Welcome to Neuroeducation, where we're exploring the
neuroscience of how to switch on the brain to supercharge learning.
I'll be sharing with you innovative teaching techniques, effective parenting
strategies, and educational advocacy. I'm your host, Angie
Dee. Together, let's revolutionize children's learning.
Hi everybody and welcome back to Neuroeducation. Thank
you for being here. We are going to touch on something
super exciting today. How to switch on
the brain to supercharge learning. Unfortunately,
what's happened in schools is that we have
continued a very outdated method of education.
If we look back to where schools were created, we
know that post-war we needed to get a lot of
children into schools and basically it
was the easiest thing to get them into a box, behind
a table, on a chair, writing out
something on a sheet, textbook learning. And today we've
added a thousand tests to that. So often,
not only are they teaching to the test, we're
still teaching in a very outdated method of education. What
does neuroscience say about how we teach right
now in this day and age? A lot of people say to me, yes, but
we're innovating, Ang. Look what we've got. We've got laptops
in all of the classrooms. Well, while laptops obviously
is an innovation in some form, when you're getting
them to type, and in a
form where they're having to respond to a question that's
still requiring very lower order kind
of lower order thinking, it's still that
very same outdated method of education just
on a laptop. So what can we do to
really switch on the brain to supercharge learning? There's
quite a few things that we have learned through neuroscience. I
mean, we can literally put little monitors on the brain. We
have incredible research that show what kind of
hormones charge the brain so that
it is ready for learning and more receptive and
remembers more of what it's learned. And
we know that when children are interested and children are engaged,
the hormones of serotonin and dopamine are
flooding the brain at different times. Are they connected?
Are they interested? If they're connected to their teacher and to
their classmates and they're engaged in some kind of
classroom discussion and they're engaged in the learning, the
quality of learning is going to be so much higher. So
I'm going to give you three principles that neuroscience has
shown very clearly switch on the brain and
can supercharge learning. The first principle is
emotional receptivity. Now we know that
if our brain is in fight, flight, freeze
or faint, some people call it fawn, then
their learning is basically at
the lowest possible power because if the
brain feels like they are in danger in
any way shape or form and that can be from obviously an obvious
threat like somebody's actually trying
to hurt them or in this day and age a lot of our threats are
psychological maybe bullying or maybe they're
not feeling like they're being supported by you know their teacher
or their peers what can happen if they're
in fight, flight or freeze, their actual learning power,
which is in our prefrontal cortex at the front of our brain, it
can't be activated. It's like all powers are at
survival. So what can we do to make sure Well,
first of all, the brain can be activated for higher order thinking and
be in the prefrontal cortex is making sure children
feel safe and connected. So number one,
and they've shown it in many studies, the connection to the
teacher is of a higher influence than
many other things in the classroom. If
you are spending time connecting to the students before they
come into the classroom, that is fantastic. A lot
of teachers I see these days, they have five different ways to
connect before they even enter the classroom. A high five, an elbow pump,
maybe a dance, something fun, but it's
just a simple way to connect to the students before they come
into the classroom. Also, what
kind of an environment is the classroom, I
guess, feeling in terms of are they feeling supportive by their
classmates? Is it a comfortable environment or
is it an environment with lots of competition or bullying? So
what can we do to create that kind of environment where they're feeling
comfortable? Obviously having things
like group discussions, group projects, working
in pairs, talking about different things, this helps children
feel a sense of connection. So not only does it make them feel safer,
that allows the thinking and all of the powers to go up
to the prefrontal cortex, but also educational
research has shown us that children can remember
about 5% of what they hear, but 50% of
what they've learned through classroom discussions and group discussions. So
not only is it an effective way to help switch on the brain
for prefrontal cortex for the higher order thinking, it's
also a fantastic way for them to actually be
learning the content. The second component of
how to switch on the brain to supercharged learning is engaging
children's interest. Sometimes we might say something
like, all right today we're learning about photosynthesis. If
you are just stating what you're learning and
the children often will react with
receptivity that dwindles because you're just telling this is
what we're doing today, here's our content, da da da da da. It's
very different if we even try to elicit a little bit of
interest from the children. You could start with a question, an open-ended
question. So why is the grass green? Why are the
leaves on the trees green? And why do the leaves on
the tree change colour as we go through the seasons? just
starting with a slightly different question can start to
elicit interest. Also, if we're following
children's interests or allowing children more choice
in their interests, maybe if we're studying different countries, what
kind of aspects of understanding another country or
culture can benefit them in their classroom? And
what kind of choice can you give them to see what aspect are
they interested in? What country are they interested in
learning? these little little inputs where
we give children more and more power to follow their interests increases
the level of serotonin. Now when we increase the level
of serotonin our happy hormone in our brain What
happens to the learning? The learning is supercharged. I
like the analogy of a little paper boat going
down a stream because we have our neurons that
are basically firing together to wire together.
