One Teacher to Another

Beating a Path to the Brain

Rick Wormeli

A student might memorize these letters for a test later in the week. But understand them, find meaning in them, move them to long-term memory? Slim chance. Now look at the same set of letters this way: San Francisco. Those of us who are familiar with the city suddenly connect those letters to places we have seen or studied — Fisherman's Wharf, Alcatraz, the Exploratorium, or curvy Lombard Street. We might think of cable cars we rode or sourdough bread we ate. By chunking the individual pieces (letters) in a meaningful way, we make sense of the randomness and improve the chances of moving the information to long-term memory.

Chunking is one of many instructional strategies supported by recent research about the human brain. Our rapidly expanding knowledge of how humans learn offers exciting possibilities for teachers.

A few years ago, I made a presentation about the applications of brain research for middle level education to a group of Colorado teachers. After the session, the husband of one teacher came up to me. He explained that he was a trauma surgeon, had a child who suffered from brain damage, and was well versed in neuroscience. My heart started pounding and I worried that I might have made a mistake in the presentation.

"Did I get the neuroscience wrong?" I asked him.

"No," he said. "You had it right. I want to tell you that those of us in the medical field are finding that the comments we made to patients about how the brain works just a few years ago are 180 degrees different from the truths we've found today. That's going to continue, too. If it's hard for us to keep up with the latest findings, then it has to be very difficult for teachers to keep up, given everything else they have to do."

We agreed that somehow teachers must stay informed about the new developments in brain research, whether at a professional conference, a school workshop, through a book discussion group, or by reading articles like this one.

Retaining the Lesson
If I asked you what you learned yesterday, you might not be able to immediately recall the specifics. David Sousa, author of How the Brain Learns (Corwin Press), says that most people will forget 90 percent of what they heard in the past 24 hours unless they interact with the material. In her book, Brain Matters, Patricia Wolfe explains that our brains begin discarding information within 18 seconds of receiving it unless we do something significant with the new data.

Now, it would be unreasonable to expect teachers to stop every 18 seconds in class so their students could interact with a different set of facts. But it is possible for us to make significant connections on a daily basis. For example, instead of lecturing for 30 minutes then asking students to color a map or label a diagram, a teacher could stop halfway through the presentation and ask the students to use one of the 12 summarization techniques they previously rehearsed. Cindy and Harvey might choose a two-minute partner review in which Cindy first describes everything she learned in the previous quarter hour followed by Harvey describing everything he learned that Cindy didn't mention. Afterward, the teacher finishes the lesson. (By the way, of the many possible instructional presentations, lecturing — by itself — results in the lowest long-term retention rates.)

Another good way for students to interact with new information is to divide them into groups and ask them to design a flag with symbols that represent the significant points of the topic. For example, they might create a flag representing labor's interests during the meat-packing industry scandals of the 1920s, a flag representing the conjugations of regular verbs in French, a flag representing compound interest on a loan, or a flag representing the importance of stretching before and after exercise. On the back of each flag, students can write explanations for each component of the design.

Understanding how the brain moves information to memory is very useful for teachers. Re-searchers tell us that the ability to remember something accurately and thoroughly has more to do with how the information entered our minds than how we review it. The brain seeks wholeness. When we fail to adequately learn something the first time, our memories become piecemeal. The brain fills those holes with other information regardless of its accuracy, and worse, becomes convinced that whatever filled those holes is the original truth.

This confabulation happens every day in our classes. That's why we must be on the lookout for students' misconceptions and correct them as quickly as possible. Knowing this, I pay more attention to the front end of my lessons because I have found that it takes much more time and energy to undo bad instruction than to teach a concept correctly the first time. I use more frequent and formative assessments than summative assessments to evaluate student learning. I also try to be clear about my expectations. Instead of saying, "Read Chapter 17 and be prepared for a test on Thursday," I will say, "Let's take a look at the way this chapter is set up and discuss why we're reading it."

