Hands-on, Practical Guidance for Educators

From math, literacy, equity, multilingual learners, and SEL, to assessment, school counseling, and education leadership, our books are research-based and authored by experts on topics most relevant to what educators are facing today.

Look Inside

Updated Edition of Bestseller

We're Born to Learn

Using the Brain's Natural Learning Process to Create Today's Curriculum

Second Edition
By: Rita Smilkstein, Corwin Press, Inc.

This updated edition of the award-winning bestseller shows teachers how to help students become the motivated, successful, and natural learners they were born to be.

Full description

Look Inside

Product Details

Grade Level: K-12
ISBN: 9781412979382
Published By: Corwin
Year: 2011
Page Count: 272
Publication date: April 04, 2014

Select Format:

Review Copies

This book is not available as a review copy.

Description

"Applying the natural human learning process described in the book transformed my students' ability to learn. No teacher, new or experienced, should enter any classroom without a copy of this book."
—Patricia Jamie Lee, Educational Consultant
Many Kites Press, St. Paul, MN

Teach students to take responsibility for their own success!

This updated edition of the bestselling book on the brain's natural learning process brings new research results and applications in a power-packed teacher tool kit. Rita Smilkstein shows teachers how to create and deliver curricula that help students become the motivated, successful, and natural learners they were born to be. Updated features include:

Guidelines for using the six-step Natural Human Learning Process (NHLP) for lesson planning and test preparation
New information on how technology and Internet research affect student learning
Practical methods for giving all students the tools they need to achieve

The author translates her unique research on students' critical and creative thinking into classroom strategies and sample lesson plans that will help to create a successful learning environment. Building on the content that earned the author an Educator's Award of the Year from the Delta Kappa Gamma International Society, We're Born to Learn provides teachers with practical methods for giving all students the metacognitive, motivational, and technological tools they need to take responsibility for their own achievement.

Key features

The updated edition includes:

Step-by-step instructions to help educators conduct student research in their own classrooms to determine similarities and differences between individual learning processes
Answers to how teachers might adapt to the widespread use of user-controlled technology both in and out of the classroom
A chapter dedicated to explaining how the brain learns in accessible language to share with students, complete with diagrams depicting the parts of a neuron, growing dendrites, synapse communication, and the sections of the brain
Emphasis on the imperative of emotionally safe classrooms, including discussion of self-image and positive and negative neural networks, and the way that feeling's physiological effect on the brain plays into a successful learning environment
A section on learning styles, aptitude, preferences, and multiple intelligences, including learning type (visual, auditory, kinesthetic), gifted students, special needs learning differences, and students with ADD/ADHD
Real life classroom examples of students' critical and creative thinking coupled with research on the NHLP (Natural Human Learning Process)
a list of non-natural learning assumptions followed by a list of ways to change them to natural learning assumptions
an examination of students—their emotions, similarities, and differences, including learning styles, multiple intelligences, and disabilities such as ADHD and autism—as a precursor to pointing out their own resources for achieving success as learners
Self-evaluation tools to help students take responsibility for their own success, including pre- and post-evaluation forms for classroom use
A discussion of how to help students use positive transfer to intervene in the natural constructive process of learning, including an example of a transfer problem from the authors' own time as a graduate student
Updated discussion of student group instructional feedback, and how teachers can learn and improve from their student evaluations
Procedural suggestions for exams and exam preparation
Sample lesson plans for elementary- through college-level classrooms
How to give students the matacognitive, motivational, and technological tools to help them take responsibility for their own success

Author(s)

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.

Corwin Press, Inc.

Table of Contents

Foreword by James H. Berry

Preface

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Introduction

What This Book Is About

Why Study the Brain?

Experienced Educators and the Research

The Learning Paradigm

Assumptions

Where We Have Been

Where We Are Today

This Book

PART I: Research in the Classroom and in the Brain Lab

1. Learning and Teaching

Eye-Opening Experiences in the Classroom

The Natural Human Learning Process and Brain Research

The Breakthrough Classroom

The Research-Based Stages, Curriculum, and Lesson Plans

2. How People Learn: The Natural Human Learning Process (NHLP)

Critical and Creative Thinking by Infants and Children

An Example of Children’s Critical and Creative Thinking

Critical and Creative Thinking in School

The Natural Human Learning Process and School

The Natural Human Learning Process (NHLP) Research

After the Research Is Over

Research Reports

The Importance of Making Mistakes

Where We Go From Here

3. How the Brain Learns: The Brain’s Natural Learning Process

Introducing the Brain

Getting to Know the Brain

How the Brain Learns

Convergence of Ceiling Levels and Neural Networks

Pruning

Experience and Brain Growth

Constructivism

How the Brain Thinks and Remembers

The Brain’s Innate Resources and Rules

Children’s Brains and Adults’ Brains

The Brain Grows Holistically with Plasticity

Implications for Curriculum Development

What About Piaget?

