Multiple Methods of Assessment

The brain-compatible classroom is a brain-friendly classroom, whose activities are complementary to what we know about brain functioning.

The Brain-Compatible Classroom - General Characteristics

• absence of threat
• meaningful content
• enriched environment
• choices
• collaboration
• immediate feedback
• adequate time [for reflection and integration of new knowledge]
• mastery at the application level
• active involvement in the learning

Get students talking to each other about class content. When they talk, their frontal lobe is processing information more actively and they learn more.

Do whatever you can to help students feel safe and secure both physically and emotionally in your classroom. Help students feel accepted, not put-down. Help them to feel like it is OK to take a risk and try to give an answer without fear of ridicule.

Use metaphors like cartoons, stories, and broad, general representations of context.

Use color. Don’t use it to a distracting and excessive level. The learner has to be able to figure out why you are changing the colors and what patterns you are using. You can use a new color for each point or one color for heading and another for details.

Use a graphic organizer. The right-brained students need it and the others like it.

Present similar information that can be easily confused at least a day apart. On the second lesson, when introducing similar but different material, emphasize the differences. For example, do not teach latitude and longitude on the same day. Avoid teaching batting and golf swings on the same day. Do not teach how to print the letters p, q, and b all on the same day. It takes 6-8 hours to establish a clear pathway. If you are taught a similar skill before the 6-8 hours are up, you confuse and tangle the pathways.

Change the method of presentation every 10 or 15 minutes to refresh the cycle of learning.

Find out what motivates your students and apply the topic to that area of interest when possible.

One-third of kids learn best when they are in motion. Walk with them and get them moving.

As soon as a student gets over the fear of getting words down on paper, switch from creative spelling to conventional spelling. The longer a student practices something the wrong way, the harder it is to learn it the right way.

Make sure you have sunlight or full-spectrum light in your classroom. Add a desk lamp, open the blinds, and enjoy the light which changes the chemicals your nervous system secretes.

Keep the lights on whenever possible. Dimming lights or turning lights off during a video promotes the release of chemicals in the brain that makes students sleepy.

Use appropriate and respectful humor [NOT SARCASM]. When people laugh, they learn and retain information better. Use cartoons or stories to help students laugh. Laughter increases the release of endorphins which make a person feel good naturally.

Introduce musical keyboarding to children very early. This could be with a piano or electronic keyboard. Teaching instrumental music seems to help develop math and logic skills.

Avoid alcohol and drugs, especially during pregnancy. Alcohol use by either males or females has possible negative effects on the offspring.

Encourage everyone you know to enroll in the Parents as teachers Program so that their child can benefit from the newest brain research.

Introduce students from birth to age 10 to native speakers of a foreign language. This can be done in person or with video. Students who practice foreign languages early can reproduce the sounds and syntax like a native speaker will and will retain the language for years.

Help toddlers develop emotional control early through the use of consistent responses, rewarding positive behavior rather than the temper tantrum or other negative behavior.

Use music and motion in classroom lessons.

Support family quality time.

For children ages 5-13 years of age, teach no more than 5 pieces or concepts as a time. By age

14, most students can handle up to 7 things.

 

Components

Strategies


 

Absence of Threat

•            Daily Agendas: schedule [expectations] for the day posted where students can see it easily •            Lifelong Guidelines: Be Truthful; Be Trustworthy; Appreciation, No Put Downs; Use Active, Empathetic Listening; Do Personal Best; Mutual Respect; Positive, Encouraging, Supportive Interaction; Safety •            Procedures: steps for completing a task - the plan for expected behaviour    •            Cushioning - reassurance re learning to reduce anxiety - “It takes 3 repetitions or so to learn something.  Sit back, get what you can; we’ll review it later; we’ll work with it tomorrow.” •            Consistency: expectations maintained through procedures, agendas, modelling, and consequences •            Target Talk: a non-threatening way to focus attention on a concept or behaviour and Cushioning, reassurance •            The Seven Life Skills: caring, teamwork, responsibility, effort, initiative, perseverance, common sense •            Brain Biology: teaching how the brain functions


 

 

Collaboration

•            Cooperative Groups: working together to complete a task •            Class Meetings: time to “talk it out” and discuss issues and resolve problems •            Community Building: helping each student become a contributing part of his or her class


 

 

Enriched Environment

•            “Being There” Experience: real world location that uses all the learner’s 19 senses •            Clutter-Free Environment: classrooms that avoid distraction and overstimulation and are clean and well-organized •            Morning Procedure: a procedure that sets the stage for the student to begin his or her work [the day begins with the student, not the teacher] •            Immersion in Content: creating a time and place within the classroom that reflects what is being studied - not just print resources, but also three-dimensional objects and artifacts •            Compatible Colours: greens and blues tend to be calming colours and shades of brown reassuring; bright psychedelic colours are avoided •            Hands-On Activities: artifacts, manipulative, “real” objects •            Emotional Hooks: ways of bringing in interest and experiences of the students; emotion drives attention, which drives learning •            Resource Books and People: original documents, guests from a particular field of study •            Music, Lamps, Plants, Potpourri: an environment conducive to learning


