Zull, Chapter 4: Pleasure and Movement

In Chapter 4, Dr. Zull discusses the brain connections between pleasure and movement.  All educators are familiar with kinesthetic teaching strategies as well as Edgar Dale's Cone of Learning, which posits that we remember ~90% of what we do, and much less if we simply hear or see information.  I challenged my fourth and fifth grade Talented Theatre students to create choreography for a musical theatre piece, "Chim Chim Cheree" from the musical Mary Poppins.  I filmed various stages of the process, letting them watch themselves using a projector every ten-twenty minutes.  At first, I heard moans from the students that claimed that they "didn't dance." Others stated that singing, acting, and dancing would be "too hard!"  When they saw their ongoing collaborative progress, they began to reflect as a team, and congratulate each other on success and achievement.  They have begged me to replicate this lesson in our recent classes, and even show me choreography that they created at home with friends or siblings.  In watching the video, it is extremely clear that dopamine production is high, as is enjoyment!

Here is the video of their progress, at the end of 45 minutes of collaboration. Even though it is grayed out, it will still play...

-Jamie Hipp

Communication with Dr. Zadina

The opportunity to communicate with the author of our text is unbelievably awesome!  I have gone through my notes from every chapter and have compiled a list of burning questions for her here:

- Do you place limits on homework menu choice to still allow for student choice whilst ensuring students do not choose the same type of activity/exercise repeatedly?

- Given the importance of working memory and its effect on both reading and math achievement, do you feel it wise that parents utilize strategies to improve working memory prior to formal schooling? If so, should parents also work on attention training?

-    Are there currently any school systems or universities that you know of that employ educational neuroscientists in the capacity you discuss in Chapter 1?

- Since the act of speaking is important for transfer, are you a proponent of more oral exams as these may possibly lead to longer-term potentiation?

- If learning is state-dependent, should teachers/administrators/parents hype-up high stakes tests for students, even though this will likely increase anxiety?

 -In chapter 6, you state the importance for students to understand the number system and, for example, that 8 = 2 groups of 4.  Twenty+ years ago when I learned multiplication, I memorized times tables. With curriculum packages such as EngageNY Math, students are taught this expression through a variety of pathways including arrays, number bonds, tape diagrams, etc.  In my experience, high achievers in these classes persist in asking, “Why,” when they are taught multiple options for solving a problem. Would you allow student choice in this situation, even if the high achievers were unable/unwilling to demonstrate knowledge in every way? 

-  Jamie Hipp

Refer to Class Blog Post (Environment Pictures)

Here are the pictures to accompany my response to this week discussion leader's (Katy) post:

The best example of a classroom environment I have seen is Mrs. Bush's 3rd grade class at Parkview Elementary. As you will see in the pictures on my individual blog, desks are grouped with ample space between for movement, students have posted jobs each week, groups can change easily, and directions for the morning are clearly outlined on the board. Students have ample supplies in plastic cabinets at their table groups, making them self-sufficient and not reliant on the teacher. The walls boast great work and important information. I think this environment is a key factor to Mrs. Bush's students showing huge growth year after year.









-Jamie Hipp

Week 6, Day 3 Lyrics and Long-Term Memory

Recently, my students have been working on a musical theatre unit.  I have been looking for a great lyric-writing lesson, so the Week 6: Day 3 workbook lesson came at just the right time.  Spatial awareness and knowledge of stage directions are crucial to musical theatre choreography.  I charged my students with choosing a well-known song and changing the lyrics to ones that helped better their understanding of stage directions.  Students then voted on the 'best' song.  I have shared it below:

To the tune of "M-i-c-k-e-y  M-o-u-s-e"
By: Imani, Ja'Lia, and Nyla

When you're lookin' at the audience
Standing Center Stage (CS!)
From left to right
Stage Left, Stage Right
Don't look at the page!

If you are directin' the show
This is good to know
It's opposite
Stage Right, Stage Left
Now on with the show!

The concept of stage left being the actor's left and the director's right is a difficult one for fourth graders. Since creating this song, I hear students humming it onstage to help them remember!

-Jamie Hipp

He Had Part of His Frontal Lobe Removed...Should He Get The Death Penalty?

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/missouri-killer-cecil-clayton-fights-halt-execution-over-brain-damage-n324281

I came across this article on NBCNEWS.com.  It details the case of Cecil Clayton, who killed a police officer in 1996. Twenty-four years earlier, he had 1/5 of his frontal lobe removed due to a workplace injury at a sawmill.  Evidently, this executive dysfunction led to suicidal thoughts, depression, hallucinations, and violent tendencies.

