaningful – a brief checklist inside their notebooks, reworded their own way, as a thinking web.
• Place group work up on the walls in addition to individual student work. This will also reinforce the value of teamwork while graphically representing their achievements.
• Place positive affirmations throughout the room – “Your success is my success!” or “Slow and steady wins the race!”  and the like. Have students research and/or create their own positive messages.
• Have students develop murals or graffiti that convey positive messages around the classroom.
• Show short video clips (3 to 7 minutes in length) that convey powerful messages related to the content to be learned, or content already learned. It will enhance retention and understanding.

The Power of Music

Music can and does change and energize our brain. Its power can’t be underestimated. In study after study, it’s been found to boost intelligence. Music is crucial for spatial tasks, and has proven to boost intelligence using Mozart compositions. Below are some suggestions for integrating music into your classroom environment:

• Play positive, energizing music as the class settles in.
• Keep soft, classical music playing in the background as students do their work – while they read independently, write, or perform other tasks.
• When teaching something dramatic, or with drama, play Romantic or Classical music to reinforce the ambience or theme.
• Play Mozart piano sonata before students perform spatial tasks, like manipulating objects, building, composing, or completing puzzles.
• Play lyrically applicable music to calm the class, liven the class, or conclude learning. Consider “I’ve Had the Time of My Life, or “Happy Trails.”

Aroma Learning Therapy

Aroma has been the subject of study for its effects on the brain for years. All studies have concluded that it has an impact, and a primal one, on the amygdala and thalamus, the glands that respond to danger, pleasure and food. Our sense of smell immediately funnels messages to the brain, faster than any other sense – like a first responder, our sense of smell is the first sense to arrive on a scene, and funnels lasting memories to the brain. “A person can actually react to an aroma before being aware of having inhaled it!” (p. 55).

• Use lemon, cinnamon or peppermint to effectuate attention and/or mood.
• Use fans to circulate the scent throughout the room.
• Change aromas around to keep students’ attention, or capture it again.
• Stick to the natural scents as much as possible, such as lavender – they minimize effects of allergies, and are easier to digest in the system.

2. Other Cognitive-Friendly Learning Strategies

See the Course Objectives | Research | Materials folder for printable resources

Other Cognitive-Friendly Strategies

Adapted from Brain Compatible Strategies, Eric Jensen, 2004 and Brain Matters, Patricia Wolfe, 2001

Role Playing Activities

Integrate physical movement to invigorate cognitive activity, kinesthetic, spatial, verbal and linguistic elements of the brain that work into problem-solving skills.

• Expert interviews: Pair students up with one student becoming an expert on a topic and another posing as a reporter. Experts take ten minutes to review facts, conduct quick research and “brush up” on their topic, while reporters prepare questions to ask (reporters will also need to research).  When finished, one student will ask questions, the other will answer as the expert, and then they’ll switch roles.
• Retro parties: Identify an historical era or event in time. Have students stand up and close their eyes for three to five minutes and imagine that they are time travelers in that time period from a specific perspective, or from their own.  When finished, have them sit down and freewrite for five to ten minutes about what they imagined. **Use this as a priming activity to stimulate prior knowledge about a subject, and curiosity to set learning purposes with.

All the world’s a stage: When reading long text or watching a long lecture, have students pause and reflect for a moment before turning to a peer and discussing the learning as a three-minuet skit. For example, they could perform a dialogue between two characters, world leaders, the sun and planets. They might also dramatize a meeting between two historical figures or critically discuss a piece of literature.

Musical Chairs: Using games to inspire learning improves working memory and inspires cognition by raising the level of “feel good” amines in the brain (dopamine and norepinephrine).  Using musical chairs games can achieve this:

Arrange chairs in a large circle.

• Have students take a chair, stand up and perform an interactive task such as introducing themselves to someone they don’t know very well, making a positive affirmation to someone, or reciting a fact from the lesson taught. They might also find someone with the same birthday or shake everyone’s hand.
• Play cheerful music in the background.
• Stop the music after ten to twenty seconds and everyone find an empty chair to sit in. The last person to find a chair must be the Music Master, starting and stopping the music while initiating an interactive task. Here are some interactive task ideas:

Getting to know you

Lesson or content review

Saying something about oneself that nobody knew before (self-disclosure)

Storytelling with each participant adding something to the story

Concept mapping, or connecting ideas to an idea started by the Music Master

Ball Toss

Establish some content-focused learning goals and objectives for students to aspire to as they toss a ball to each other to answer and ask questions (use a soft ball). Other ball tossing goals can include:

• Presenting a claim or stating a piece of evidence  (such as a quote or news item) that supports a claim on a topic.
• Students can invent test questions.
• Students can introduce themselves to each other from a character or historical figure’s point-of-view.
• Review content learned

Threat Reduction Strategies

Because our brain are highly influenced by threat and excessive stress, it is ultra-sensitive to it – meaning, cognition can be inspired when challenged, but not threatened. The brain will shut down performance with too much threat, and optimize it with higher-order thinking and creativity with enough challenge. Here are recommendations for minimizing threat, and allowing for challenges that inspire learning:

• Avoid academic surprises – pop quizzes and on-the-spot questioning that some might not be prepared for. Reassure students of success.
• Allow learners to make mistakes, and let them know it is ok to make mistakes and that we learn from them. Post these messages visibly about the room – “We learn from our mistakes!” and, “Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and move on!” In addition, share with them the mistakes you have made and how you’ve learned from them.
• Allow plenty of wait time before asking another question, or before requiring an answer.
• Always discipline students privately and offset it with advice to move forward with.
• Never use additional work or time in class as a punishment or threat to learners; let the punishment fit the crime.
• Establish a social air of no tolerance when it comes to putting others down or bullying in any way.

Synapse Strengtheners

• Choose a concept taught that students have struggled with, or have difficulty understanding and create a graphic organizer for it.
• Give students the major topics and subtopics to be addressed and have them complete the organizer.
• Have students share strategies that have helped them with challenging material, like a reading strategy, a note-taking strategy, a pre-writing or brainstorming strategy.

1. Keep the strategies in a collection for easy retrieval and review when the same or similar challenges arise again.

• Have students write up short presentations of content learned through short constructed pieces, as a podcast, a video presentation, a slideshare or through a PowerPoint presentation.

1. Have students present the learning to the class or to a small group.