Week 1: Chapters 1 - 3 Question #1 What are some key points about brain science...

What are some key points about brain science that would be beneficial for adult learners to know? What are some effective ways to share those points with colleagues and/or students?

Challenge: Create a poster, article, short video, or other illustration that effectively shares key points about brain science related to mindset, mistakes, and/or learning mathematics. Share your work in the discussion board.

Comments

This community seems to be chocked full of excellent instructors with great ideas.  Thank you all for sharing your thoughts and your creativity.

The adult learners I work with right now seem to benefit from the transparency used in their math class.  Using Rita Smilkstein's brain growth work and ideas more fully explained here http://tlcliteracy.org/images/downloads/Math/how_the_brain_learns_math__3_.pdf, we track daily brain growth and have dialogue about what that means for the day's events.

Another visual used in class is a representation of connecting dendrites (a hair band fully decked out with colorful pieces of feather boas).  Particularly when we find strong mathematical connections, a student in the class will go to the cabinet and get the "dendrites" then parade around the room with others students chiming, "Ding! Ding! Ding!" It's a fun way of celebrating and remaining aware of constant brain growth.

I think we should ALL be sharing about brain growth (especially in the k12 setting!) with our students. I'm thinking that a survey which helps a student to see their own thoughts about fixed vs growth mindset would be a start. Then to grow into showing a video about growth mindset with the new connections that occur with mistakes and growth. I'd conclude with having the students create a poster (paper/pencil or digital) on fixed vs growth mindset - could include words, phrases the show each, pictures, etc. 

There are two videos that we use during our orientation phase of signing up for our program.  These two videos are very good about explaining neuroplasticity and also explaining that anyone can learn at any stage of their lives.     www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELpfYcZa87g (neuroplasticity)    khanacademy.org/youcanlearnanything