 

 

Immediate Feedback

•            Guided Practice: teacher provides sufficient examples and practice for student achievement •            Rubric, Checklist, Rating Scale, Key, or Exemplar: a scoring guide that gives the learner the expectations and a vehicle for self-feedback •            Student Binders: binders for self-checking progress and understanding •            Checking for Understanding: teacher monitors through observation, informal assessment, and every-learner response techniques


 

 

Meaningful Content

•            Application to the Real World: constantly helping students connect what is being learned to how it will be used in the world beyond school/college •            Curriculum Connections: concepts that can be applied to other subject areas •            Student Binders: notebooks or folders for each student that contain copies of procedures, work-in-progress, Seven Skills, Lifelong Guidelines, classroom information, expectations, course outlines, evaluation procedures •            C. U. E.: design content that is creative, useful, and emotional •            Age-Stage Appropriate Content: content that is meaningful and of interest to the learner •            Critical Content: concepts, generalizations, frameworks and facts, what instructors want students to know and when and how they are going to handle it •            Theme: a framework for organizing the curriculum; a cognitive structure •            Framework: teaching the big ideas and method of approach of the subject


 

 

Choice/Multiple Intelligences

•            Learning Activities: activities designed to help students build mental programs •            Eight Intelligences: linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial-visual, musical-rhythmic, naturalistic, intra personal, interpersonal, bodily-kinaesthetic [emotional, spiritual] •            Time: giving students some choice in how to organize their time •            General Thinking Behaviours: observing, comparing, organizing, applying, and communicating, envisioning, setting goals, monitoring, progress, evaluating results, changing based on new evidence •            Learning Modes: visual, auditory, tactile, kinaesthetic •            Learning Styles: concrete sequential, concrete ransom, abstract sequential, abstract random •            Bloom’s Taxonomy: knowledge -> comprehension -> application -> analysis -> synthesis -> evaluation •            Dimensions of Learning: 5 types of thinking essential to learning: attitudes and perceptions about learning; acquisition and integration of knowledge, skills, and habits; extension and refinement of knowledge, skills, and habits; meaningful use of knowledge, skills, and habits; productive habits of mind


 

 

Adequate Time

•            Pattern Recognition: helping students see patterns in the world, across subject areas and in content and process skills - concepts and generalizations •            Building Mental Programs: being able to do a sequence of steps to accomplish a goal •            Less is Best: developing content and topics to the concept level; not skimming over the curriculum; understanding the framework of the subject - the themes within the subject and the way they connect; the method of operation of the subject; how the subject produces new knowledge; how an expert operates in this field


 

 

Mastery at the Application Level

•            Student Portfolio: demonstrates growth, samples of work, polished pieces, typical performance, personal best •            Metacognition: teaching students how to think about their thinking •            3C’s of Assessment: complete, correct, and comprehensive: “work isn’t done until it is done right” •            Authentic Assessment: tasks are related to classroom instruction and connected to the world beyond the classroom •            Closures [Celebration]: students teaching others what they have learned as a result of a unit of study and being evaluated by those others on the job they have done.

Brain-Compatible Classroom = one where curriculum is structured to take advantage of the way the brain learns best.  The richer the environment, the greater the number of neural interconnections that are made, and learning can take place faster and with greater meaning.  Input from the senses contributes to how we learn.  Our senses collect, on the average, 40,000 bits of information per second.  Those deeply involved in multi-sensory learning experiences will process even more bits.  The two critical elements in a child’s school success are an effective teacher and clearly established procedures.  Procedures allow us to experience consistency and to take personal responsibility.  Procedures give us a feeling of safety and security because we know how to do what is expected of us.  Knowing the procedures frees us to concentrate on the new content.  The Lynchpin of establishing a safe classroom environment is the Lifelong Guidelines and the Life skills.  Use the Life skills to label behaviours being exhibited.  The human brain looks for patterns of action that are nonthreatening.  Preplanning is thus very important.  All create an absence of threat!

 

Meaningful Content has several attributes: comes from real life, the natural world around us; depends on the prior knowledge we have had; it is important to all members of a “learning club”; it is age-stage appropriate; allows brain to seek patterns as a means of creating meaning; creates intrinsic rewards.  Experience is the prerequisite for understanding.  By relating content to what we already know, the brain sees a pattern and makes a mental program. The “being there” experience allows true learning to take place.  Reading about something is far less effective than actually experiencing it.  Experiencing it or “being there” makes a mental program of the phenomenon on which to “hook” further reading and learning about the topic.