Obviously, I related this article to my knowledge gleaned from Zadina Chapter 7 and the Frontal Lobe Pathway.  The frontal lobe controls, among other things, emotion and judgment.  She even states that 'normal' frontal lobe function is crucial to a good, quality life.  It is difficult to understand why Mr. Clayton did not (as far as we know) snap for over two decades after losing a key part of his brain.  A study by in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry found that, "No study... shows that disorders of prefrontal cortex predict violent crime (Brower & Price, 2001)."

I believe the Supreme Court has a very difficult decision ahead of them.  The research shows dysfunctionality when the frontal lobe is injured through trauma, however, this man is a killer.  I wonder if there are any intensive cognitive behavior therapy for patients who have damaged/lost part of their frontal lobe and if this kind of training would benefit adults as it does children.

References:

http://jnnp.bmj.com/content/71/6/720.full

-Jamie Hipp

Workbook Week 5 Day 5: Visualize meanings

Friday, March 6, 2015

This week, I wanted to really focus on the cooperative nature of learning and the social pathway, as well as visualizations.  I allowed for entirely group-oriented cooperative learning in each of my classes and ensured that all students felt included and valued by asking each member of a group to start class by giving a compliment to the other members of the group.  My students at Brownfields Elementary began working on making their own drama concept posters.  We have all seen the motivational posters like these...

...so I asked my students to create posters for a drama concept (their choice) including a picture of themselves representing the concept.  They also had to provide a concise definition of the concept. As per the workbook, they had to visualize the meaning of the word and discuss which image they thought best represented their concept.  Here was one of the most amazing posters:

All students pictured have media release forms signed by parents/guardians on file at the school.

HAMMING IT UP

The process of stealing focus from castmates onstage

Now these students have created a poster that will act as a visual aid for other castmates.  

This was a great activity and they will not soon forget any concepts they learned with visuals.

-J. Hipp

Workbook, Again (Week 4, Day 3) Making Connections

I am a huge proponent of helping students make neural networks by teaching information in such a way that my students can form connections.   When the workbook called for students to detect relationships and patterns, I thought it would be great to utilize tableau, a theatre concept to learn the cross-curricular concept of sequence.  Tableau is the French word for 'picture,' and is a strategy where students create frozen pictures with their bodies to demonstrate knowledge of concepts.  I do not explicitly tell students what they should portray, nor do I set them up with various levels.  The possibilities for teaching sequence with tableau are endless, including the following: any science cycle, timelines in social studies, PEMDAS and place value in math, story sequence in ELA and many more.

All of the students in the pictures below have signed media releases in the school's office so that pictures and videos may be taken of them in class.  

I asked students to show me the sequence of the science cycle of their choice:

 These fourth-grade students chose the life cycle of a human: infancy, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.

 Other fourth-grade students, given the same prompt, chose the life cycle of a butterfly: egg, caterpillar, chrysalis, butterfly.

I also asked students to show me sequence of place value:

 From right to left, these third-grade students portrayed the ones, tens, and hundreds place.

These students will not soon forget the concept of sequence.  They saw it on the board and in writing, discussed it, molded their bodies to portray it, and evaluated other peer work.  Talk about multiple pathways and neural networks!

Workbook (Week 4: Day 2) combined with Cool Writing!

In my five years of teaching, I have found that student motivation, ownership, and enthusiasm increases when they are given choices in class.  Last week, I came across an amazing image on Pinterest regarding the brain and writing.  I enjoy incorporating playwriting and script adaptation in my Talented Theatre classes but thought I would change it up this week, as per the workbook.  In lieu of choosing a short script for the students to work on, I allowed them to write stories and adapt these stories into plays.  I also asked students to vote on which script they would like to perform at the end of the week.  The fact that they were writing for a genuine purpose of potentially using their story for performance really made my students buckle down and focus on their work.  (They are also extremely competitive, which helped!)  I showed them this Pinterest image and students were fascinated by what areas were working as they wrote and even wanted to point to the various areas of the brain they felt were working hard as they planned their stories and worked on them.

Focused Attention: It Gets Easier, Kiddos!

Memorization.  When I mention this word to newly identified Talented Theatre students, I am often met with groans and whining.  For students that have hit their three-month mark in my class, memorization is a piece of cake! On page 117, Zadina identifies the "Zombie practice" of assigning students a poem to memorize. She admits that the benefits of this activity include attention, focus, and memory training.  

Every four to six weeks, my students perform their plays or one-acts and begin working on new scripts.  As my students will attest, they cannot add character voices, movement, or facial expressions to their acting without memorizing their lines.  As I have learned, my students are dealing with limited working memory capacity whilst trying to read off of a script onstage while trying to use an accent, change their body movement, and show their character's emotion on their face. 

Because students' minds have to remain focused in order to fully memorize the material, I tend to group new students (who tend to lack focused attention skills) together.  I begin these new groups with a small skit, requiring a few lines of memorization for each student.  As time goes on, the scripts get longer and a miraculous transformation occurs: Classroom teachers come to me, praising my efforts in Theatre class since the student we now share can focus for an entire lesson and completes more assignments than ever.  Students gain confidence in their ability to memorize and their motivation to memorize their lines for homework improves dramatically.  It is always amazing to witness students developing attention control which will benefit them throughout their entire academic career and into employment.

-Jamie Hipp

Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic Motivation...a Balance

In Chapter Four, Zadina states that intrinsic motivation is more powerful than extrinsic motivation.  I have applied this theory in my classes this week:

Extrinsic:
In a class of 8 students, I offered each student's candy choice if all lines were memorized prior to a dress rehearsal.

Intrinsic:
In a class of 7 students working on similar material as the first class, I kept repeating this phrase: "If you don't know your lines, and the rest of the cast does, who will look silly onstage?"

In the extrinsic group, 3/8 were completely "off-book" and memorized.
In the intrinsic group, 7/7 were completely "off-book" and memorized.


While my intrinsic group were clearly more motivated to achieve, I do see the benefit in extrinsic motivation as well. I will never forget my mother's sticker chart for memorization of multiplication facts.  She had given me a deal regarding my multiplication fluency: learn all of your times tables through 12x12 and we will take a family trip to Disney World.  Man, I wanted to see Mickey Mouse SO BADLY, so in a few short weeks, I could complete rapid fire drills correctly. (I didn't have to know that she and my father were already planning this trip!)

-Jamie Hipp

Initial Response/Brainstorm based on Zull Chapter 2

Experiential Learning (Student Centered/Active Learning): Teacher is only the sensory input, providing the concrete experience.

*Major reform is needed in educational assessments.  If the brain comprehends via experiential learning, how can prompts and worksheets truly assess for learning? 

*Teachers should provide opportunities for students to utilize all learning cycle stages. At my three schools, very few teachers allow for student experimentation/testing of abstract hypotheses, much less scaffolding students to construct a hypothesis.

*Finally, the science to back up the data on experiential learning and evaluation systems like COMPASS!

 

Creating New Knowledge While Sleeping

Response to Dr. Baumgartner's post:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/01/150129125546.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Fmind_brain+%28Mind+%26+Brain+News+--+ScienceDaily%29

Recently, I have read many articles focused on napping at work, which many say leads to an increase in workplace productivity. Teacher napping during the instructional day at any school seems impossible but I do believe a built-in nap time similar to Pre-K programs and nurseries would be beneficial to students and would increase achievement. I have attached a link to 2013 TODAY article that shows some companies' 'energy pods' for on-the-job relaxation/napping: http://www.today.com/money/nap-rooms-encourage-sleeping-job-boost-productivity-1C8881304 

I've always thought adults should have "rollover" naptime minutes that were unused from childhood :). The research from this week's article might just be the brain-based boost my idea needs!

Jamie Hipp

Can Music Improve Attention and Learning?

Response to Maya's article: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzbXQdE3mhMndFVFaFhFU1JfZnc/view

Music’s effect on brain structures to increase engagement, attention, word recognition, and mathematical achievement is well documented in the research cited in this article. I do not incorporate music as much as I should in my Talented Theatre courses, as I spend a majority of time trying to integrate drama/theatre with the core curriculum. There is also much research on the arts-integration versus arts-enhancement debate. It has been shown that arts-integration is better for students and increased success in both the core curriculum subject AND the art form subject.

I believe classroom teachers feel more comfortable with music enhancement versus music integration. Here are two examples of each:

Music Enhancement:

-Singing the ‘Fifty Nifty United States’ song to remember the states

-Songs from “Schoolhouse Rock” that aid in memorization

Music Integration:

-Teaching rhythm/steady beat/time signatures of music and connecting this to ELA through Poetry Rhyme schemes

-Teaching a genre of music (i.e. “jazz”) and connecting this to Social Studies via the Harlem Renaissance

As much as I advocate arts integration versus enhancement, I believe that the right music in any setting leads to increased happiness and reduced stress. I see the joy students get from joining choir and our annual Spring musical. The music teachers at all three of my schools have the least amount of student discipline issues and write-ups. Therefore, there are implications for every teacher, especially those trying to reduce anxiety and stress and increase positivity within their classroom climate.

