Week Nine: Blog Question

What is the most important things to keep in mind when developing brain-compatible Lessons?

With this vast amount of knowledge I learned throughout this course and with the assistance of How the Brain Learns, its hard to bring it all together into a lesson plan and keep in mind the large amount of information.
Unfortunately there is no answer to this question. There are several components to keep in mind when developing brain-compatible lessons but one component is not as important as the other. They are all important. Not every lesson plan can address every aspect of every possible teaching method but we can come very close.
We should keep in mind:
- Learning engages the entire person.
- The human brain seeks patterns in search of meaning.
- Emotion affects all aspects of learning, retention, and recall.
- Past experiences always affects new learning.
- The brain’s working memory has a limited capacity.
- Lecture usually results in the lowest degree of retention.
- Rehearsal is essential for retention.
- Practice does not make perfect.
- Each brain is unique.
While teaching we should set a strategy that captures attention, tell the students what you expect, state why they should know this, inform them of the knowledge they should know, clear and correct models, check for understanding, provide immediate feedback, and provide the opportunity during closure to attach sense and meaning to new learning.
Teachers can only hope they help all their students but they should also know that sometimes this does not always work. With the necessary knowledge, we can correct this and hopefully help all in some way.