what teachers need to know about their students brains

Differentiation is neither revolutionary nor something extra. Information technology is simply pedagogy mindfully and with the intent to support the success of each human being for whom nosotros have professional responsibility.
—David A. Sousa and Carol Ann Tomlinson (Differentiation and the Encephalon, 2018, p. ten)

Successful educators have been differentiating teaching for centuries. Great teachers design learning experiences that respond to their students' needs/readiness, interests, and learning preferences. They are ready to add depth and complexity to a task when they see that some students have achieved early mastery and are ready for a greater challenge. They also take ideas ready for how to scaffold the lesson to provide a struggling student with sufficient support tailored to the student's needs. These differentiated strategies are office of the art and science of great didactics.

Levels of Differentiation

The two levels of differentiated pedagogy could be divers as daily and targeted.

Daily Differentiation

Daily differentiated instruction integrates variety into daily tasks, lessons, and experiences for all students within a safe and secure encephalon-friendly classroom environment. This might include various cooperative learning arrangements, multimodal strategies, games and mini-competitions, art, music, office-play, projects, and discovery play.

Targeted Differentiation

Targeted differentiated didactics is the more traditional understanding of differentiated didactics. Using cess data and student feedback, teachers may modify and arrange didactics, materials, setting, content, process, and products to meet the learning needs of individual students' readiness—before, during, or after an initial lesson. This might include small-group reteaching, adjusted/modified assignments, extensions, do-overs, or a compacted lesson for highly capable students.

Brain-Friendly Daily Differentiation

When teachers have a solid understanding of the latest neuroscience research on learning, attention, motivation, memory, emotions, and stress, they are able to design classroom environments, curricula, and instructional strategies with the brain in mind. This proactive arroyo using prove-based all-time practices sets the stage for student date that results in powerful learning. Using a diverseness of differentiated strategies may be ineffective if the classroom climate and environment are not "brain-friendly." Agreement how brains larn best and virtually naturally can aid teachers create "brain-uniform" classrooms that tin can optimize learning.

Why Teachers Need to Differentiate Instruction

Differentiation should not exist seen as more work. Information technology is implementing the best of what we know to help all students learn. There are five compelling reasons to reply the question, "Why should teachers differentiate?"

1. Unique Brains

   Neuroplasticity, co-ordinate to neurologist and educator Judy Willis, is defined as the selective organizing of connections betwixt neurons in our brains. Intelligence is not fixed in our brains from birth. Rather, it's forming and developing throughout our entire lives. Every experience and interaction prompts neurons to abound dendrites, connect and form our neural networks. Every brain becomes uniquely wired.

   I type of lesson may or may non brand sense to every learner in a classroom. Ane's prior experiences, opportunities for socialization, and family unit life have created brain connections that must exist considered and respected during the learning process. As our children are experiencing more indoor, solitary, and sedentary time (often in forepart of a screen), many researchers believe that without discovery play and socialization, our kids may exist defective opportunities to make important neural connections in their younger years. These 21st century students' brains are wired differently. One size does not fit all. Instructional variety must be wide to engage the various learners in a classroom.

2. Brain Preferences

   Each of us develops learning "preferences." Based on our prior experiences, interactions, and successes (or failures), our brains develop patterns for what we believe works best for us. Even students from the same family tin can have very different interests, preferences, and temperaments, in spite of their shared genetic and environmental influences. Therefore, all students enter the classroom with their own unique propensities for learning—abilities, mindsets, advantages, disadvantages, and expectations—all of which shape students' learning preferences and needs. Teachers who take the time to create student profiles may discover the unique learning preferences and multiple intelligences strengths students bring to the classroom. When students are routinely motivated by tasks that "fit" them, they tin can develop a lifelong love of learning. Through daily differentiation, teachers tin can create instructional plans in a way that boosts every student's ability to succeed.

3. Curious Brains

   The brain loves novelty. Motivation and appointment are enhanced when we are presented with something out of the ordinary. Our brains are constantly scanning our environments for resources and pleasance. Affective neurologist Jaak Panksepp calls this the encephalon'due south natural innate SEEKING organisation (Gregory & Kaufeldt, 2015).

   Detect out what your students' interests are. What will get their attending? Student learning tin can be enhanced by real-world situations, trouble/project-based tasks, discovery play, guest speakers, field trips, and sensory-rich learning environments. Many students may not appoint with material presented through traditional text or lectures. When sitting in a classroom that contains mostly predictable or repeated stimuli, students' brains lose involvement and begin to seek novelty. Many of these technology-savvy learners will be more motivated and likely to engage if there are opportunities to use technology and multimedia.

   In his book How the Brain Learns, 3rd Ed. (2006), David Sousa emphasized how using humor and some fun activities can create a positive classroom climate, become students' attending, relieve stress, and raise retentiveness. Daily differentiation should include opportunities for students to brand discoveries and figure things out on their ain. Diverseness, a little fun, and novelty promote student learning and date.

4. Apply Information technology or Lose Information technology

   Brains demand multiple (elaborative) rehearsals to store data into long-term memory. The human being brain continues to abound dendritic connections between and among neurons throughout life, based on experiences and new learning. Those connections that get restimulated multiple times form our long-term memories. Many initial connections may only be temporary. If the new learning connections are not actively processed several times, at that place is a natural pruning that occurs. Merely those neural connections that have had multiple rehearsals and stimulation will concord for the long term. (Sousa, 2006).

