Brain Movies: When Readers Can Picture It, They Understand It

The images that form in your mind as you read—we call them "brain movies"—can be more exciting and memorable than a Hollywood film. More to the point for teachers, guiding your students to visualize as they read is an engaging and enjoyable way to boost comprehension and retention.

Move Your Body, Grow Your Brain

Incorporating exercise and movement throughout the school day makes students less fidgety and more focused on learning. Improving on-task behavior and reducing classroom management challenges are among the most obvious benefits of adding physical activities to your teaching toolkit. As research continues to explore how exercise facilitates the brain's readiness and ability to learn and retain information, we recommend several strategies to use with students and to boost teachers' body and brain health.

Engaging Brains: How to Enhance Learning by Teaching Kids About Neuroplasticity

Explicitly teaching students about neuroplasticity can have a transformative impact in the classroom. A central facet of our work as teacher educators is teaching about how the brain changes during learning. Many teachers have told us that these findings have had a positive effect on their expectations for their students and on students' perceptions of their own abilities.

Training the Brain to Listen: A Practical Strategy for Student Learning and Classroom Management

During the school year, students are expected to listen to and absorb vast amounts of content. But how much time has been devoted to equipping students with ways to disconnect from their own internal dialogue (self-talk) and to focus their attention fully on academic content that is being presented? Listening is hard work even for adults. When students are unable to listen effectively, classroom management issues arise.

Greetings from the ASCD Conference in Anaheim

Greetings from ASCD's Empower17 Annual Conference! We're looking forward to a wonderful varied experience here. This afternoon, we will be attending a couple of receptions. This evening at 7:00 p.m., we will be attending the ASCD dinner event for their authors who are presenting here.

This day promises to be both enjoyable and purposeful. I feel blessed that again we are here to present our own innovative and research-based work (actually a labor of love) in support of effective teachers worldwide! Going on almost 20 years with the wonderful Marcus Conyers and our BrainSMART! With appreciation to team members Mary Collington, Mary Buday, Karen Bankston, Lorraine Ortner-Blake, Karen Autrey, and Diane Franklin, alongside all our teacher and administrative colleagues, Pre-12, college, and university!

My heart is filled with gratitude to all whom I've had the privilege to learn and teach alongside for now many years!

Our Work Appears in The Progressive Teacher

While Marcus Conyers and I were presenting our work with Singapore teachers recently, The Progressive Teacher publication featured BrainSMART across India through an adaption of our article “4 Proven Strategies for Teaching Empathy.”

As we approach the 20th anniversary of BrainSMART, we are pleased to write that our work in support of effective teaching and teacher well-being has now been featured in countries that include Canada, Netherlands, England, Poland, UAE, South Africa, Bermuda, Bahamas, Japan, South Korea, France, Germany, Singapore, India and the USA!

To see the article as published in India, visit the link at The Progressive Teacher.

“Collaborating Minds” Is the Topic of Our edCircuit Blog Post

Marcus and I advocate for the importance of teacher collaboration in our recent blog post for edCircuit.

As we explain in the post, entitled “Collaborating Minds,” the traditional model of teachers working in isolation is no longer effective in this time of significant change in the teaching practice. Collaboration is critical.

In our work with thousands of educators over the last 17 years, we have facilitated a collaborative approach. In our edCircuit blog post, we stress the importance of capitalizing on what we call educators’ “combined sea of strengths.”