An ASCD Study Guide for Research-Based Strategies to Ignite Student Learning: Insights from Neuroscience and the Classroom, Revised and Expanded Edition

Most of the questions contained in this study guide are ones you can think about on your own, but you might consider pairing with a colleague or forming a study group with others who have read (or are reading) Research-Based Strategies to Ignite Student Learning.

Chapter 1. How Red Wagons Capture Students' Attention

1. The brain's attention filter prioritizes input that is novel or unexpected. How can you use this understanding of the brain to hook students' attention and stimulate their curiosity as an entrée to new learning?
2. Some of the content you teach may not seem intrinsically interesting to learners. When planning lessons, what strategies can you use to capture students' attention and keep them engaged with that content? How can you help them to feel more connected and interested in the material?
3. 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?
4. You can help students build the executive function of attentional control and focus throughout the school day. How might you incorporate activities, such as making slow observations or noticing subtle differences and details, into your curriculum?

Chapter 2. How Emotions and Stress Affect Learning

1. What have you noticed about various emotional factors that affect your students' motivation and impair their ability to focus on academic matters? How can you help your students monitor their moods and emotions? What additional interventions, for classroom climate and building learners' executive function of emotional self-management will you try?
2. Students' motivation is often enhanced when their learning is personalized. In what ways might you allow students to have some input into their learning goals and choice regarding what they learn and how they show their learning?
3. How might you teach students about how their brains work? How will you boost their knowledge and awareness of their brain powers so they can maximize the operation of the most powerful tool they'll ever own?
4. Regular syn-naps (brain breaks) benefit learning by allowing the brain to restore neurotransmitters and cool down the amygdala. What types of brain breaks could you incorporate into a lesson or unit?
5. Think about the characteristics of video games that make them so appealing. Select a topic of instruction and write one strategy from each of the three aspects of the video game model (buy-in, achievable challenge, frequent feedback) that could promote a positive emotional state so that instruction becomes learning.

Chapter 3. The Journey from Sensory Intake to Memory

1. In order for short-term memories to encode, the brain must make connections between the new and the known. What strategies can you include to activate prior knowledge along with your instruction?
2. The brain connects with information via multiple neural networks. How will you provide multisensory opportunities to help students learn specific content?
3. Translating newly acquired information into another form by symbolizing, categorizing, synthesizing, and engaging in authentic performance tasks can be helpful for consolidating short-term memories into durable long-term memories. Which of these mental manipulation strategies have you found to be successful? What are some new strategies that you plan to use?
4. You have read about the power of narrative structure to enhance encoding and memory retrieval. How might you harness the power of narratives to make learning for a specific topic more engaging and enduring?
5. How will you design for knowledge transfer so your students can take what they learn in class and apply it to other applications and creative problem solving?

Chapter 4. Building Powerful Executive Functions: Skills for the School Years and Beyond

1. Which executive functions do you think are most critical for your students, their higher education success, and their workforce readiness and why?
2. What strategies would you use to help students to build their executive functions of goal setting and reaching?
3. How could you incorporate strategies for building prioritizing and organizing into short-term and long-term projects?
4. Examples of good judgment and faulty judgment abound across subject areas. What examples come to mind in your subject area? How can you have students reflect on judgments made by others and themselves?
5. What opportunities for practicing critical analysis already exist in your curriculum? How can you build on them?
6. Cognitive flexibility is a critical skill that can be creatively incorporated into your curriculum. Are there parts of your curriculum that tend to be less interesting to your students? Which cognitive flexibility boosters could be incorporated to increase engagement and build this essential executive function?

Research-Based Strategies to Ignite Student Learning: Insights from Neuroscience and the Classroom, Revised and Expanded Edition was written by Judy Willis and Malana Willis. This 250-page, 6″ × 9″ book (Stock #120029; ISBN-13: 978-1-4166-2858-3) is available from ASCD. Copyright © 2020 by ASCD. To order a copy, call ASCD at 1-800-933-2723 (in Virginia 1-703-578-9600). Or buy the book from ASCD's Online Store.