How We Teach This: Season Three
Season 3 of How We Teach This has a wide range of guests and topics including Social Emotional Learning, Brain-based teaching, motivation and inspiring stories from teachers.
Episode 6 - March 30, 2022
Teacher Talk - Brain Based Teaching
Whittne Ballinger, as a 3rd-year teacher, has already experienced a lot of variety in her teaching career. She currently teaches 2nd-grade students to understand their own brains plus how to improve regulation and be better prepared for learning. She creates a welcoming classroom with Amigdala reset stations and Polyvagal charts. She says that if 2nd-grade students can understand these concepts then any grade level can benefit from educators who teach with a mindset of how the brain impacts teaching and learning.
Resources:
Students decorate their "Amygdala Reset Stations." These are a spin-off of safe zones, chill zones, etc. However, each student has a shoebox that they decorate, and with each emotion that we discuss, we add manipulatives and resources to their boxes that assist them with their individual tough feelings that they deal with on the daily. We will be adding scent buddies (to talk about aromatherapy), doodling journals, fidgets, sensory tools, and other brain-based resources.
The pictures below were the start of our brain discussion in 2nd grade. We read "My Fantastic Elastic Brain" and discussed brain highways. Using tofu, students got to "carve" their own brain highways into their model brains. We discussed how some things are deep, long highways because we do them often and it is repeated. Some things are the opposite, and we may not do them or practice them as often. For this, we have smaller brain highways.
I use "brain highways" as a term to teach students that you have to train your brain properly in order to get the response or reaction they desire. For example, if we continuously do a routine incorrectly because we think it's comical, it will start to carve a brain highway that teaches our brain to do something we don't want it to. In other words, students understand that they are in charge of creating their own brain highways, and how they can change past reactions and responses, aka Growth Mindset.
If you are interested in learning more about OutSchool or the course Whittne is teaching, "Neuro For Newbies", check out the link below.
Want to be a guest on our show? Contact us at email: HWTT@emporia.edu
