Motivation and How Students Learn Best

1. Motivation and How Students Learn Best Georgetown Day School Parent Evening Seminar April 2012

2. For further conversation about any of these topics: Rick Wormeli rwormeli@cox.net 703-620-2447 Herndon, Virginia, USA (Eastern Standard Time Zone)

3. Do I dare disturb the universe?

4. [Artist Unknown

5. Schools aren’t meant to meet the needs of diverse students. ‘Anyone out there know me? It is counter-cultural, subversive, to do what we know about motivation and differentiation.

6. Interpretive Dance for All Curriculum vs Hidden Curriculum Dentist Office Couch Analogy Varied Homework Assignments The Larger Working World Fair Isn’t Always Equal

7. Readiness v. Ability

8. Our future depends on this one here.

9. Writer, Mark Bauerlein, speaking about today’s students surfing the Internet: “Their choices are never limited, and the initial frustrations of richer experiences send them elsewhere within seconds. With so much abundance, variety, and speed, users key in to exactly what they already want. Companionship is only a click away….Why undergo the labor of revising values, why face an incongruent outlook, why cope with disconfirming evidence, why expand the sensibility…when you can find ample sustenance for present interests? Dense content, articulate diction and artistic images are too much....They remind them of their deficiencies, and who wants that? Confirmation soothes, rejections hurts. Great art is tough, mass art is easy. Dense arguments require concentration, adolescent visuals hit home instantly. “

10. “We went to school. We were not taught how to think; we were taught to reproduce what past thinkers thought….Instead of being taught to look for possibilities, we were taught to exclude them. It’s as if we entered school as a question mark and graduated as a period.” -- Michael Michalko, Creative Thinkering, Machalko, 2011, p. 3

11. Creativity is making connections between dissimilar things in such a way as to create something new. It’s often about recombining old ideas and things for new purposes or perspectives.

12. From Professor Alane Starko in her book, Creativity in the Classroom: Gutenberg developed the idea of movable type by looking at the way coins were stamped. Eli Whitney said he developed the idea for the cotton gin while watching a cat trying to catch a chicken through a fence.

13. Pasteur began to understand the mechanisms of infection by seeing similarities between infected wounds and fermenting grapes. Einstein used moving trains to gain insight into relationships in time and space.

14. Transcend formulaic responses.

15. A submarine submerges, rises up to the surface, and submerges again. Its depth d is a function of time t.(p.44) d d 1 t t 2

16. A submarine submerges, rises up to the surface, and submerges again. Its depth d is a function of time t. (continued) d d 3 t 4 t

17. Consider the following graphs. Describe a situation that could be appropriately represented by each graph. Give the quantity measured along the horizontal axis as well as the quantity measured along the vertical axis.

18. A Visual Approach to Algebra Frances Van Dyke Dale Seymour Publications 1998

19. It’s notan answer chase.

20. It’s a question journey.

21. Shifting our Thinking…. • Democratization of knowledge… • Lectures are launching pads… • Web 2.0: Khanacademy.org, teachertube.com, schooltube.com, youtube.com, Google Docs… • Growing narcissism… • Students only use filtered Websites… • Incredibly fertile soil for new ideas when sharing (Steve Johnson, Where Do Good Ideas Come From?)

22. Be clear: We mark and grade against standards/outcomes, not the routes students take or techniques teachers use to achieve those standards/outcomes. Given this premise, marks/grades for these activities can no longer be used in the academic report of what students know and can do regarding learner standards: maintaining a neat notebook, group discussion, class participation, homework, class work, reading log minutes, band practice minutes, dressing out in p.e., showing up to perform in an evening concert, covering textbooks, service to the school, group projects, signed permission slips, canned foods for canned food drive…

23. A • B • C • I, IP, NE, or NTY Once we cross over into D and F(E) zones, does it really matter? We’ll do the same two things: Personally investigate and take corrective action

24. If we do not allow students to re-do work, we deny the growth mindset so vital to student maturation, and we are declaring to the student: • This assignment had no legitimate educational value. • It’s okay if you don’t do this work. • It’s okay if you don’t learn this content or skill. None of these is acceptable to the highly accomplished, professional educator.

25. Remember: • Learning is reiterative, recursive. • Repeated practice and use of content are vital to long-term competency. • Re-do’s better prepare students for the world of standards and accountability.

26. Cerebrum Pre-frontal Cortex Cerebellum Brain Stem

27. Moral/Abstract Reasoning Empathy Working memory Awareness of ConsequencesPlanning Adjusting to changing situations Impulsivity control Input by-passes cognition centers; goes directly to emotional response centers

28. Hippocampus and the Amygdala

29. …AMYGDALA! Activate the… • Amygdala encodes emotion on to information as it’s • processed in the hippocampus. • Learning with strong emotion retained longer. • Don’t go too far – emotion can dominate cognition. • Purposefully plan for the emotional atmosphere.

30. Consider: • Pre-frontal cortex allows reflection, amygdala designed for reaction. What does this mean if the amygdala develops faster than the pre-frontal cortex? • Experiment with students identifying emotions in pictures of faces… • Early adolescent dopamine levels are low. What does that mean for learning/teaching?