   For every concept, skill, standard, and task, teachers must consider how it might be presented and so actively candy in several unlike means. This pluralized instruction should contain a broad spectrum of multimodal instructional strategies. Pedagogies that encompass a diversity of best practices tin can provide pluralized strategies that can engage all learners. Marzano's Classroom Instruction That Works and Hattie and Yates' Visible Learning and the Scientific discipline of How We Larn provide a plethora of strategies that are based on a meta-analysis of available research.

   When teachers create a repertoire of powerful strategies and integrate them into daily differentiation, students will retain, transfer, and exist able to use the new knowledge and skills beyond the classroom. Without the multiple rehearsals, learning might be merely for the curt term.

5. The Best Intervention Is Prevention

   Daily differentiation of essential standards helps more students be successful during initial instruction of the core curriculum. When more than students are able to achieve mastery due to pluralized teaching, in that location volition be less of a need to create interventions. For schools that develop response to intervention (RTI) models—or more broadly a multitiered system of back up (MTSS)—they tin can systematically provide differing levels of intensity of supports (interventions/additional challenges, collaborative structures, monitoring of student progress) based upon student responsiveness to educational activity and intervention (Buffum, Mattos, Weber, 2012). These tiers of intervention are most successful if the grade-level core instruction at Tier 1 has been taught with effective evidence-based all-time practices and differentiated instructional strategies. "Shoring upwards the Core" and improving initial instruction at Tier 1 will amend any intervention model. My co-author, Gayle Gregory, and I have 2 books that address the need to differentiate during Tier 1 initial educational activity. The unproblematic and secondary editions of Best Practices at Tier i: Daily Differentiation for Effective Instruction (Solution Tree, 2016) provide teachers with strategies and so that all students receive effective instruction on grade-level essential curriculum.

In that location are many compelling reasons for teachers to differentiate instruction. Our classrooms are filled with diverse learners and their unique brains. A traditional "1 size fits all" approach will non likely be effective for many of the students. Initial education should include variety and pluralized strategies. With novelty and multimodal real-earth tasks, more students will be engaged. When the lessons "fit" with the students' learning preferences, they build confidence and are more likely to stick with it, even during a struggle.

We know that constructive pedagogy requires an expectation that all teachers employ proven best practices while simultaneously integrating their ain personal style, planning for daily differentiation, and preparing targeted differentiation for individual educatee needs. There is actually no way for every teacher to have the fourth dimension, all of the skills, and all of the knowledge to meet every student's individual needs. The research is articulate: practiced teaching requires a collaborative effort. The only way a school staff can achieve the mission of enabling the highest level of learning for all students is by collaborating using their combined skills. (DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, & Many, 2010). The Professional person Learning Communities at Work® process uses team structures and a focus on learning, collaboration, and results to drive successful outcomes.

"If improved student learning requires a collective effort, then collaborative teacher teams are the engines that bulldoze effective core didactics. …to exist constructive, educators in educational activity teams must piece of work collaboratively to achieve the common goal of shared essential student learning outcomes." (Gregory, Kaufeldt, Mattos, 2016, p. 19)

Our students need us to differentiate our instructional strategies and teach with their brains in heed. Building up our instruction "tackle box" takes fourth dimension. Working with colleagues, sharing ideas and successes, and interpreting educatee data will provide the back up needed for teachers to build a repertoire of differentiated strategies.

Martha Kaufeldt

Martha Kaufeldt is a professional development specialist and author. She travels internationally doing workshops and trainings on curriculum development, differentiated didactics, assessment, mindfulness, and encephalon-friendly strategies for teachers.

References:

Buffum, A., Mattos, M., & Weber, C. (2012). Simplifying response to intervention: Four essential guiding principles. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Printing.

DuFour, R., DuFour, R., & Eaker, R. and Many, T. (2010). Learning by Doing: A handbook for Professional Learning Communities at Work. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.

Gregory, G & Kaufeldt, M. (2015). The Motivated Brain: Improving Pupil Attention, Engagement, and Perseverance. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development (ASCD)

Gregory, G & Kaufeldt, Grand. (2012) Think BIG, first minor: How to differentiate didactics in a brain-friendly classroom . Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree.

Gregory, G., Kaufeldt, M., Mattos, M. (2016) All-time practices at tier one: Daily differentiation for effective instruction . (Elementary & secondary versions) Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree.

Hattie, J. & Yates Thou., (2013) Visible learning and the science of how we acquire, 1st edition. New York, NY: Routledge.

Kaufeldt, M. (2015). The motivated brain: Improving attention, engagement, and perseverance. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Marzano, R.J. (2017). The new fine art and science of teaching. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree and ASCD.

Marzano, R. J., Pickering, D. J., & Pollock, J. Eastward. (2001). Classroom pedagogy that works: Research-based strategies for increasing student achievement. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Sousa, D. (2006). How the brain learns. G Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Sousa, D., & Tomlinson, C. A. (2011). Differentiation and the encephalon: How neuroscience supports the learner-friendly classroom. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.

Willis, J. (2006). Research-based strategies to ignite pupil learning, Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

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