I have recently participated in several workshops at ASCD Teaching for Excellence 2014 that touched on Brain Based teaching and learning. While not the focus of the session topics, the strategies that were provided were enough to make me want to learn more about power behind this theory.
While my goal is to spend a significant amount more time on this topic in future blogging and go into depth on specific strategies, especially in gender biased learning and ways to overcome it through brain teaching and learning, my goal today in this post is to begin to collect some of the strategies that speak to the heart of brain based teaching.
Eric Jensen, an expert in the field of Brian based defined the theory in his book, Brain Based Learning: The New Paradigm of Teaching in three words, “engagement, strategies and principles.” He continues by saying, “Brain-based education is the engagement of strategies based on principles derived from an understanding of the brain.” (Jensen 2008).
To support such change in ones practice below is the beginning of my collection of brain based learning from websites, to publications, to videos that offer an insight into the very heart of the subject.
Even though I have no formal training in brain based learning, I have found that some of the suggestions and strategies I naturally carry out in my teaching or my suggestions for teachers as “best practice” and capitalize on the teachable moment! I do believe that as educators when we follow our intuition, much of the theory that abounds is almost second nature in classroom practice. But it can be reassuring to know that the experts support the practice through research. :-)