Brain+Based+Learning

Description of the Approach
 * Beulah Heath**


 * Brain-Based Learning **

Brain-based learning is a comprehensive approach to instruction using current research from neuroscience. Brain-based education emphasizes how the brain learns naturally. It is based on what we know about the structure and function of the human brain at varying stages of development. Using the latest neural research, educational techniques that are brain friendly provide a biologically driven framework for creating effective instruction. This theory also helps explain recurring learning behaviors. Currently, related techniques stress that teachers must connect learning to students' real lives and emotional experiences, as well as their personal histories and experiences. This form of learning also includes newer educational concepts like:
 * mastery learning
 * experiential learning
 * learning styles
 * multiple intelligences
 * cooperative learning
 * practical simulations
 * experiential learning
 * problem-based learning
 * movement education

**Information Resources**

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The three instructional techniques associated with brain-based learning are:
 * Strategies and Ideas for Implementation **


 * 1. **** Orchestrated immersion ** –Creating learning environments that fully immerse students in an educational experience
 * 2. Relaxed alertness ** –Trying to eliminate fear in learners, while maintaining a highly challenging environment
 * 3. Active processing ** –Allowing the learner to consolidate and internalize information by actively processing it

**What Brain-Based Learning Suggests**

How the brain works has a significant impact on what kinds of learning activities are most effective. Educators need to help students have appropriate experiences and capitalize on those experiences. Three interactive elements are essential to this process:
 * Teachers must immerse learners in complex, interactive experiences that are both rich and real. One excellent example is immersing students in a foreign culture to teach them a second language. Educators must take advantage of the brain’s ability to parallel process.
 * Students must have a personally meaningful challenge. Such challenges stimulate a student’s mind to the desired state of alertness.
 * In order for a student to gain insight about a problem, there must be intensive analysis of the different ways to approach it, and about learning in general. This is what’s known as the “active processing of experience.”

**The core principles of brain-based learning state that:**
 * 1) The brain is a parallel processor,meaning it can perform several activities at once, like tasting and smelling.
 * 2) Learning engages the whole physiology.
 * 3) The search for meaning is innate.
 * 4) The search for meaning comes throughpatterning.
 * 5) Emotions are critical to patterning.
 * 6) The brain processes wholes and partssimultaneously.
 * 7) Learning involves both focusedattention and peripheral perception.
 * 8) Learning involves both conscious andunconscious processes.
 * 9) We have two types of memory: spatialand rote.
 * 10) We understand best when facts areembedded in natural, spatial memory.
 * 11) Learning is enhanced by challenge andinhibited by threat.
 * 12) Each brain is unique

==== Group-your wiki looks great! I am passionate about brain-based learning. I think this page is very well done and includes great info. I would just like to add the following...b **ecause of technology advances since the 90s, we know more about the brain. Findings: (1) the brain seeks patterns constantly. So, thematic, integrated lessons and units allow learners to more readily see patterns and connect new knowledge to prior knowledge. It is also good to thread curriculum to emphasize patterns. E.g. persuasive writing in an explorer unit (persuade people to go to new lands) and later in the year persuasive writing on Earth Day (why people should conserve, reduce, reuse, recycle, etc.). (2) THis goes with active processing---scientists have seen that movement and learning are connected. The brain learns best through movement (hands-on, creative drama/pantomime/improv, etc.)...Dr. Tate** ====