This ASCD Study Guide is designed to enhance your understanding of Teaching with the Brain in Mind, 2nd edition by Eric Jensen, an ASCD book published in May 2005, by helping you make connections between the text and your school or school district. You can use the study guide after you have read the book or as you finish each chapter. The study questions provided are not meant to cover all aspects of the book; rather, they address selected ideas that might warrant further reflection.

Most of the questions in this study guide are ones you can think about on your own. But you might consider pairing with a colleague or forming a group of people who have read (or are reading) Teaching with the Brain in Mind, 2nd edition. The questions could also be modified for use in professional development activities on the topic of brain-based teaching and learning.

Introduction

1. What are your criteria for “successful” instruction? Are engaged students and rising test scores enough, or should all classroom strategies be “scientifically based”?
2. Do any of the presented criticisms of brain-based learning resonate with you? If so, which ones? Can you think of other criticisms? How might someone answer those?
3. Consider some of the new understandings of the brain that have come to light during the past 10 years. What are the implications for classroom instruction?
4. What are the differences between brain-based teaching and brain-compatible teaching?
5. Do you agree that research findings about the brain should factor in education policy decisions? Why or why not?

Chapter 1: Meet Your Amazing Brain

1. Rather than presenting a lesson in neurobiology, this chapter gives an overview of the brain by introducing three of its key features: adaptability, integration, and sophistication. Does this way of thinking about the brain make sense to you? If you were teaching your students about how the brain influences learning, how might you approach the material?
2. Consider the brain’s adaptability. How does its state of constant change square with a traditional model of teaching focused on helping a student acquire—or “add”—new sets of facts of skills?
3. In what ways does the human brain change for the better over the years? In what ways does it change for the worse? Name some of the factors that regulate these changes. As an educator, do you have any control over these factors?
4. Consider the brain’s integration: how its structures compete and cooperate and how no brain system is isolated. What are some of the implications for educators? For educational policy?
5. Consider the brain’s sophistication. What are some examples of the brain’s complexity? What are the implications for educators?
6. After reading Chapter 1, has your understanding of students’ brains changed or shifted in any way? What understandings of yours have been reinforced?

Chapter 2: Preparing the Brain for School

1. Understanding that brain maturation is a natural biological process, what does it mean to “prepare the brain for school”?
2. What are the pros and cons of school-based efforts to help parents of future students prepare their children’s brains for school? Reflect on the question from the perspective of a parent, a teacher, and an administrator.
3. What school-readiness practices or theories of your own did this chapter confirm or challenge?
4. Which of the preparatory measures do you think are the most important to success in school and success in life?

Chapter 3: Rules We Learn By

1. All teachers follow rules about teaching and learning. For example, some teachers believe that behavior that is reinforced is more likely to reoccur. What are some rules about learning and the brain that you have followed? Did the information in this chapter change or reinforce any of your rules?
2. Rules are derived from studies, experiences, and opinions. Which of the rules related to engagement, repetition, input quality, coherence, timing, error correction, and emotional states will be most helpful in your practice? Which will be least helpful?
3. Have you developed any other rules for learning based on your own experience in the classroom? If so, what is one of them and how has it served you? Does it complement or compete with the rules in this chapter?
4. Some might argue that teachers do not have time to incorporate all the rules of learning. For example, using repetition takes time, and so does trial-and-error learning. A counterargument would be that following both these rules will actually save time in the long run, as teachers will need to spend less time reteaching. What are your thoughts on this issue?

Chapter 4: Movement and Learning

1. More than one-third of U.S. schoolchildren do not participate in daily physical education. Do you support the idea of making daily physical education mandatory? Why or why not?
2. What are considered to be some of the problems with today’s physical education programs? Can these problems be fixed? If so, how?
3. What are the five or six primary brain-based arguments for increasing the amount of movement in the classroom? What would you say is the single best argument?
4. How conscious are you of simple physical activity in your classroom? Do you have any rules about movement (e.g., “Get the students moving every half hour”)? What would be the pros and cons of increasing the amount of movement in your classroom?
5. Many teachers have reasons for not using movement in their classrooms. What are some of the reasons that you have (or that you have heard), and what could be done to minimize any negative effects of incorporating movement?
6. Most primary school teachers include movement in their classes. Evidence suggests that older students need movement too. What can be done to encourage more secondary teachers to include movement? If you are a secondary teacher, what are you willing to do differently to make your classroom a more active place?

Chapter 5: Emotional States

1. How closely do you monitor your students’ emotional states? Do observations of emotions factor into your classroom management strategies? Your instructional decisions? If so, how?
2. Most teachers have seen firsthand how students’ emotions can enhance or undermine efforts at academic achievement. How do your own experiences compare with information in this chapter?
3. Which types of emotional states do you see most often in the classroom?
4. What roles do the brain chemicals play in our emotions? As the teacher, how might you influence the brain chemicals circulating through your students’ bodies?
5. Would you say that fostering a love of learning is a legitimate goal for a teacher? What kinds of things could a teacher do to encourage students’ emotional response to learning?

Chapter 6: Physical Environments for Learning

1. In general, teachers have a moderate influence over their students’ physical learning environment. Which aspects can you control and which are you powerless to influence?
2. Think about how issues related to seating and mobility affect student learning. How might you alter your own classroom arrangements and operating models in light of this information?
3. In what ways can you influence the noise levels within your classroom?
4. Describe the physical environment in your ideal school and cite brain-based arguments to justify its various components.