The Primacy-Recency Effect takes this idea to the next level. Sousa uses this phrase to describe the portion of a lesson that we remember best and least. In some middle school classrooms, teachers begin the period with announcements, attendance, and other clerical matters. They might end the period by letting students start on homework or clean up the classroom before the bell rings. But the middle of the period — when the least amount of material can move to long-term memory — is when they focus on the key parts of the lesson. What a waste of learning potential!

If we want to improve learning, we have to teach the big truths in the first 10 minutes of class and review them in the last 10 minutes. When students first enter our classrooms, they need to do something that reinforces the major points or skills of the lesson, not just exchange last night's homework. Changing our classroom sequences can be the difference between students remembering the principles of FDR's New Deal legislation or remembering that the Ecology Club will meet next Tuesday. (In block-length classes, we must complete more than one Primacy-Recency cycle during the extended period.)

Getting the Brain's Attention
The brain is basically a survival organ. It focuses first on feeding itself — getting enough nutrition and energy to work — then responds to any threats, such as extreme temperatures or emotional and physical danger. If its survival needs are met, the brain next focuses on what's most familiar or contextual. The pursuit of familiarity is so powerful that the brain will not move anything to long-term memory unless it is connected to something already there. Knowing this, smart math teachers will begin their lessons on percentages by tapping into students' prior experiences, perhaps focusing on the likelihood of rain in the weather forecast or discussing classroom survey results.

Interestingly, we store information by similarities, but we retrieve it by differences. As middle school teachers, this means we should focus on similar topics several days or weeks apart to keep students from confusing the information the first time they experience it. If we have to teach similar topics simultaneously, we should explain the differences first to keep things clear.

Continuing the hierarchy of focus, the brain next pays attention to what it has been primed to receive. So, if we ask students to watch a video and take notes, they will write everything or nothing but probably not the material we thought was most important. On the other hand, if we ask them to watch the video and record four ways Americans responded to the Soviet Union's launching of Sputnik, we can steer their brains toward the purpose of the lesson. Ask a naturalist to study an area of the forest for possible uses and she will examine soil composition, tree cover, flora, fauna, climate, and the impact on animal habitats and surrounding ecosystems. Ask a housing development specialist to observe the same area and he will focus on slopes in need of grading, heavy boulders that will need to be redistributed, the difficulty of connecting to nearby water systems, the cost of tree removal, and the neighbors' willingness to cooperate. Establishing the purpose of an assignment and activating personal background are critical if we want to create meaning and get good results.

Conventional wisdom says we need five or six different interactions with the material before we master it. Can we do this with every topic? No, but we can incorporate previous learning when teaching new units, thereby providing reinforcement and keeping those neural pathways open. We also can let students continue interacting with the information and growing new neural connections by using wait time in our classes. In other words, don't call on the first student who raises her hand. The moment we call on someone, all the other students relax and their brains shift to autopilot. Keep everyone in suspense and their neurons will continue firing. Better yet, keep those brains moving at warp speed by making a habit of asking students to comment on a classmate's response before you add commentary.

The brain is very elastic. It continues to grow dendrites with each new learning experience until the day we die. The more dendrites we grow, the more neural pathways we have for future learning. In other words, the more we learn, the more we can learn.

If we want to help students learn well, we must immerse them in rich, diverse, and stimulating environments. Researchers tell us there are two stages in a person's life when the brain experiences phenomenal growth — from birth through age 2 and from ages 10 to 14. That's wonderful news for middle school teachers. It means we can profoundly influence students and shape their thinking, perhaps for a lifetime. So, let's use Socratic Seminars, inquiry methods, vivid simulations, authentic assessments, varied summarization techniques, block scheduling, and alternative instruction models that ignite innovation. Although new discoveries are made about the brain every year, one principle has remained constant: Mindful teachers produce mindful learners.

Rick Wormeli, who is certified by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, has taken a sabbatical from his job teaching English at Rachel Carson Middle School in Herndon, Virginia, to complete a doctoral degree in curriculum and instruction. You can reach him at rwormeli@erols.com.