The Brain and Cognitive Learning
Schemas: The organization of ideas or patterns that people use to make sense of things.
Assimilation: Interpreting new experiences by incorporating them into existing schemes.
Accommodation: Modifying existing schemes in order to incorporate or adapt to new experiences.
The following are the different parts of the brain and what each part is responsible for:
Frontal Lobe - Reasoning, planning, impulse regulation, emotions, movement.
Parietal Lobe - Touch, temperature, pain.
Temporal Lobe - Hearing & memory.
Occipital Lobe - Vision
Cerebellum - Aids in balance and control of body movement
Reticular formation - Maintains alertness and consciousness
Hippocampus - Vital role in memory and images of space that help us find out way
Cerebral Lateralization - Specialization of brain functions in the left & right hemispheres.
Right Hemisphere - Control of left side, visual-spatial ability, music, negative emotion.
Left Hemisphere - Control of right side, verbal abilities, analytical processing, positive emotion.
Neuron - Nerve cells that receive & transmit impulses.
Synapse - Connective space between one nerve cell and another.
Neurons require stimulation to form connections (synapses). Use it or lose it!!
Synaptic Pruning - Synapses are lost due to lack of stimulation.
The following stages, developed by theorist Jean Piaget, apply to the grade 6 age group:
Concrete Operational Stage (7- 11 years)
-Children acquire cognitive operations, but they lack abstract reasoning skills
-Students in the concrete-operational stage use logic to complete tasks; whereas, students in the pre-operational stage base their thoughts and ideas on the appearance of objects.
-Student’s understanding is confined to events and objects that they know and are familiar with.
Thought becomes:
¤ Logical
¤ Flexible
¤ Organized
Decentration
¤ Change in one aspect (e.g., higher of water) is compensated by change in another (e.g., width)
Reversibility
¤ Doing problem in reverse
E.g., Seeing the water returned to original container
Seriation
¤ Order items along quantitative dimensions
Example: height, weight
Spatial Reasoning
¤ Mental rotations to understand directions
- Put in place of others
- Example: my left is your right
¤ Cognitive maps - Mental representation of large scale spaces
- Example: drawing maps of school or neighborhood
Formal-Operational Stage (11+ years )
-Formal operational stage differs from the concrete-operational stage in that students can now think abstractly
-Students can now generate hypotheses
-Students can think inductively: from the specific to the general
-Students can generate ideas about things they have not yet experienced
-Students can practice metacognition: thinking about thinking
-Greater awareness of mental activity that is influenced by experience (e.g., school).
- Better judgment of effectiveness of cognitive strategies.
- Children under 12 show poorer cognitive self-regulation: the ability to monitor
progress and make changes to strategies.
Abstract Thinking
Hypothetico-Deductive Reasoning
¤ Deducing hypotheses from general theory.
Propositional Thought
¤ Evaluating the logic of verbal propositions
Concrete Operational - Application in the Classroom
1. Continue to use concrete props and visual aids, especially when dealing with sophisticated material.
2. Give students the opportunity to manipulate and test objects.
3. Make sure presentations and readings are brief and are well organized.
4. Use familiar examples to explain more complex ideas.
5. Give opportunities to classify and group objects and ideas on increasingly complex levels.
6. Present problems that require logical, analytical thinking
Activities:
Build a Village
o Separate children into groups and each group designs a section of a village
Gravity Experiment – in groups
o Drop objects of different masses at the same time from the same height to determine which objects fall faster.
o Ask students to form a hypothesis what will happen before, then perform a series of tests, record findings, and write a conclusion
Brain Teasers
-Riddles, trivia questions, math problems, and mazes are fun ways to challenge your child's cognitive skills and put them to the test
Assimilation: Interpreting new experiences by incorporating them into existing schemes.
Accommodation: Modifying existing schemes in order to incorporate or adapt to new experiences.
The following are the different parts of the brain and what each part is responsible for:
Frontal Lobe - Reasoning, planning, impulse regulation, emotions, movement.
Parietal Lobe - Touch, temperature, pain.
Temporal Lobe - Hearing & memory.
Occipital Lobe - Vision
Cerebellum - Aids in balance and control of body movement
Reticular formation - Maintains alertness and consciousness
Hippocampus - Vital role in memory and images of space that help us find out way
Cerebral Lateralization - Specialization of brain functions in the left & right hemispheres.
Right Hemisphere - Control of left side, visual-spatial ability, music, negative emotion.
Left Hemisphere - Control of right side, verbal abilities, analytical processing, positive emotion.
Neuron - Nerve cells that receive & transmit impulses.
Synapse - Connective space between one nerve cell and another.
Neurons require stimulation to form connections (synapses). Use it or lose it!!
Synaptic Pruning - Synapses are lost due to lack of stimulation.
The following stages, developed by theorist Jean Piaget, apply to the grade 6 age group:
Concrete Operational Stage (7- 11 years)
-Children acquire cognitive operations, but they lack abstract reasoning skills
-Students in the concrete-operational stage use logic to complete tasks; whereas, students in the pre-operational stage base their thoughts and ideas on the appearance of objects.
-Student’s understanding is confined to events and objects that they know and are familiar with.
Thought becomes:
¤ Logical
¤ Flexible
¤ Organized
Decentration
¤ Change in one aspect (e.g., higher of water) is compensated by change in another (e.g., width)
Reversibility
¤ Doing problem in reverse
E.g., Seeing the water returned to original container
Seriation
¤ Order items along quantitative dimensions
Example: height, weight
Spatial Reasoning
¤ Mental rotations to understand directions
- Put in place of others
- Example: my left is your right
¤ Cognitive maps - Mental representation of large scale spaces
- Example: drawing maps of school or neighborhood
Formal-Operational Stage (11+ years )
-Formal operational stage differs from the concrete-operational stage in that students can now think abstractly
-Students can now generate hypotheses
-Students can think inductively: from the specific to the general
-Students can generate ideas about things they have not yet experienced
-Students can practice metacognition: thinking about thinking
-Greater awareness of mental activity that is influenced by experience (e.g., school).
- Better judgment of effectiveness of cognitive strategies.
- Children under 12 show poorer cognitive self-regulation: the ability to monitor
progress and make changes to strategies.
Abstract Thinking
Hypothetico-Deductive Reasoning
¤ Deducing hypotheses from general theory.
Propositional Thought
¤ Evaluating the logic of verbal propositions
Concrete Operational - Application in the Classroom
1. Continue to use concrete props and visual aids, especially when dealing with sophisticated material.
2. Give students the opportunity to manipulate and test objects.
3. Make sure presentations and readings are brief and are well organized.
4. Use familiar examples to explain more complex ideas.
5. Give opportunities to classify and group objects and ideas on increasingly complex levels.
6. Present problems that require logical, analytical thinking
Activities:
Build a Village
o Separate children into groups and each group designs a section of a village
Gravity Experiment – in groups
o Drop objects of different masses at the same time from the same height to determine which objects fall faster.
o Ask students to form a hypothesis what will happen before, then perform a series of tests, record findings, and write a conclusion
Brain Teasers
-Riddles, trivia questions, math problems, and mazes are fun ways to challenge your child's cognitive skills and put them to the test