Introduction

Did you know that we don't just have five sense as we traditionally thought?

Researchers have identified 19 senses! The more engaging students are across these 19 senses, the more brain activity and stimulation can be created in your classroom. As teachers, we should be taking an instructional approach that is collaborative, reflective, and inquiry based, that focuses on intentional teaching of skills and use of strategies that are directly brain targeted.

This course was key to introducing how brain-compatible teaching, or the "researched best practices" can be a game changer in your classroom. But it also helped me identify what I already did well. For the areas I wanted to change about my classroom, this course gave me the confidence to apply it because of the weekly chat rooms of collaboration with instructors who were encouraging and cohort members who were being stretched like me.

Ah ha's from this course:

● Emotions play a significant role.

● Praise for hard work, not smarts.

● Building group identity through rituals, short fun activities, and reaching goals as a group build a

strong emotional connection between students in the class.

● Establishing a positive learning environment through movement, sound, smell, order and beauty.

● Novelty is the ability of the teacher to create space that is relevant and changing for the students to

engage in within the classroom space.

● Designing activities and routines to build road maps for instruction, which aid in the brain making sense of curriculum.

● Give a whole picture view when putting together pieces of the instructional puzzle together.

Strategies that I now use because of MWBLI:

This course allowed me to realize that my classroom experience goes well beyond just experiencing science. For my students both give their all and receive all that I wish them to I must focus on a positive learning environment. This showed me that the way my classroom is organized is important, how I greet students is valuable, asking for their opinion shows value, backing up what I say with action builds trust, etc. Reflecting on this course, in particular, I see the value of brain learning, because it is so much more than what I used to view teaching. It allows me to validate and support that structured freedom I intend to give students each day.

Where did this information come from?