Chapter 6 Blog
WHAT:
Cognitivism


What different parts of the brain do and how the brain functions in adolescence


Frontal lobe: retaining long term memories that are not task based,
involves the ability to recognize future consequences resulting from current actions,
to choose between good and bad actions (or better and best),
ability to override and suppress unacceptable social responses,
to determine similarities and differences between things or events.
Temporal lobe: one on each side of brain – hearing, memory, epilepsy from temporal lobe problems - Hippocampus and amygdale found in this area
Occipital lobe: back of brain – smallest of 4 lobes – vision and color – damage not see or recognize color. Dementia – don’t recognize colors or objects. Small relationship to hearing
Parietal lobe:spatial – perception
Amygdale: almond shape located in temporal lobe - find out
Patients with damage – anxiety and fear – don’t show an amag response to learned fear
Feel emotions that aren’t there
Men’s bigger than women’s – they feel more sexual ways rather than emotional ways like women
Hippocampus: temporal lobe – a lot like amygdale = memory
Problems = memory, amnesia, dementia
Connected to amygdale
Brain stem: everything runs thru this – nerves, etc - all things that you don’t have control over that you do automatically without conscious thought –sleeping – auto response activities
2 parts = pons and oblongata


Adolescent brain: the brain continues to develop at least into a person's twenties.
brain connections and signaling mechanisms selectively change over time to meet the needs of the environment. Overall, gray matter volume increases at earlier ages, followed by sustained loss and thinning starting around puberty, which correlates with advancing cognitive abilities.
Scientists think this process reflects greater organization of the brain as it prunes redundant connections, and increases in myelin, which enhance transmission of brain messages.
Areas associated with more basic functions, including the motor and sensory areas, mature early.


Areas involved in planning and decision-making, including the prefrontal cortex -- the cognitive or reasoning area of the brain important for controlling impulses and emotions -- appear not to have yet reached adult dimension during the early twenties.


The brain's reward center, the ventral striatum, also is more active during adolescence than in adulthood, and the adolescent brain still is strengthening connections between its reasoning- and emotion-related regions.


Scientists believe these collective findings:
May indicate that cognitive control over high-risk behaviors is still maturing during adolescence, making teens more apt to engage in risky behaviors.
With the brain's emotion-related areas and connections still maturing, adolescents may be more vulnerable to psychological disorders.
Prefontal Cortex - it acts as the CEO of the brain, controlling planning, working memory, organization, and modulating mood.
As the prefrontal cortex matures, teenagers can reason better, develop more control over impulses and make judgments better. Doesn’t fully develop until age 25
Corpus callosum - Of particular interest to educators and parents is their finding that the fiber systems influencing language learning and associative thinking grew more rapidly than surrounding regions before and during puberty (a similar period to the growth of the frontal cortex), but fell off shortly after. These findings reinforce studies on language acquisition that show that the ability to learn new languages declines after the age of 12.

RAD Teaching (low stress – high emotion)
Understanding how information becomes knowledge, and makes it to long-term memory can be a powerful tool for enriching our students’ academic success. Brain-friendly strategies empower students to respond to the best sensory input (information) from their environment, and turn that data into retained knowledge.
R - Reticular Activating System - activating system
The attention activation switching system located at the brainstem. You can control where students’ focus goes in the classroom, and what information gets through the RAS by incorporating novelty, multi-sensory learning, goal-motivated attention, and creativity with learning activities.
A - Amygdala –controls emotion
The center of the brain’s emotion relays in the limbic system and it also strengthens the long-term memory potential of information that enters accompanied by positive emotion. With low-risk, low-stress, positive learning activities, the RAS and amygdala can help the brain focus on the sensory information of the learning activity.
D – Dopamine- happy neoro transmitters that carry emotion
One of the brain’s most important neurotransmitters, proteins that carry information across spaces between nerve endings. When you can incorporate pleasurable learning experiences and activities into lessons, the dopamine released is then available to increase pleasure, attention, and memory.



USING RAD TEACHING: Make sure that our classroom is stress free.
Bring in emotion – emotion and memory are highly connected

Keep stress level down in class so kids can learn better!
As a teacher don’t be so frantic about getting thru lesson plans but cover the material appropriate
How do you cover what you need to without getting a stressful frantic feeling?
Prioritize what is essential instruction
Backwards design
Practice – Plan well






The Information Processing View
Cognitivism Basics
Learning is due to experience.
Meaning is constructed by the learner, rather than being derived directly from the environment.
Prior knowledge and beliefs play a major role in the meanings that people construct.

A Model of Memory
Input to sensory register – (some lost)
attention goes into shorter /working memory
goes into long term memory (Some lost)
in depth processing often involves connecting new information to prior knowledge
can be retrieved fro working knowledge

Characteristics: Sensory Register, Working Memory, Long-Term Memory
Long-term Memory: Declarative/Semantic, Procedural, Episodic


SO WHAT: Putting Cognitivism into Practice
In the Classroom:
Make sure you have the students' attention;
Help students focus on the most important details and separate less vital information;
Help students make connections between new information and what they already know;
Provide for repetition and review of information;
Present material (instruction) in a clear, organized, way;
Focus on meaning, not memorization, of information.
Encoding
Rehearsal
Meaningful Learning (e.g., analogies)
Organization (e.g. advance organizers, chunking)
Elaboration
Visual Imagery
Mnemonics (if necessary)
Better Encoding: How do we get students to remember things better?
Emphasize meaningful learning
Teach for transfer
Promote flexibility
Group discussion and projects
Authentic activities
Foster dispositions
Dual coding in presentation

What we really want is Higher-Level Thinking
Bloom’s Taxonomy:
Remember: Recognizing, Recalling
Understand: Interpreting, exemplifying, classifying, summarizing, inferring, comparing, explaining
Apply: Executing, implementing
Analyze: Differentiating, organizing, attributing
Evaluate: checking, critiquing
Create: generating, planning, producing

Metacognition:
Learners’ knowledge and beliefs regarding their own cognitive processes
Their attempts to regulate those cognitive processes to maximize learning and memory
How can we help them develop a realistic view? This is affected bythe students stages of development.

Other things we can do…
Primacy & Recency Effect
Practice: Massed, Distributed, Enactment

Effective Study Strategies:
Identifying Important Information
Taking Notes
Retrieving Relevant Prior Knowledge
Organizing
Elaborating
Summarizing

NOW WHAT:

As a teacher my goal is to help students learn lifetime skills so they can become productive members of society. This can be done by teaching effective learning and study strategies and higher level thinking skills. Knowing what can be expected of students at their developmental stages and understanding how the adolescent brain functions helps me as a teacher to gear my teaching to the level at which my students are functioning. Blooms taxonomy and Rad teaching would be things I would incorporate into my lesson planning and teaching strategies. The information about using cognitivism in the classroom gives succinct and clear ways to help students retain the information being presented and gives me, as a teacher, a way to check list to make sure my students are retaining what I teach. Good chapter!