31. Neurotransmitters • Dopamine – activates pleasure centers, controls conscious motor activity, facilitates mental acuity • Serotonin – calming, mood enhancer, helps with memory, sleep, appetite control, and regulation of body temperature Healthy diet, exercise, and sleep help production of both!

32. “Emotion drives attention, attention drives learning.” -- Robert Sylwester, 1995, p. 119, Wolfe

33. Oxygen/Nutrient-Filled Bloodflow When the Body is in Survival Mode Vital Organs Areas associated with growth Areas associated with social activity Cognition

34. Carol Dweck (2007) distinguishes between students with a fixed intelligence mindset who believe that intelligence is innate and unchangeable and those with a growth mindset who believe that their achievement can improve through effort and learning…Teaching students a growth mindset results in increased motivation, better grades, and higher achievement test results.” (p.6, Principal’s Research Review, January 2009, NASSP)

35. Characteristics of Motivational Classrooms(Rick Lavoie, The Motivation Breakthrough, 2007) Relevance Control Balance of Support and Challenge Social Interaction Safety and Security Motivational Forces (Needs): To Belong To be Acknowledged To be Independent To Control To be Important To Assert To Know

36. Three elements in intrinsic motivation: • Autonomy -- the ability to choose what and how tasks are completed • Mastery -- the process of becoming adept at an activity • Purpose -- the desire to improve the world. -- Daniel H. Pink Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us 2009

37. Important for all ages for motivation and moving content into long-term memory: Students have to do both, Access Sense-Making Process Meaning-Making

38. Perception • What do you see? • What number do you see? • What letter do you see? Perception is when we bring meaning to the information we receive, and it depends on prior knowledge and what we expect to see. (Wolfe, 2001) Are we teaching so that students perceive, or just to present curriculum and leave it up to the student to perceive it?

39. “To a person uninstructed in natural history, his country or seaside stroll is a walk through a gallery filled with wonderful works of art, nine-tenths of which have their faces turned to the wall.” -- Thomas Huxley, 1854

40. Expertise aids metaphor genesis and understanding. (Physics students example) ‘Put another way: Chance favors the prepared mind. -- Pasteur

41. Creating Background Where There is None • Tell the story of the Code of Hammurabi before discussing the Magna Charta. • Before studying the detailed rules of baseball, play baseball. • Before reading about how microscopes work, play with micros copes. • Before reading the Gettysburg Address, inform students that Lincoln was dedicating a cemetery.

42. Creating Background Where There is None • Before reading a book about a military campaign or a murder mystery with references to chess, play Chess with a student in front of the class, or teach them the basic rules, get enough boards, and ask the class to play. • In math, we might remind students of previous patterns as they learn new ones. Before teaching students factorization, we ask them to review what they know about prime numbers. • In English class, ask students, “How is this story’s protagonist moving in a different direction than the last story’s protagonist?” • In science, ask students, “We’ve seen how photosynthesis reduces carbon dioxide to sugars and oxidizes water into oxygen, so what do you think the reverse of this process called, ‘respiration,’ does?”

43. Chess masters can store over 100,000 different patterns of pieces in long term memory. Chess players get good by playing thousands of games! • Experts think in relationships, patterns, chunks, novices keep things individual pieces. • Physics experiment in categorization… • Solid learning comes from when students make the connections, not when we tell them about them.

44. Sleep • Melatonin production in young adolescents shifts by 3 to 5 hours, but runs for the same length of time. • Sleep deprivation often invokes the starvation response in the body. • Sleep helps us encode memories for long-term memory; lack of sleep lowers the brain’s capacity to learn new things, Dye, 2000, as cited in Sprenger • Adolescents need 9.25 hours of sleep or more, Wolfe, others, 2010 • Young children, ten hours. Ages 5 to 10, 12 hours, Adults, eight hours. • REM sleep important to memory and consolidation of learning.

45. There are periods during sleep in which the brain is as active as it is at your brightest, conscious moment awake. • New information is not fixed the moment it is perceived. It takes time to consolidate. Sleep and time are critical. Famous study: Individuals typed sequence of letters on a keyboard. They trained in the morning, tested 12 hours later but no improvement. When tested after a good night’s sleep, all performances were up 20%.

46. Nocturnal “Aha!” moments • Brain makes connections while it sleeps, replays the day. • Missing even one hour has detrimental effect. …a slightly sleepy 6th grader will perform in class just like a 4th grader (Sadah, Gruber, & Rav, 2003), p. 98, Wolfe • Nutritious breakfast also matters: complex carbohydrates, proteins, water, fruit, breakfast cereal rich in omega-3 fatty acids, multi/whole grains – not glucose, saturated fats

47. Exercise is Important: Exercise increases oxygen flow to cognitive portions of the brain. It also releases protein IGF-1 which stimulates neural growth. It directly impacts learning and emotional and physical well-being.

48. Components of Blood Content Matrix Red Cells White Cells Plasma Platelets Purpose Amount Size & Shape Nucleus ? Where formed

49. The student’s rough draft: Red blood cells carry oxygen and nutrients around the body. They are small and indented in the middle, like little Cheerios. There are 5 million per cc of blood. There is no nucleus in mature red blood cells. They are formed in the bone marrow and spleen.

50. Somebody Wanted But So[Fiction] Somebody (characters)… wanted (plot-motivation)…, but (conflict)…, so (resolution)… .