How can you best facilitate the brain and learning?
In order to get the most out of the brain and learning adhere to these tried brain and learning practices.
The Brain and Learning: Focus
In today’s busy and social world, it’s easy to think you are focusing. Learning complex skills and memorizing important knowledge takes concentration.
If you are listening to music, watching football, or drowning is social media, you will find it hard to learn efficiently. You think you’ve learned something, yet later something important escapes you. Be honest with yourself. You must set aside “quiet time” in order to focus on knowledge and skills you need to master. Remember to focus to accelerate the brain and learning.
The Brain and Learning: Time on Task
There is a truism that all teachers know. That to learn you must spend “time on task.” You must do a skill or study a body of knowledge until you master it.
If you don’t spend enough time, at a later date you will be asking yourself why you can’t recall important information or perform a needed skill. Use time on task strengthen the brain and learning.
Short-Term to Long-Term Memory
Short-term memory only lasts a few minutes. If you want to lock down information that is important, you must shift it to long-term memory. In a nutshell, this means recalling the information in timed intervals.
For instance, you are in a college government class. The professor is lecturing on important Supreme Court cases. The professor lectures about the importance of each case in terms of American history. You are pretty sure some of these cases if not all of them will end up on your next test.
So how do you lock these important cases into your long-term memory? You do it by reviewing these cases at timed intervals. After class, as soon as possible. Review this material again. Try to recall each case, its importance, and any important facts or details. If you don’t have a class, go to the library or some quite place and simply see what you can recall. What you can’t go back over your notes. It’s that simple.
The next day at around the same time or close to it, break out your notes again. See what you can recall. Hopefully, you will recall a little more than you did yesterday. Then a week later, review the material again. You should be able to recall even more.
A week before the test, review the material again. The night before the test your review should be easy, as the material should be locked into long term memory. Work your short-term to long-term plan to best facilitate the brain and learning.
Pictures are Better Than Symbols
No doubt about it. The brain remembers pictures better than symbols like letters of the alphabet. How can you take advantage of this? Associate what you have to learn with visuals or pictures.
For instance, if you have a grocery list of five items exaggerate the items and give them some action. Your list is to buy bananas, chocolate ice cream, olives, hamburger buns, and carrots. The trick is to create pictures in the wildest possible way.
Imagine you ride to the store in a giant banana split car loaded with bananas and chocolate ice cream. As you enter the store, you notice the cashier’s head is a hamburger bun with olives for eyes, and a carrot for a nose. Visualize this a few times and you won’t forget it once you get to the store.
What if the list is more abstract? Use the peg system. It is a tried and true system associates pictures with information you need to learn. Need t find a good Peg System. Google it. With a little effort you will be able to remember a hundred or more items with relative ease and lock down the brain and learning using pictures.
For more information about what neurologists discovered about the brain Click Here.