 

Choice is important for we are all different.  Each of our 8 or more intelligences is present in everyone, is independent of the others, and develops and grows at its own schedule.  We all have each to some degree; some are more prominent than others.  Address all the intelligences.  It is choosing how to learn that allows each to be successful.

 

Time is a gift.  Scheduling must be held to a minimum, allowing time to consider, deliberate, master, and apply the tasks at hand.

 

Leslie Hart defines learning as a two-step process: It is the extraction from chaos of meaningful patterns and the acquisition of useful programs.  Pattern-seeking is the process of meaning-making or arriving at understanding of what is being considered; program building is the process of putting what we know into action and practising ways of using it, in real-life situations until it becomes locked into long-term memory, ready for retrieval years later whenever needed.   A mental program is a sequence of activities put together to complete a task, such as riding a bicycle, cooking spaghetti, mowing the grass.  As we learn to do these things, a mental program for that activity is stored in the brain so it becomes a habit.  We simply reach into our long-term memory and choose the right program. It takes adequate time for pattern-making and program-building.  Students must be given adequate time to master new experiences and add these to their prior knowledge, thereby creating new mental programs.  Basic ones allow for the building of more complex ones.  Eliminate strict schedules ands short blocks of time; slow down and use the “less is more” guideline to allow better understanding.  Teach frameworks, principles, and concepts instead of facts; time for application in a real-world setting; use the “teachable moments” for interest & excitement.

 


 

An enriched environment is one which wakens the entire nervous system - stimulating, curiosity feeding, capable of answering many questions, bursting with non-print materials such as experts in their fields and examples of the real thing!  Teaching by sensory input from all the senses is far more brain-compatible than teaching by textbook.  Intelligence is a function of experience: we know what we know because of what we have experienced.  Immersion in an enriched environment causes neurons to enlarge and dendrites to grow, which results in a denser, heavier brain that has a greater capability to problem-solve.  There are six levels of input:

Being There: uses all 19 senses.  Go for a walk in the forest.

IMMERSION: uses 13 senses - make a forest - papier mache, yarn, music, lamp for sun, etc.

HANDS-ON THE REAL THING: uses 9 senses - bring in samples of forest materials: trees —

HANDS-ON REPRESENTATIONAL THINGS: uses 4 senses - toy trees

SECONDHAND: uses 3 senses, videos, pictures, books

SYMBOLIC: uses 2 senses - label the parts of a tree {Dittos do not make dendrites!}

To create an enriched environment: use real life where applicable; use immersion as much as possible; use as much hands on of real items as possible; use books, videos, print only as a last resort; lots of references available, make room body-compatible; avoid clutter, distraction, overstimulation; change displays frequently & ensure such are related to topics being studied; spend less on texts and more on being there and immersion experiences; have guest speaker [experts] as often as possible; increase sensory input by at least ten times.

 

Collaboration builds problem-solving, decision-making, and communication skills.  It allows more input to the brain.  Collaboration is especially good for cognitive goals [creative problem-solving, conceptual learning, language, communication]; social goals [input from different groups using Lifelong Guidelines and Life skills], and solving common classroom problems [inclusion, influence, support, belonging through base, skills, interest, and work groups]

 

Immediate Feedback is automatic in the real world; but not so in the classroom!  We have to build it in.  Accurate, immediate feedback is essential for building mental programs.  Start with real-world experiences - being there.  Encourage changes to concepts: teach frameworks and “big ideas.  Change instructional materials - real events provide automatic feedback - building a model aeroplane. Increase the number of teachers through collaboration, guests. Change schedule so we have blocks of time.  Unlearning previously established mental programs is difficult.  Ensure they learn it correctly the first time!  Delayed feedback gives the opportunity to build an incorrect mental program.  Get it right the first time!

 

Teach for mastery - at the application level.  The U. S. graduates one million functionally illiterate children each year! [Kovalik, 1994, p. 108] The brain learns by building mental programs.  Authentic Assessment uses real life settings and levels of expectations and assesses what is worth assessing rather than what is easy.  Remember the 3 Cs as the criteria of mastery: COMPLETE: task completed from beginning to end and on time; CORRECT: work is accurate, uses multiple sources, meets all given specifications; COMPREHENSIVE: thoroughly thought through and investigated from several angles or sources.  Tenets currently held in high regard, such as seatwork equals learning, quantity is quality, and many points equals learning, must be relinquished in favour of these 3 Cs. Assessment is built into the curriculum as an on-going process by having already identified what is important to measure and creating real-life tasks to measure mastery.

 

Active Involvement - in any manner - alone, small group, large group - performances of Understanding/Expertise.