Blog Post #2

I haven't had much experience learning about the teenage brain so it is not second nature for me to incorporate it into my lesson designs.  However, I do know that learning should be broken up into chunks separated by short segments where students are allowed to talk to a neighbor and discuss what they are learning.  This is a daily practice in my classroom and we allow students to break into at least a short discussion every 10 minutes or so.

By doing this, I think students are more engaged in the learning and it breaks up the material into more digestible pieces.  Discussion also allows students time to think about what they are learning and hear what their peers' interpretations are, providing multiple points of view to help them deepen their understanding of an idea.

I have also seen the SDAIE approach of linking movements to vocabulary words in order to help memorize them.  This was extremely effective and students were very engaged in the process because it was more active.  If students forgot the meaning of the word later, they often remembered it immediately after seeing the hand gesture associated with it.

The most engaged I have seen students in the learning process was always when they were actively doing something.  Whether it was creating a poster of some other project for a presentation, they were always more engaged in activity.