The Breakthrough Theory of Learning

4. Personal Experience, Individual Differences, and Learning

Emotions and the Brain

Negative and Positive Self-Image Networks

Learning from Experience

Learning Styles, Preferences, and Multiple Intelligences

Gifted Students

Aptitudes

Special Needs, Learning Differences, Autism, ADD, and ADHD

The Seven Magic Words: See If You Can Figure It Out

Tests

Beyond Individual Differences

A Handout for Students

5. The Student’s Experience: Metacognition, Motivation, Self-Evaluation, Achievement, and Technology Self Taught

Metacognition and Motivation

Intrinsic Rewards

Removing the Barriers

Self-Evaluation and Metacognition

Another Metacognitive Experience

Achievement

Writing Samples

Age and Achievement

Technology Self Taught

PART II: Theory and Application

6. Sequencing of the Curriculum

Challenges

The Missing Link

Two Problems

Neuroscience and Education

Converging Research

The Theory and Guide

Putting the Theory into Practice

Thinking at Higher Levels

Constructing New Knowledge

Planning the Sequence of the Units or Topics in a Curriculum

Using a Causal Sequence

Learning Activities for Units and Topics

The First Activity

Two Classroom Examples

Students and the NHLP

Developing a Curriculum

Young Students Thinking at a High Level

The NHLP in the Classroom

7. The Pedagogical Model and Guidelines

Transfer

Four Effective Instructional Practices

NHLP Pedagogical Guidelines

Assessment

Education Courses or Faculty Development Programs

Good News

PART III: Using the Brain’s Natural Learning Process to Create Curriculum

8. Brain-Based, Natural Learning Across the Curriculum

The Seven Magic Words in Action

Safety

Respect

The Opportunity to Learn Naturally

The Critical First Stages

The Introduction-to-Poetry Unit

Front Loading

A Science Learning Activity about the Concept of Buoyancy

A Unit for Library Orientation

A Unit for Introduction to Safety Procedures

A Science Learning Activity about Water

A Unit for Learning How to Take Lecture Notes

The NHLP Planning Guidelines and Pedagogy

9. Curriculum Development for Units, Courses, and Programs

Where to Start

Curriculum Development Guidelines

A Unit on Literal and Inferential Meaning

A Unit on an Introduction to Egypt

A Unit on an Introduction to Fractions

A Basic Grammar Curriculum: A Sequence of Units for a Whole Course

A Developmental English Curriculum: Courses in a Program

References

General Bibliography

Index

Reviews

"I encountered Rita Smilkstein's work as I struggled with teaching entry level students on an Indian Reservation. The natural human learning process described in the book transformed my experience. My students were engaged, attending classes, and reprogramming their past from the frame of 'failure' to the frame of 'born to learn.' No teacher, new or experienced, should enter any class without a copy of this book."

Patricia Jamie Lee, Educational Consultant
Many Kites Press, St. Paul, MN

"Dr. Rita Smilkstein has inspired thousands of students and educators with her practical application of the Natural Human Learning Process. This new edition brings us up-to-date, and maintains the clarity and generosity of spirit that is Smilkstein's trademark. Her enthusiasm rekindles the joy of learning that is hard-wired in all of us. If you read one book this year, make it We're Born to Learn, then put it into action."

Laura Symons, Assistant Professor
Piedmont Community College, Charlottesville, VA

"We're Born to Learn is one of the most valuable instructional tools teachers will ever use. Knowing 'how' students learn should be absolutely mandatory, yet is rarely taught in college prep. All teachers believe that they are teaching, but few know how students actually learn, and don't consider how the brain processes new information while developing their lesson plans. Dr. Smilkstein likens the learning brain to twigs on a tree; the twigs grow from a branch that is already there (prior knowledge). After reading this book, the most treasured seven words in every classroom will be, 'See if you can figure this out.'"

Dr. Deborah Daiek, Associate Dean
Schoolcraft College, Livonia, MI

"Dr. Rita Smilkstein offers a prescription for what ails our developmental students: lack of critical thinking, lack of understanding of the learning process, etc. While the previous edition is a must read, this latest edition is teaching and learning’s pharmacology textbook…a collector’s item for developmental education."

Reneau Waggoner, Associate Professor
Jefferson Community and Technical College, Louisville, KY

"This book is a must read for anyone with ADHD or ADD students who are drowning in the public education system. The author presents recent research that opens the door for teachers to immediately create an environment conducive to helping these students learn."

Karen J. Sides, Dean of Interdisciplinary Programs
St. Philip's College, San Antonio, TX

"Packs in in practical methods for achievement and is a top pick for any education collection."

James A. Cox, Editor-in-Chief
The Midwest Book Review, August 2011

Other Titles in: Teaching Methods & Learning Styles | Brain-Friendly Teaching & Learning | Critical Thinking Skills

Select Format:

Review Copies

This book is not available as a review copy.