Building Smart Students: A Neuroscience Perspective

So, how does all this research in neuroscience translate to the actual classroom? 

"The message from social and affective neuroscience is clear: no longer can we think of learning as separate from or disrupted by emotion, and no longer can we focus only at the level of the individual student in analyzing good strategies for classroom instruction."

This quote is from a book chapter titled  “Building Smart Students: .” , by Mary Helen Immordino-Yang and Matthias Faeththey  in which they present suggested strategies for teachers based on neuroscience.

One contribution from the research that they provide concerning students' learning is "If they feel no connection to the knowledge they learn in school, the academic content will seem emotionally meaningless to them.   Even if they manage to regurgitate the factual information it will lay barren and without any influence on their decisions and behavior." 

Not surprisingly their first suggested strategy for teachers is -

Strategy 1: Foster Emotional Connections to the Material

" The first and possibly most important strategy that teachers can use to foster meaningful learning through emotion is to design educational experiences that encourage relevant emotional connection to the material being learned..... teachers can make room to relate the material to the life of the students and to students' interests."

One way that I do this in the lower school science classes is to connect the students with real people who are doing scientific research.  I strive to connect them to the stories of working scientists and how these people struggle to make sense of the information they gather and to develop their scientific explanations.   My hope is that students  will feel an emotional connection to those people and will envision what it would be like to do actual research.  In addition, in learning about scientists that are making substantial contributions to their communities I hope to empower students to see that science can be one way to make substantive improvements in the world around us.

How can we make those connections between students in an elementary classroom and scientists conducting research?  We can read books, watch videos and sometimes talk with researchers (in person or online).  Here are a couple of the books that I use that might be useful to other teachers- both books are written at the appropriate reading level for Grade 2 -3 students.  You can find more information about these books here.

Tornado - Tornado! A Meteorologist and Her Prediction tells the story of a weather scientist, Lynn Burse. Students read about how Burse gathers evidence that helps her predict when a tornado is coming. They learn that meteorologists take measurements, including wind speed and temperature, and use weather balloons to take measurements high above the ground. The book includes examples of weather data displayed in different ways, such as a table and a map. This book supports students in making connections between their own weather data collection in the classroom and what scientists in the field do to help society.

A Walk in the Woods - In Walk in the Woods students "accompany" a soil scientist named Asmeret as she walks through the woods. Students see the world through a soil scientist's eyes as Asmeret searches for evidence of decomposition. As Asmeret guides students through the forest, several important ideas emerge: soil is made of living and non-living things; small organisms help decompose dead plants and animals; and through decomposition, soil is made. It shows how scientists look for evidence to help answer questions about the world. Walk in the Woods provides a real-world context for the study of decomposition and soil habitats.

Perhaps even more engaging for kids are stories about the investigations of other children that were interested in things such as finding the best substances to use in making human hair gel or to answer questions about how to keep snails in a terrarium.  My students love this books and often ask me to re-read them.  

Jess Makes Hair Gel - Jess Makes Hair Gel provides an account of a boy who sets out to make his own hair gel. In the book, Jess identifies the properties of a good hair gel and then tests different ingredients to see which have these properties. While conducting tests on each ingredient, Jess realizes that he needs to expand the list of properties of good hair gel to include several more. With this realization he is able to solve problems he encounters and end up with a great hair gel. This book models the steps of the design process that students use in the unit.

Snail Investigations- Snail Investigations is a fictional account of a class who sets out to figure out what makes a good snail habitat, so they can keep snails in their classroom. This book describes the investigations these students conduct and what they learn about how snails, like other organisms, need food, water, shelter, and air to survive. The book highlights the cycle of scientific inquiry and depicts the triumphs and missteps of a group of classroom scientists. It shows how it is possible to investigate to find answers to questions. Snail Investigations models the process of conducting a scientific investigation and provides an opportunity for students to practice interpreting data.

This is  just one way to make science more emotionally relevant to students and it is only the beginning of a new way of thinking in terms of student learning and I look forward to many more ideas and possible strategies that will come from this new area of research.  As the authors of “Building Smart Students: .” say  " we aim to distill what neuroscientists have learning into a series of neuroscience-based recommendations about emotion and learning in social context that can inform teachers' practice.  These recommendations are likely to be reliable and useable because they reflect not one experiment or brain area, but a consensus on the principles of brain functioning that has accumulated from several years of neuroscience experimentation and debate."