Monday, August 05, 2019

Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain: Chapter Eight


As I read chapter eight of Zaretta Hammond's book (shown above), I turned the notes into a number of mini posters to guide my learning experience design as well as to help me relay the information from the chapter to students as a way of teaching them how to manage/maximize their brain power and potential:

Learning to Learn is the Key to Academic Success
  • Review the task
  • Map out a strategy
  • Follow your plan


Effective Learning:
The Journey from Dependence to Independence
  • Create a welcoming learning environment
  • Listen to your students
  • Know your students
  • Partner with students
  • Be a “warm demander” 

What is information processing?
  • Take information in with the intent of understanding
  • Relate that information to what you already know
  • Store it in a way that is easily retrievable 


Three stages of information processing:
  1. Input: brain zeroes in on what is important--something relevant, something that stimulates curiosity, something that elicits a strong emotional response.
  2. Elaboration: makes material memorable and meaningful, moving information from the clipboard of short term memory (input) to working memory. Culturally responsive processing tools: movement, repetition, story, metaphor, music to help the brain process--fire and wire making a permanent association in the brain. A cycle of active processing (12-20 minutes) and consolidation occurs (~10 minutes).
  3. Application: Opportunities to apply the new information--”use it or lose it” stage to make permanent learning pathways.

Instructional Strategies for Effective Learning:
Culturally Grounded Information Processing
IGNITE: strategies: storytelling, call and response, music, provocation (quote, outrageous statement, powerful images), puzzle--wake students up, stimulate the senses, be expressive/emotional with rhythm, music, orality.
CHUNK: “Right sized” chunks of information for apt learning. 
CHEW(PROCESSING): Begin with unstructured think time via drawing, writing, or talking (time for consolidation after the lesson Ignite/Chunk). Next focus on cognitive routines (habits of mind)--give students the framework for effective learning:
  • How does this new learning connect to what I already know?
  • What are the natural relationships and patterns in the material?
  • How does it fit together? What larger system does the information belong to?
  • Whose point of view does it represent?
Focus on thinking dispositions when providing students with these cognitive routines:
  • Similarities and differences
  • Whole to part: How things are organized in a system
  • Relationships
  • Perspectives
Strategies that can be employed during the chew:
  • Talk to learn: dialogic talk--World Cafe, Four on a Pencil, Give One Get One
  • Create songs, poems, raps, theater dialogue, spoken word, poetry slam
  • Storify the content
  • Visual imagery: graphic organizers, infographics, signs, 
  • Metaphors and analogies
  • Word play, humor: cogens, verbal battles, jokes, riddles
REVIEW: Practice within 24 hours by playing a game, solving a mystery or real life problem, working on a project, making something.