Brain-Based Learning Strategies to Try in Your Classroom Today
Time has never been a particularly plentiful resource for educators — there’s so much content to cover, so many learners with such a variety of needs, and countless interruptions — that the oh-so-valuable deeply engaged learning time is always inevitably limited. In the face of learning loss, those engaged moments are even more precious. Educators need instructional strategies that work. To make the most of limited time, we must leverage practices that incorporate all that we know about how learning happens and how the brain works — without losing the creativity and flexibility that makes for an exciting, engaging learning environment.
What is brain-based learning?
Brain-based learning, also related to brain-based teaching or learning science, is the idea that we should teach in such a way that takes into consideration how students learn. If we understand how the brain takes in, processes, stores, and recalls information, we can help students learn efficiently by tailoring instruction according to those functions. It’s about designing instruction to match the brain’s capabilities. Neuroscience can help teachers (and their students!) work smarter, not harder.
Brain-based learning and learning science have been a powerful force in education for some time. For most educators, these concepts aren’t new. What can be a challenge, however — as with many spaces in education — is translating research and science into actionable, tangible classroom practices. That’s why we’ve created a series of fun, quick animations that break down brain-based learning practices and provide teachers with steps to implement the practices in their classrooms. Each of these animations focuses on a specific practice and is applicable to all subject areas. We’re always working to create more of these videos, so if there’s a topic you’d like to see covered, tell us in the comments of this blog or on Twitter at @McGrawHillK12.
Spaced Practice
By strategically scheduling practice sessions according to cognitive science, we can help students retain newly learned information for longer periods of time.
From research, we know that although we retain one hundred percent of the information we learn at the moment we learn it, our ability to recall that information drops quickly, then levels off over time. This phenomenon is sometimes called the “Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve.”
By employing spaced practice, educators can strategically plan review sessions just when the brain needs it most. When we schedule practice sessions at increasingly spaced intervals in time, we “catch” the rate of forgetting just when it starts to dip. The review sessions are used to spark student memory when it begins to decay and helps students retain information longer.
Cognitive Load Theory
Your working memory, which processes incoming information, has a limited capacity. Incoming information is either discarded or stored in your long-term memory. The brain manages this incoming information by sorting it into established schemas, or categories, that help process what that information means. It’s your brain’s strategy of understanding new information by relating it to information that you already know.
If the new information doesn’t fit into established schemas, your brain must adapt the schemas or create new schemas.
According to the Cognitive Load Theory, students’ brains will benefit if we introduced new concepts by strategically building on existing schemas. Specific teaching practices — like strategic practice and scaffolded feedback, among others — can empower educators to do just that.
Misconceptions
Broad conceptual understandings are a fundamental way that we identify patterns and absorb information. They are a biological shorthand for how we make sense of the world.
But, when a construct is based on faulty logic or missing data, the resulting misconception can become a barrier to learning. Sometimes, misconceptions are deeply-rooted beliefs that are not easily corrected.
Addressing a misconception directly can actually serve to reinforce it in the mind of a learner. Strategies like the O-SIRE method can help establish a framework for students to understand that their misconceptions contradict evidence:
- Open with facts
- Show how the misconception contradicts the facts
- Illustrate how the facts provide a better framework for predicting future outcomes
- Reinforce the facts
- Expose the architecture of the misconception so the learner can recognize it in the future
Worked Examples
In a worked example, the teacher walks a learner through the entire solution to a problem. By scaffolding learning through demonstration, students will feel more confident to tackle the same or a similar problem, and can often find the solution much faster.
Similar to video game tutorials, worked examples help students learn academic content by providing step-by-step demonstrations of how to perform tasks or solve problems. Once learners get the hang of things, the teacher can provide a faded worked example, with only some of the steps shown, so learners can practice using their own knowledge while still having some support. This reduces their cognitive load — which is the amount of information a learner has to remember all at once — so they can devote more of their cognitive resources toward really understanding how things work.
Metacognition
Metacognition refers to an understanding of cognitive processes and the ability to regulate those processes. In other words, it’s thinking about your own thinking. Metacognition helps students build conceptual understanding by activating prior knowledge and making connections between the prior and new knowledge. Metacognitive strategies are teaching and learning practices that encourage students to engage in metacognition as they learn new things, explore concepts, and apply knowledge. Here’s an example of a metacognitive strategy students can use to solve a word problem in math:
- Set goals
- Make a plan before beginning a word problem
- Reflect on what they have learned in the unit so far
- Come up with at least two strategies for solving the problem
- Decide which is the most efficient
- Work through the problem while asking questions and reflecting along the way
What brain-based learning strategy has been influential in your classroom? What strategy do you want to explore next?
For more on learning science, brain-based learning, and research-driven teaching strategies, see:
