Brain science in class?

The human brain is a magical and complex creation of nature and has always been regarded as an elusive "black box" by educators. Since the 1980s, with the application of new technologies and methods, the research of brain science has gradually flourished, and scientists have begun to reveal the brain mechanism of human cognitive activities from different angles. According to these new achievements, education and teaching experts from all over the world carried out experiments in the field of education and teaching, which provided valuable enlightenment for classroom teaching practice.

In order to better improve teachers' teaching and promote students' science, according to the latest exhibitions in the fields of brain science, pedagogy and psychology, we provide the following 12 suggestions for teachers' reference in teaching.

1. Emotion helps to remember. When the individual's emotional system is active, the effect of learning and memory is the best. As an adult, what I remember best are those experiences related to positive or negative emotional experiences in my childhood. Therefore, teachers can use some methods to stimulate students' positive learning emotions in class to enhance their memory, such as maintaining teaching feelings; Stimulate interest with change and exercise; Personalize the course by contacting students or their own life experiences; Arrange interesting activities, special events or trips, etc.

2. High challenges and low threats. Challenges can promote learning, while threats can hinder learning. When the environment is full of challenges and children are encouraged to explore bravely, the learning effect of the brain is the best. When the brain receives the "threat" signal, it will turn to the primitive survival mode, and learning will be inhibited. Affirmative praise, reward and competition are all ways to create challenges and will not pose excessive threats to students. Criticism and punishment can also create challenges and contribute to the establishment of the school system, but they should not be too strong and abused. For example, too much homework should not be used as a punishment.

3. Let the children move. Exercise promotes blood circulation and delivers more oxygen to the brain. When students sit for more than 20 minutes, a lot of blood will gather on their hips and feet. Let the student stand up at this time, which can promote his blood circulation. In the 45-minute class, if students have the opportunity to stand up, the blood supply to the brain will increase significantly. Therefore, in the long-term teaching, teachers should ask questions, group activities and other forms to make students move and improve the learning efficiency of the brain.

4. study with a smile. Humor can promote learning. Research shows that humor can improve the memory retention rate from 15% to 5%. When you laugh, more blood is pumped into your brain, bringing more oxygen. Laughter can also cause the brain to release a chemical into the blood, reducing the pain of learning and making people feel comfortable. Humor can create a positive emotional atmosphere and help improve students' attention. Therefore, teachers should be good at using humor, but be careful of irony!

5. Graphic organizer. Graphic organizer is the way the brain organizes information, such as outline, venn diagram, network diagram, chart, etc. The brain is not a container of information, but a selective receiver. It selectively accepts information according to a graphic organizer, while shielding a lot of other information. Therefore, teachers should often use some graphic organizers to help students organize new knowledge and teach students to use various graphic organizers to classify knowledge.

6. Multi-sensory participation. The sensory channels that learning mainly depends on are vision, hearing and motor perception. When learning new content, the more senses involved in learning, the greater the possibility for students to master it. Teachers can use visual stimuli such as pictures, charts and physical demonstrations to mobilize multi-sensory participation; Explain to the students and let them explain to you in turn; Create an immersive opportunity for students. The more senses involved in learning, the more opportunities for students to learn.

7. Keep it bright. When the light is dim, the brain will secrete a chemical substance-melatonin to the pineal gland, thus inducing sleep. When the light is bright, melatonin secretion stops. Generally, the brightness of classroom lamps is only 30-50 Candeira, while the brightness requirement for inhibiting melatonin is 150 Candeira. Therefore, teachers should try to keep the classroom bright, especially the classroom without windows.

8. Use metaphors. Similar to the existing experience, it is easy to be accepted and understood by the brain, and metaphor is a good assistant for the brain to find out the similarities between old and new knowledge. Metaphor can play a crutch role in the thinking development of junior children, because he prefers visual and space-oriented thinking to language-oriented thinking. Similes, analogies, stories and cartoons are all good ways to promote effective learning. Vivid metaphors can generally improve the efficiency of memory retention by 40%.

9. The root cause and recency effect. At the beginning of a class, students learn best. Followed by class. The middle part of the class has the worst influence, which we call a trough. 20-minute class, 3-4 minutes in the trough. In an 80-minute class, the trough is as long as 30 minutes. Older children are more adaptable to long classes than younger children. Therefore, the teacher should use the beginning of the class to emphasize the main points, explain the details and exercises in the middle of the class, and finally summarize the tips.

10. A confusing new concept. Teachers should not teach two similar concepts at the same time. If the concepts are very similar, such as latitude and longitude, height and length, the brain will establish the same learning path, causing conceptual confusion. It's like painting with red and yellow at the same time. You must clean the brush before trying another color. Otherwise, the two colors will mix together to produce the first color you don't want. Therefore, teachers should not talk about two similar new concepts in one class, but step by step. It is best to teach the second concept after students have a solid grasp of the first concept, and then focus on the differences between the two concepts after all the new concepts are finished.

1 1. Guide the exercise. When teaching new skills, teachers should carry out guiding exercises before letting students practice independently to help students master the skills correctly. Otherwise, if students acquire certain skills by mistake, teachers often spend a lot of time to correct these mistakes. It is difficult to change students' wrong skills because the learning path of neural dendritic connection has been fixed. Neurodendrites form a "road" like wood. The more this road is used, the less likely it is for students to overcome difficulties and create other "roads" to reach the same destination.

When teaching new skills to the whole class, teachers should first give students examples or demonstrations, and then let each student practice in their seats. At this time, you must take a walk to ensure that the students understand correctly. Only by ensuring that each student has mastered the new skills correctly can students practice independently. Teachers should always check the study or homework of the whole class to find out the wrong study. The faster you find and correct mistakes, the better your learning effect will be.

12. As we all know, teachers must master the teaching content before class. The same applies to students. Students usually learn best when teaching other students. Teaching other students can improve the memory consolidation rate by three times. Therefore, teachers should take the initiative to create various "teaching" opportunities for students, such as letting students speak to the whole class and giving lessons to other students in the class.

"Mutual teaching" is a very effective form of student teaching. After learning a series of contents, the teacher asked the students to face each other in pairs and tell each other what they had learned. For this activity, students often have to prepare carefully for a long time after class. In order to "teach each other" effectively, teachers had better not let students choose their own partners or limit the time of activities. It is best to have a certain gap between students who "teach each other", such as the combination of gifted students and average students, and the combination of average students and poor students, but the level should not be too different. Moreover, "mutual teaching" should be carried out after a group of learning tasks are completed, not after each class.

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