Resources on Learning and the Brain

Understanding How Brains Develop and Learn

• Five-Minute Film Festival: Learning and the Brain: Watch a collection of videos about the brain that will get you thinking about how findings from neuroscience can be applied in the classroom. (Edutopia, 2014)
• Nine Things Educators Need to Know About the Brain: Take a look at this brief list of lessons from neuroscience with implications for learning. (Greater Good, 2013)
• The Neuroscience Behind Stress and Learning: Understand how neuroimaging and EEG studies have provided a scientific basis for student-centered educational models. (Edutopia, 2014)
• Positive Brains Are Smarter Brains: Discover how educators can help students take charge of thoughts, feelings, and brain chemistry to steer themselves toward positive learning outcomes. (Edutopia, 2015)
• How to Enhance Learning by Teaching Kids About Neuroplasticity: Learn how teaching students about neuroplasticity can help them to adopt a growth mindset. (Edutopia, 2014)
• Metacognition: The Gift That Keeps Giving: Explore how students can become stronger, more independent learners by reflecting on learning, and try out strategies that can facilitate this process. (Edutopia, 2014)
• Brain Development and Adolescent Growth Spurts: Understand the forces at work inside a tween brain, and discover several strategies to help adolescents grow their executive-function skills. For more information on adolescent brains, also see "Understanding the Hyperrational Adolescent Brain," "The Mind of a Middle Schooler," and "How the Mind of a Middle Schooler Works." (Edutopia, 2016)

Applying Neuroscience in the Classroom

• Strategies for Strengthening the Brain's Executive Functions: Use these classroom strategies to help students better understand and develop executive functions. (Edutopia, 2015)
• Putting Working Memory to Work in Learning: Explore techniques like repetition, gamification, visualization, and peer teaching to help activate and, over time, enhance the central executive function of working memory. (Edutopia, 2015)
• Brain Movies: When Readers Can Picture It, They Understand It: Encourage students to visualize meaning in order to boost reading retention. (Edutopia, 2014)
• Move Your Body, Grow Your Brain: Exercise has physiological and developmental benefits for children's brains; discover ideas for putting a new spin on active learning. (Edutopia, 2014)
• Meta-Collaboration: Thinking With Another: Explore four strategies for teaching students how their brains work through acts of collaboration. (Edutopia, 2015)
• Educator Resources From BrainFacts.org: Find resources and activities to help teach students about the brain; available resources include interactives, videos, lesson plans and more -- sorted by grade, topic, and resource type. (BrainFacts.org)
• Matching Edtech Products With Neurological Learning Goals: Use the critical questions from this post to identify the best edtech products to help you meet learning goals that are consistent with what we know about how brains learn. (Edutopia, 2016)

Social and Emotional Learning and the Brain

• Brain Labs: A Place to Enliven Learning: Consider creating a brain lab in your classroom or school to teach children about metacognition and develop skills for self-reflection, attention, emotional regulation, and cognitive flexibility. (Edutopia, 2015)
• Brains in Pain Cannot Learn!: Understand how trauma affects the brain, and read about three ways to calm the stress response and ready brains for learning. (Edutopia, 2016)
• Cracking the Code of Student Emotional Pain: Learn about three collaborative processes that will help reset expectations and rethink outcomes in the face of academic, emotional, or social challenges. (Edutopia, 2015)
• Strengthening Executive Function Development for Students With ADD: Explore targeted mindfulness exercises that will help children with Attention Deficit Disorder to be more aware of reactions and decisions and to practice better emotional regulation and self-control. (Edutopia, 2015)
• Cultivating Practical Optimism: Read about an activity that can help promote an attitude about life that relies on taking realistic, positive action. (Edutopia, 2014)
• Change It Up and Calm It Down!: Discover ways to incorporate brain breaks and focused-attention practices into the school day to boost students’ brain health and knowledge acquisition. For more information, also see this earlier post on brain breaks and focused-attention practices. (Edutopia, 2016)
• Maslow Comes to Life for Educators and Students: Explore a blueprint for classroom practice that translates Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs into actionable, brain-compatible strategies. (Edutopia, 2014)

Brain-Based Student-Engagement Strategies

• Humor Boosts Retention: Learn about the research on humor, and consider how you can use it more effectively to engage students in learning. (Edutopia, 2015)
• The Engagement-Based Classroom Management Model: Invite your students to participate in a behavioral model that helps them level up with their engagement and attitude -- much like a video game. (Edutopia, 2015)
• Strategies for Getting and Keeping the Brain’s Attention: Use strategies like incentives, adjusting the pace of your teaching, and helping students recognize how focus feels. (Edutopia, 2015)
• Cognitively Priming Students for Learning: Consider a few ways that you can promote curiosity and get students ready for an upcoming unit or lesson. (Edutopia, 2014)
• Training the Brain to Listen: Learn how the brain processes auditory information, and find out how to introduce the HEAR strategy as a way to help students develop their listening skills. (Edutopia, 2014)
• Strategies to Prevent the Neurotoxic Impact of School Stress: Pursue strategies for counteracting the chronic stress of frequent boredom on the classroom. (Edutopia, 2013)

Brain-Friendly Assessment Practices

• Assessment, Choice, and the Learning Brain: Learn about neuroscientific research on assessment, and explore takeaways for classroom practice. (Edutopia, 2014)
• To Improve Test Scores: Hit Reset: Find out how to help students deal with feelings, including stress, that inhibit test performance. (Edutopia, 2014)
• Survive and Thrive During Testing Season: Consider some questions you should ask yourself during testing season, and explore brain-compatible strategies to help students feel better about themselves and more connected to the material. (Edutopia, 2014)
• 5 Assessment Forms That Promote Content Retention: Explore several assessment forms that will help students retain content and access higher performance levels. (Edutopia, 2014)
• Helping Students Understand What a Test Is and Is Not: Learn how students' performance on tests can often be affected by their perceptions of and feelings about why they're being tested and what's being assessed. (Edutopia, 2014)
• Brain-Compatible Study Strategies: Explore an array of brain-compatible study strategies for fifth graders, methods that can be adapted for use at any age. (Edutopia, 2013)

Neuroscience and the Common Core

• 6 Ways to Build Independent Thinking: Try out one of several suggestions, aligned to Common Core, for pushing students beyond their comfort zone, exercising brains’ executive functions, and developing independent thinking. (Edutopia, 2014)
• 11 Tips on Teaching Common Core Critical Vocabulary Help your students learn critical vocabulary through activities suggested by a learning and memory specialist. (Edutopia, 2013)
• Education, the Brain, and Common Core State Standards: Read about potential benefits and practical applications of the Common Core State Standards through the lens of the Brain-Targeted Teaching model. (Edutopia, 2013)
• Student Responses to Common Core Instruction and Assessment: Understand implications of the move to Common Core-aligned instruction and assessment for students and their brains. (Edutopia, 2013)

Research on How the Brain Works

• Neuromyths and Edu-Ca$h-In: Vetting the "Expert" Claims: Use these guidelines to evaluate educational marketing claims about “brain-based” products. (Edutopia, 2016)
• The High Cost of Neuromyths in Education: Learn what neuroscience research has to say about the right/left brain, learning styles, and the idea that we use only ten percent of our brains. (Edutopia, 2015)
• Why Curiosity Enhances Learning: Read about a neurological study that has demonstrated that curiosity makes our brains more receptive for learning. (Edutopia, 2014)
• Understanding the Causes of Dyslexia for Effective Intervention: Discover how neuroscience research can inform effective interventions for dyslexia. (Edutopia, 2014)
• Neuroscience and the Bilingual Brain: Follow neuroscientific research that suggests that children who grow up bilingual develop better focus and judgment. (Edutopia, 2012)