-Jamie Hipp

Why Focus on the Negative?

Response to Dr. Baumgartner's question:

The prominence of research on negative emotions as opposed to positives ones is not surprising to me. I believe the same is probably true with anything that is considered 'abnormal.' Students with normal frontal-lobe function and a propensity for self-regulation can typically make it through school. They can make average to above-average grades and can graduate. 

This reminds me of the research and spending on different ends of the spectrum. According to Time Magazine, schools in the United States spends over $8 billion dollars educating students with intellectual disabilities. Alternately, our country only spends $800,000 on educating gifted children. Gifted students can typically get through school, make average or good grades, and graduate without incident, just like positive-emotion children. 

As a teacher of Talented students, I find it more difficult to find research pertaining to teaching Gifted and Talented students than to find research on students living with disabilities. In watching the TED Talk with Shawn Achor (which made me feel positively awesome!), I feel that a multitude of positive emotion research is absolutely necessary. The 'Happiness Advantage' theory should be a call to action for scientists to research best practices for positivity as this allows the brain to be productive and rewarding!

-Jamie Hipp

Have Technology and Multitasking Re-Wired the Ways Students Learn?

Based on Maya's article posting: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzbXQdE3mhMndmdrU2VrV3lPV3c/view

I incorporate technology into my Talented Theatre classes on a daily basis. My three Title I schools have received grants to purchase instructional equipment such as microphones, light boards, theatre Parnell lights, and soundboards. When casting any show, some students audition for my cast, while others beg to be crew members who open the stage curtain, run the boards, stage manage, etc. I am also a strong proponent of using videos as exemplars of outstanding work. I utilize Youtube and BlueGobo.com to show students different speeches, accents, and clips from plays and musicals. Recently, my students completed a playwriting unit entirely on computers, improving their keyboarding skills. We also use computers when analyzing/reviewing/critiquing peer work. Finally, I always start class with an improvised scene and use a stopwatch to time student progress.

As the article indicated, students need working memory space to accommodate multimedia and technology in the classroom. Therefore, teachers that incorporate technology have to account for students' individual differences in working memory capacities. As Zadina states in Chapter 3, students with a lower capacity may experience anxiety when this capacity is overloaded. Teachers should use a variety of modalities in teaching and allow for varied modalities for students to express what they have learned. Additionally, based on research about the brain's plasticity, teachers incorporating small doses of technology and scaffolding students may actually see a genuine improvement in students' working memory.

-Jamie Hipp

The Importance of Keeping Arts in Schools

SPEAKING OF ARTS-INTEGRATION...

THINKING vs. LEARNING

Insufficient learning occurs in many classrooms. Learning is deliberate, purposeful, ingrained information that students will retain. Unfortunately, we all know many students who think about new information but cannot apply it outside of their learning environment or in a different manner than the way the information was presented.  It is clear that numerous teachers are not effectively supporting student learning.

Often, educators plan a lesson, teach it, and assess for learning.  Inadequate.  Based on Chapter One, these teachers are setting students up for failure.  We should consistently assess for prior knowledge.  Although it may seem a waste of time to assess gifted students or those who have grasped all prior material, this helps all students make connections with information that has already been “wired.”  In my opinion, teachers should also share scope and sequence documents with students in various formats (for younger students, I have found mapping and graphic organizers helpful). I also encourage students to discuss and determine how new knowledge or information fits into/around/with what they already know.  They have to think critically and use metacognitive skills to determine connections which helps strengthen conceptual information networks in their brains.  

Teaching the material one way is also unsatisfactory.  Students need repetition and multiple pathways of information input to be able to adapt what they learned to new circumstances. Differentiation is key.  The homework menu is genius!  Not only do students take ownership of their work due to the element of choice, but they also are firing the information in varied ways so it is wired with increased synaptic strength. This undoubtedly leads to long-term potentiation.

All educators should master the difference between thinking and learning, and should ensure that both transpire in their classes.  

A Little About Me (and playing around with adding pictures)

     

Hello, EDCI 7307 class!  I'm playing around with inserting pictures on this blog, so here are three pics that I love:

1. One of my classroom signs

2. My rescue Bichon Frise, Crosby

3. Golf, my favorite pastime 

-JH