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Igniting Student Potential

Teaching With the Brain's Natural Learning Process

By: Angus M. Gunn, Robert W. Richburg, Rita Smilkstein

Kindle students' excitement for learning with transformative, field-tested strategies and lessons!

Combining brain research, teaching strategies, and sample lessons based on the Natural Human Learning Process (NHLP), this innovative guide for preservice and inservice teacher training and professional development helps teachers maximize student engagement and achievement. This resource covers:

Engaging diverse learners from PreK through high school and beyond
Curriculum applications across content areas, teaching methods, and learning styles
Research and theory, instructional planning and strategies, sample lessons, assessment, teaching for transfer, and more

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Product Details

Grade Level: PreK-12
ISBN: 9781412917063
Published By: Corwin
Year: 2006
Page Count: 232
Publication date: December 20, 2006

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This book is not available as a review copy.

Description

"'Handle With Care' should be on the front cover so that the eager teacher uses the book as an inspirational resource."
—Roy Bentley, Professor Emeritus, University of British Columbia

"A wonderful guidebook for people moving toward constructivism and for many who are already there."
—Geoffrey Caine, Director, Caine Learning

"Fosters a refreshing educational discourse of possibility and offers some very useful classroom strategies that work with today's youth."
—Peter P. Grimmett, Director, Institute for Studies in Teacher Education, Simon Fraser University

Kindle students' excitement for learning with transformative, field-tested strategies and lessons!

Students are natural thinkers and pattern-seekers who are born to learn. Tapping into their innate abilities is the key to engaging students in their own learning. This innovative guide helps teachers maximize student engagement and achievement by combining brain research, classroom applications, and teaching skills based on the Natural Human Learning Process (NHLP).

Ideal for preservice and inservice teacher training and professional development, this superb resource covers:

Working with diverse learners from PreK through high school and beyond
Curriculum applications and sample lessons across content areas, teaching methods, and learning styles
Research and theory, instructional planning and strategies, assessment, teaching for transfer, and more

Key features

Combines brain research, classroom applications, and teaching skills based on the Natural Human Learning Process (NHLP) that all students possess
By award-winning author Rita Smilkstein and co-authors Angus Gunn and Robert Richburg, all of them master teachers, teacher educators, and staff developers
Focuses on the needs of diverse learners from PreK through high school and beyond, as well as on the professional development needs of instructors and instructional leaders
Covers curriculum applications across content areas, teaching methods, and learning styles.
Appropriate for in-service teachers as well as for pre-service methods courses
Covers research and theory, instructional planning and strategies, sample lessons, assessment, teaching for transfer, teacher professional development, and more.

Author(s)

Angus M. Gunn

Angus M. Gunn is professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia. Gunn's books, journal articles, and media productions focus on education, geography, and environmental science.

Robert W. Richburg

Robert W. Richburg, Ph.D., a teacher of teachers, is University Distinguished Teaching Scholar at Colorado State University.

Rita Smilkstein

Dr. Smilkstein speaks nationally and internationally on brain-compatible education. She has taught in middle school through graduate school including 28 years at North Seattle Community College. Currently Professor Emerita North Seattle Community College and invited faculty in Educational Psychology at Western Washington University's Woodring College of Education, Everett Campus. Publications include articles and books on brain-based curriculum and pedagogy. Author of We’re Born to Learn: Using the Brain’s Natural Learning Process to Create Curriculum (Corwin Press, 2003), which won the Delta Kappa Gamma International Society’s Educator’s Award of the Year, 2004; the second edition will be published in 2011. She is a co-author of Igniting Student Potential Using the Natural Human Learning Process (Corwin Press, 2007). M.A. (English, Michigan State University), Ph.D. (Educational Psychology, University of Washington). She has received many teaching awards, including the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development’s Excellence Award, 1991, 1995; the College Reading and Learning Association’s highest honor, the Robert Griffin Award, 2005; Induction as a Fellow of the American Council of Developmental Education Associations, 2006, the highest honor in the field of Developmental Education.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

About the Authors

Part I: Research and Theory

1. Why This book? Why Now?

The Moral of the Maginot Line

Are Our Educational “Guns” Facing in the Wrong Direction?

A Bloated Curriculum

A Testing Obsession

Cultivating the Latent Ability of Every Student

Life-Altering Teachers

The Classroom as a Community

Understanding Is a Key to Hope

A Playful Classroom

References

2. How Learning Happens: The Natural Human Learning Process

Students Know How to Learn; They Are Natural Learners

Trying to Find the Way

Research on the Natural Human Learning Process (NHLP)

Using the Missing Link in Math Education

If All Students Learn the Same Way, Why Are Students’ Fates Different?

A Person’s Fate: Nature or Nuture?

