This ASCD Study Guide is designed to enhance your understanding and application of the information contained in Research-Based Strategies to Ignite Student Learning, an ASCD book published in 2006. This book differs from other books on the topic of brain-based learning in that it is written by a classroom teacher with fifteen years prior experience as a brain researcher and practicing adult and child neurologist. After a brief overview of the research pertaining to memory, attention, learning, retention, and test-taking, Willis devotes subsequent chapters to strategies to captivate and hold students' attention, techniques that reduce the stresses that block information from entering the neural processing centers of the brain, and suggestions about how to maximize the positive emotional climate that maximize learning. The concluding chapter offers a variety of assessment techniques that actually increase student knowledge while providing accurate and specific feedback that can further improve teaching and learning success.

You can use the study guide before, during, or after you have read the book. You can consider questions raised in this study guide on your own or along with colleagues who have read the book. As you consider the topics outlined in the study guide you will find ways to implement the suggested strategies in your own classroom.

Preface

1. Which advances in the neurology of learning have affected educational thinking about how students acquire and retain information?
2. What advantage will it be to you to increase your understanding of what qualifies research as truly brain-compatible?
3. Why is it more important than ever for educators and not politicians to determine curriculum and teaching techniques?

Chapter 1: Memory, Learning, and Test-Taking Success

1. How do priming and pruning change the number and function of neurons, dendrites, and synapses in students' brains? What can be done to use our knowledge of this brain plasticity to improve students' memory?
2. How do multiple and multisensory presentations and enriched classrooms increase the success of long-term memory?
3. What is the role of episodic memory, event memory, relational memory, and experiential learning on the development of neural pathways that strengthen memory storage and retrieval? What can you add to your classroom strategies to increase student exposure to these powerful forms of memory stimulation?
4. What can you do to increase student connection with academic material and efficient memory storage through strategies such as personal meaning, real life connections, flashbulb events, visualization, dramatization, and movement?
5. Describe the brain's encoding and patterning of new information and how graphic organizers, K-W-L charts, brainstorming, music, and other strategies can help more information reach your students' long-term memory storage and executive function areas.
6. What are syn-naps and why are they important? What happens when the brain’s neurotransmitters drop to low levels? How do you know when your students need brain breaks and what are good activities to do after the syn-naps to help cement newly learned material?
7. What culminating activities do you use for memory cement? Which ones do you think you might use to increase student success?

Chapter 2: Strategies to Captivate Students' Attention

1. What is the role of the Reticular Activating System in the attention process?
2. What strategies can be used to increase students' attention and focus? Which of these strategies can you add to your teaching repertoire?
3. What are student-centered lessons and how can you use more of these to help students focus on their studies?
4. When is the last time you used a teachable moment to captivate student attention? How can you build enough flexibility into your busy day to take advantage of the next teachable moment?
5. What activities and strategies seem to make your students most connected and interested in the material? How can you add more of these activities into your lessons?

Chapter 3: How Stress and Emotion Affect Learning

1. What is the role of the affective filter and the amygdala in allowing information into the brain's processing regions?
2. How does stress interfere with learning and how do you know when students are anxious or stressed? What are the causes of stress for your students? What have you done that has reduced stress for students? What more can you do to help reduce the remaining stressors?
3. How is a sense of community fostered within your classroom and within your school? What new ideas might you try to build an even greater sense of community?

Chapter 4: Assessment that Builds Dendrites

1. How do rubrics increase student success and provide for meaningful and ongoing assessment?
2. When can prompt and specific feedback be part of ongoing assessments in general and in your classroom?
3. What is the value of frequent assessments throughout the class day and how can these assessments enhance rather than cut into teaching time?
4. Can assessments accommodate multiple intelligences and learning style preferences without lowering expectations?
5. Which performance tasks can you incorporate into your teaching to keep students engaged and ensure correct understanding while you are doing ongoing assessments?
6. How can students work in pairs or cooperative groups to productively prepare for standardized tests efficiently and with minimal classroom management problems?

Research-Based Strategies to Ignite Student Learning: Insights from a Neurologist and Classroom Teacher was written by Judy Willis. This 125-page, 6" x 9" book (Stock #107006; ISBN-13: 978-1-4166-0370-2; ISBN-10: 1-4166-0370-0) is available from ASCD for $16.95 (ASCD member) or $21.95 (nonmember). Copyright © 2006 by ASCD. To order a copy, call ASCD at 1-800-933-2723 (in Virginia 1-703-578-9600) and press 2 for the Service Center. Or buy the book from ASCD's Online Store.