But the more happy hormones we have, the more happy and interested the
children are in the learning. If you imagine the paper boat, the
message of whatever the learning content is going
down a stream. If the children aren't engaged and they're not interested, that
paper boat is probably going down a little rocky, bumpy stream
that has barely any water. As soon as we increase the
engagement and we increase the interest, that
paper boat is going to go down a stream that has water rushing
down it. And that is the same for us as adults. If
you can think of something that you've learned as an adult, something that you've been
interested in, maybe listening to a podcast, maybe reading a
book, doing your own research, how much of you have
retained of that information? I would say a
lot more information. And neuroscience backs that when
we're interested, we're engaged and where we have some choice
in that learning, we're going to remember it for a long time. And
that's about lifelong learning. The third element I
wanted to share with you today is about choice.
Now, when we add choice There have been
some studies to show that it improves learning up to
30%. There are lots of elements that we can add choice, just like I mentioned before.
What country did they want to study? Or maybe how did they want to present
the information? If you are having to
present the information on, let's say, a country. Can
you share something in a poem? Can you share
it as a diorama? Can you share it in a song? Are
there points that they need to cover in whatever form
it is? Can they be given more creative freedom in how
to share that information and that choice of
that learning? The next element is
hands-on learning. And this is basically
something that improves all of those three
elements. The emotional receptivity, the interest
that the children have and the choice. When we bring
hands-on learning to all of those elements, learning
improves dramatically. they
have shown that the hands are literally a pipeline
to the brain. And if you have hands-on
learning versus a sterile worksheet where
children are writing down answers, the learning
difference and the retention is dramatic. Neuroscience
is clear about this subject. When
you engage a hands-on learning experience to any area
of learning, the learning improves exponentially. So
what we have shown in a diagram represents
how much learning the senses take up in the brain. Once
again, our eyes, what we see
and what we hear, Really, we retain such a
small amount. The learning pyramid reflects some of
the research. It shows we might retain five to 10% of
what we see and what we hear. And the classroom discussions
take it up to 50%. However, our hands-on learning
takes some of that learning retention up to 75%. So
not only as a teacher or a parent would you be
improving your learning sevenfold by
increasing some hands-on learning, but you're
making it more enjoyable for yourself and for the
students. When we add one other special area
to this It's the top of the
pyramid and it's not what a lot of people think. Peer teaching
tops the learning pyramid out of any method
that we can teach, whether it's audio, visual, classroom
discussions, even hands-on learning. Peer teaching
tops the learning pyramid at 90% retention. Why
is this? We're social animals, we're social beings,
so when we're able to teach something to somebody else, not only
are we enjoying that component of social, of
being able to be social, also we're having to think
about everything we've learned and then share it. So
engaging peer teaching in classrooms is a
really effective method of education that lots
of schools are using because it's wonderful to show children that
maybe somebody excels in spelling but somebody else
is excelling in maths, maybe someone's
brilliant at the arts and in each subject you
can allow some of those children that might shine and
do a little bit better in those subjects to help some of the other children and show that
we can all help each other because we all have different strengths and
this comes back to also showing our children that
they all have different strengths and talents in all different areas of
education. Thank you again, I hope you really enjoyed that episode
and I hope to see you again for our next episode of
Neuroeducation. To help our podcast, what you
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the links will be down below. Thank you so much for joining us