Helping Students See Their Potential: Students’ Self-Understanding

The Benefits of the NHLP and Metacognitive Knowledge

All Students Have an Innate Potential and Motivation to Learn

The NHLP Pedagogy

Notes

References

3. How the Brain Learns: Research and Application

The Seven Magic Words

Metacognition: Basic Facts about How the Brain Learns that Everyone Should Know

Motivation

Creativity

Emotions and the Brain: Fight or Flight

Constructivism

Reasons Students Are Not Motivated In School

Plasticity (Neuroplasticity)

No-Fail First-Stage Learning Tasks

Examples of No-Fail First-Stage Learning Tasks

Things That Can Make It Go Wrong

Feeding the Brain

Opportunities to Fulfill Their Potential

Notes

References

Part II: Classroom Applications

4. How Tall Am I? Real-world Math for Early Learners

Transition from Home to School

Creating a Brain-Friendly Environment

The Nature of Math

Math Content for Early Grades

Numbers

Measurement

Geometry

Games

Multiple Intelligences and Student Potential

Exploring Outside the Classroom

Evaluation

References

5. Can You Build an Igloo? Understanding the Past with Elementary Learners

Discovering the Past

Beginning the Unit

Examining a Distant Place

Inuit Society Today

References

6. Where Would You Locate Your Castle? Developing Potential in Early Adolescent Learners

What are the Relatively Normal Physical Changes That Occur With the Beginning of Puberty?

How Then Would We Teach?

Justin’s Teacher

Building Relationships – The Key to Early Adolescents

Enriched Environments

Boredom Reduces the Adolescent Brain

The Importance of Play

The Opposite of Play is Stress

Active Learning and Problem Solving

Connected Learning

Social Learning

The Importance of Emotion

Where Would You Put Your Castle? A Potential Igniting Teaching Unit

An Acronym to Help Us Remember These Strategies

The Early Adolescent Needs a Uniquely Skilled, Compassionate Teacher

References

7. What Keeps Satellites Above Earth? Scientific Investigations for Teenage Learners

Teenage Intellectual Abilities

Learning to Use Scientific Methods

Coral Atolls

Pendulum Clocks

Gravity

Satellites

Relativity

References

Part III: Teacher Skills

8. Learning Communities: Falling Empire and Rising Democracy

Learning Communities

A Falling Empire

Models of Learning Communities

Student Feedback

The “Ask Them” Method for Assessment and Engaged Learning

Using “Ask Them” For Assessment in a Coordinated-Studies Learning

Community: “The Fall of Empires”

Side Benefits

Pitfalls and Trouble-Shooting

Making a First Connection

Igniting Student Potential

Notes

References

9. Assessment Strategies that Promote Learning and Ignite Student Potential

Instructional Sequence: Case 1

Instructional Sequence: Case 2

What Are the Differences Between Juan’s and Mary’s Approaches to Assessment?

Informal Feedback

Making Certain We Are Measuring What Our Students Are Learning

Test Considerations vs. Projects

References

Appendix A: Interest Inventory

Appendix B: Eporue Map

Appendix C: Juan’s Classroom

Appendix D: Using Juan’s Interest Inventory to Show Group Attitude Change

10. Developing Teachers Who Inspire Their Students

What is Different About Instruction That Allows the Brain to Learn in its Most Natural Way?

Why Does This Approach Work?

How Do Teacher Skills Differ in Problem-Solving Instruction?

A Model Preservice Teacher Training Program: Training Teachers to Teach with the Brain’s Natural Way of Learning

Candidate Selection Process

Program Structure

The Teacher Education Classroom as a Laboratory

Student Teaching

A More Effective Approach to the Preservice Education of Teachers

The On-going Professional Development of Teachers

If the Resources Were Available, What Would a Model Professional- Development Program Look Like?

Lesson Study: Another Professional Development Strategy

Educare

Conclusion

References

Index

Reviews

"Well organized. I enjoyed the self-talk about bad neural networks and especially liked the brain research in the chapters pertaining to the development of the student."

Marilee Sprenger, Professional Development Consultant

“`Handle with care’ should be on the front cover so that the eager teacher uses the book as an inspirational resource, gradually remolding practice and introducing change in appropriate increments. This book might have immediate impact if used first as a discussion starter for small groups of teachers or as a study guide for staff development or 'retreats.' The message of the book, however, goes far beyond strategies for teachers. There are issues here for school administrators, for state-mandated goals and programs, and for teacher education programs. The book certainly deserves consideration by teacher education methods instructors. And since parental involvement is absolutely necessary if any constructive change is to take place, imagine how discussion of this text might perk up a PTA meeting!”

Roy Bentley, Professor Emeritus
University of British Columbia

"Fosters a refreshing educational discourse of possibility and offers some very useful classroom strategies that work with today's youth."

Peter P. Grimmett, Director
Institute for studies in Teacher Education, Simon Fraser University

"A wonderful guidebook for people moving toward constructivism and for many who are already there."

Geoffrey Caine, Director
Caine Learning

"Igniting Student Potential should be on every teacher's must-read list. The book not only tells why teachers should get in tune with their students' natural learning process, but explains how to do so. If teachers have intent to construct the best possible learning environment for their students, this book is an essential tool to help them do it."

Dee Tadlock, PhD Director, Research & Development
Read Right Systems, Inc.

"A stimulating read. Confirms so much of what we have been trying to convey to the teachers with whom we work."

Sue Beeson, Director, CSD
Developing Emotionally Literate Schools

Other Titles in: Designing & Evaluating Staff Development | Teaching Methods & Learning Styles | Brain-Friendly Teaching & Learning

Available As:

Review Copies

This book is not available as a review copy.