Chapter 7: Managing the Social Brain

1. Neuroscientist Terry Sejnowski argues that a person’s culture helps to shape his or her brain, which creates culture, which acts again on individuals’ brains. Do you believe the same could be said for school culture and student learning? Why or why not?
2. What areas of the brain and what chemicals are involved with social behaviors? Does this suggest we have a brain designed to be social? What’s an example of a brain that’s not social?
3. What is the evidence connecting social activity and cognition? What are the implications for educators?
4. Think about the relationship between social conditions and stress. What are the implications within a school environment?
5. Consider how our brains respond with some hesitation to people who are different from ourselves. What are the implications for school environments?
6. How might educators guide students’ brain-based tendencies to form cliques and alliances to encourage learning and promote desirable social behaviors?

Chapter 8: Motivation and Engagement

1. What do you see as the three key ideas in this chapter? Are they things that you can apply in your classroom?
2. Educators sometimes talk about motivation problems in a way that implies the students are at fault: that they “choose” to be motivated or not. How much of the responsibility is the student’s (to be motivated) and how much of it is the teacher’s (to motivate)?
3. What are some of the common sources of demotivation? Do you see these in your own classes? How do you address them?
4. How do rewards affect the brain? Make a case for the best way to use rewards with kindergarten students, high school students, and college students.
5. What advice would you give to a colleague who tells you that his students “just are aren’t motivated”?
6. What are your strategies for changing your students’ states? Which are the most and least effective?

Chapter 9: Critical Thinking Skills

1. What are the general steps for “building” a brain that thinks critically? What obstacles might teachers encounter while trying to implement this process? How might they overcome these obstacles?
2. What is meant by “the unique brain”?
3. Make a case for and against the idea of gender-based difference in thinking. If male and female students do think differently, what are the implications for classroom instruction?
4. What classroom skills must be taught to develop the problem-solving brain? What constraints or rules are there about how our brains learn new skills? What have you discovered about context-dependent learning? How have you handled the transfer of learning issue?
5. What is meant by “the developmental brain”? What are some implications in a classroom?
6. “The adaptive brain” means that the brain simply makes use of what’s offered in the environment. What does this suggest to us about our curriculum? What did you take away from this section?

Chapter 10: Memory and Recall

1. How much of an issue is memory and recall for you and your students? What are your daily frustrations or joys regarding your students’ ability to retrieve learning?
2. What does it mean to say that memories are “distributed”? Given the weakness of semantic memories, what are some strategies to strengthen the encoding process?
3. What is “working memory” and why doesn’t it “work” very well?
4. How do episodic memories differ from semantic memories? Explain some of the ways you might reduce the memory contamination that occurs from too many similar episodic memories.
5. What are three examples of reflexive memories? How could you use these in a classroom?
6. What happens in the brain to ensure emotional memories are more likely to be remembered? How might familiarity with this basic process be useful for a teacher?
7. What are some examples of ways that memories can be altered, lost, or diminished?
8. What is priming and how might you use this strategy to strengthen your students’ memory and recall?

Chapter 11: Brain-Based Teaching

1. This chapter offers a model lesson-planning format. How is it similar to or different from the model that you use? What are the risks of trying to “map” this model onto another model?
2. The teaching model here suggests a 10–80–10 profile: spending 10 percent of any given instructional week previewing/priming the unit, 80 percent of the week on the unit itself, and the final 10 percent on unit review and revision. What brain research findings support this approach?
3. This model suggests steps of engaging and framing. What are some of the ways to do this in the classroom? Is this something you do naturally or something you work at doing?
4. Evaluate the model’s overall strengths and weaknesses. Which steps or aspects make the most sense to you? Which seem more or less practical?
5. Do your instructional responsibilities and content requirements fit into the model? What adaptations or changes might allow you to try the model?

Chapter 12: Schools with the Brain in Mind

1. Think about your own school within the context of being “brain-based.” What does your school already do well? What existing measures might be strengthened? What would need to change?
2. Think about the brain-based parameters of curriculum. What are some considerations to keep in mind? How does your own school rate on these factors? What is meant by curriculum with more “survival value”? How do you use this concept in your own work?
3. Which of the suggestions for instruction provided seem most useful to you? Which seem least useful (e.g., perhaps too theoretical)? Explain your response.
4. How does your school rate on the five key environment factors mentioned?
5. What are some of the essentials in creating a positive climate for teachers? What additional suggestions would you make? How does your school rate on creating a good climate for teachers?
6. Think about the suggestions for more brain-based assessment. Do you agree or disagree with these suggestions? What are other things you might do to improve assessment in your classroom or your school?
7. Consider your school’s staff development activities. What are some ways they might be more brain-based?
8. Based on the information in this book, what changes are you planning to make in your own instruction? If you have already made changes, what results have you seen?

Teaching with the Brain in Mind, 2nd edition was written by Eric Jensen. This 187-page, 8" x 10" book (Stock #104013; ISBN 1-4166-0030-2) is available from ASCD for $21.95 (ASCD member) and $27.95 (nonmember). Copyright 2005 by ASCD. To order a copy, call ASCD at 1-800-933-2723 and press 2 for the Service Center. Or buy the book from ASCD’s Online Store.