Question #6

This is for Chris and Jennifer:

What are the habits of the mind?

How do you cultivate it to take learning beyond the classroom?

What is the skills students need for future and how do we infuse these into the curriculum? Align into standards transdiscipline UbD

What foreign languages should be available to students in a world class school? Arabic, Chinese, Russian, German, Korean, Japanese, Tamil, Hindi

Art Costa's Habits of Mind
http://www.instituteforhabitsofmind.com/resources/pdf/16HOM.pdf

• PDF that explains each of his 16 habits: Persisting; Managing impulsivity; Listening to others with understanding; Thinking flexibly; Thinking about our thinking; Striving for accuracy and precision; Questioning and Posing Problems; Applying Past Knowledge to new situations; Thinking and communicating with clarity; Gathering data through all senses; Creating, imagining and innovating; Responding with wonderment and awe;Taking responsible risks; Finding humor; Thinking interdependently; Learning continuously

A Journey of Continuous Growth With Habits of Mind

http://www.instituteforhabitsofmind.com/resources/professional_reading/A_Journey_of_Continuous_Growth.pdf

• An understanding of the Habits of Mind should be used to help design curriculum as well as for assessments.  As students learn and practice Habits of Mind, they are growing a repertoire of strategies to call upon.  Students learn to be more self reflective, and problem solve better.

Teaching with the Brain in Mind by Eric Jensen.  2nd Edition. 2005.

Chapter 11: Brain Based Teaching

Possible model for instruction

10% of time before class to prepare you learners and create an optional environment.

80% of time during class to engage learners by getting them vested emotionally with an attentional bias, frame learning to make it relevant, important and compelling, acquire knowledge, skills, values, and experiences, elaborate and deepen the learning through trial and error time, with feedback and active processing, connect learning to other content, processes, and self.

10% of time after class to settle the learning with time for passive processing and rehearse and incorporate by revising learning and using it.

Chapter 12: Schools with the Brain in Mind

Encourage teachers to think outside the box to making curriculum, assessment and staff development connections

Curriculum

·      Not everyone’s brain will be ready to read, grasp special relations for geometry at the same time.

·      Emotional well being is linked to cognition.  Students need to feel safe, important and successful.

·      Students should be reading and counting but they should also be learning empathy, fairness and honesty

Assessment

·      Memories are variable so if it is going to be recall—students need significant practice time.

·      Learning to learn strategies are more essential to rel-world success

·      Mental models are highly critical to thinking but rarely tested

·      Value the process of learning: wide open, creative problem solving approach, alternative thinking options, multiple right answers, and creative insights

Staff Development

·      To improve student achievement, you must improve teacher effectiveness

hhttp://p21.org/storage/documents/p21-stateimp_learning_environments.pdf