Chapter 2: The Inseparable Bodybrain Partnership - Emotion and Movement
Emotion as Gatekeeper to Learning and Performance
Emotions in the Classroom
Providing opportunities for full sensory input through study trips or being there experiences allows students to look for novel solutions to problems or situations and take sensory data from a variety of sources.
In HET classrooms, teachers greet students at the door to welcome them back to class and take their emotional temperature, providing a time for students who are anxious or fearful to have a short conversation with the teacher to help center and focus themselves.
Emotion drives attention. The prefrontal cortex becomes active during emotional experiences.
How Emotion Affects Learning
The amus, centered in the brain is the relay station for all of the 19+ senses
The amygdala, in the temporal lobe allows sensory information to arrive via the short, fast, but imprecise route
The hypothalamus is an automatic response often means the difference between life and death.
The hippocampus is primarily responsible for helping form and finding long-term memories stored in the cerebral cortex.
The cingulate gyrus connects the two hemispheres of the brain and helps resolve ambiguous situations.
Information Substances: The Rest of the Story
Emotion drives our attention what we attend to determines what we perceive and thus drives learning, memory, problem-solving, behavior, and on and on.
A Word about Emotions and Gender Differences
Gender differences in the brain are significant and have far reaching implications for all areas of curriculum and instruction.
Stress improves learning in males but impairs learning in females.
Emotions - positive and negative - are processed differently in the male and female brain.
Years of Research: Learning from Fear
Emotions significantly affect brain functions and thus learning, memory, and behavior.
Emotions filter incoming sensory input. Emotions are the gatekeeper to learning and performance.
Emotions are a function of the entire body brain partnership and are with us all the time.
Mastery/Application
Using Mastery/Application to Enhance the Bodybrain Learning Partnership
The emotional side of mastery is the foundation of positive self-concept, of seeing ourselves as a competent person, capable of handling whatever life puts in front of us.
The brain has its own built-in means of evaluating whether we've achieved mastery.
The brain knows the difference between scoring 100% on a quiz versus being capable of performing something needed and valued in the real world.
Immediate Feedback
Using Immediate Feedback to Enhance the Bodybrain Learning Partnership
Immediate feedback that tells us if we're on track or not is one of the greatest sources of motivation. relying on external sources of feedback is a motivation killer. Inadequate feedback produces highly charged negative emotions.
Adequate Time
Using Adequate Time to Enhance the Bodybrain Learning Partnership
Lack of time is our society's number one cause of anxiety and stress. The more important tour the completion of a task is, the greater the stress, anxiety, and frustration - all elements that add up to perceived threat.
Enriched Environment
Using Enriched Environment to Enhance the Bodybrain Learning Partnership
We'd choose environments that were planned using the best available science about the impact of environment to support each person or student becoming engaged and learning.
Choices
Using Choices to Enhance the Bodybrain Learning Partnership
Offering students choices strengthens their commitment to learn.
Movement To Enhance Learning
What Brain Research Is Telling Us
Movement is fundamental. In the classroom, the brain and body are always talking and working together.
Half of the entire brain is devoted to organizing action. The physiology of the brain underscores the importance of defining learning as a two-step process: understanding and then using what is understood.
Movement is crucial to every brain function. Our physical movements can directly influence our ability to learn, think, and remember.
Mimicry. Mirror neurons play a bigger role than is generally appreciated. Not only are mirror neurons the missing link between gesture and language, but they help explain human learning, ingenuity, and culture in general.
Aerobic Exercise. Kick starts brain chemicals essential for forming new memories and wiring learning into long-term memory.
A Word about Movement and Gender Differences
Male Brain Geared to Action. The amount of movement needed by students differs greatly by gender.
Movement Activities for Boys (And Not So Bad for Girls Either). Movement is fundamental to learning. Action replaces language for boys. The needed curriculum and instructional fixes for boys also improve the learning environment for girls.
Absence of Threat/Nurturing Reflective Thinking
Creating Absence of Threat
Curriculum and Threat. Strong body brain-antagonistic effects: thinking things are boring when too hard or too easy, difficult to understand if there's to relevance, frustration becomes the main emotion the content is not understandable.
Instructional strategies and threat. An environment with absence of threat is fundamental to learning and a prerequisite for reflective thinking.
Using Absence of Threat to Enhance the Bodybrain Learning Partnership
The body brain-compatible element of absence of threat enhances the effectiveness of the body brain learning partnership in many ways.
Nurturing Reflective Thinking to Enhance the Bodybrain Learning Partnership
The body brain-compatible element of nurturing reflective thinking enhances the effectiveness of the body brain learning partnership via curriculum development and instructional strategies implemented.
Nurturing Reflective Thinking
Reflective Thinking as an act of discipline. Reflective thinking doesn't just happen automatically. It is an act of either conscious discipline or habit of mind.
Impact of the physical environment. The ongoing impact of the physical environment of the classroom is extremely powerful.
Movement
Using Movement to Enhance the Bodybrain Learning Partnership
Instructional Strategies: using movement every hour, adding music and singing to movement sequences, performing movement sequences, and contribute learning curriculum content to movement sequences.
Curriculum development: use movement as an extension or application of content, students plan movement in sequences, using body language effectively, means of enhancing academic learning.
Collaboration
Using Collaboration to Enhance the Bodybrain Learning Partnership
Instructional strategies: collaboration has two main goals, increasing achievement and equalizing social awareness in classroom.
Curriculum development: students analyze historical events and literature when collaborating, collaborative work is always an option
Meaningful Content
Using Meaningful Content to Enhance the Bodybrain Learning Partnership
Meaningfulness starts with an emotional reaction and continues with the "aha" experience that makes the eyes dance.