Week One: Rigor By Design: Laying the Foundation for Deeper Learning

 Week 1: 

Rigor By Design: Laying the Foundation for Deeper Learning

October 18, 2023


Rigor by Design, Not Chance’s chapter one,  Laying the Foundation for Deeper Learning, describes the essence of setting students up to utilize their academic skills to prosper in their lives. Deeper learning can only be obtained through students “actively immersed in challenging tasks that require them to seek out and acquire new knowledge, apply what they have learned, and build on that learning to construct new knowledge” (Hess, 2023). Six different levels demonstrate a more profound understanding, such as:

  1. Mastering core academic content 

  2. Thinking critically and Solving complex problems

  3. Working collaboratively on complex tasks

  4. Communicating effectively

  5. Learning how to learn 

  6. Developing an academic mindset


All of these characteristics establish a new expectation for students to build and demonstrate their learning processes through content knowledge and skill sets. “Some students will leave school unprepared for continuing their education or career training” (Hess, 2023). Molding students does take some time and effort; therefore, it is crucial to provide new learning opportunities for students so they become college or career-ready! 

The Rigor By Design textbook gives an excellent description of the human brain, how the four different lobes work together, and how the limbic system works to serve an emotional and motivational role for students. There are four types of lobes including:

  1. Frontal Lobe: Executive functions that are essential for planning, decision-making/problem-solving, and goal setting. The frontal lobe is also vital for working memory information for students to retain information, solve complex problems, and relationships between different concepts. 

  2. Parietal Lobe: Sensory information, including vision and touch. Especially important in math courses. It also allows students to concentrate on specific tasks in a learning environment. 

  3. Temporal Lobe: Auditory processing that also touches on memory and language comprehension. This is also the location for the hippocampus, which retains long memory formats and stores information. 

  4. Occipital Lobe: Visual processing of information that is essential for reading, visual aids, and subjects like art. This also includes visual memory that can recognize patterns or connections between subjects. 

The Limbic System is responsible for your emotional expressions and interactions that enhance or inhibit engagement, deep learning, and memory (Hess, 2023). This, in turn, works with other parts of the brain to help students respond to their surrounding classroom environment, make academic or personal decisions, and adapt to a variety of situations that can occur. 

“Scientists who seek to understand brain-behavior relations and educators who want to use cognitive neuroscience to improve education need ways of finding and analyzing meaningful connections between changes in brain and behavior, moving beyond the finding that characteristics go generally up (some go generally down) with age”(K.W. Fisher 2008). Students form these patterns in the brain and use skills in the classroom to develop strategies to use in the classroom. As an educator, this means finding correlations between how the brain works and finding creative ways to teach students so they can retain information (frontal lobe), and how they visualize this information(Occipital lobe). Educators must also allow room for error as this is a process for students to learn and improve using meaningful feedback on assignments or tests. The goal is to advance student learning in any way possible and knowing that everyone is different, is the key to finding solutions for everyone. By engaging students through the learning process, considering different ways to scaffold, and building schemas in each content area, students will start to show much growth and potential. “Researchers and educators in mind, brain, and education need to use normal scientific caution in drawing conclusions for educational practice”(K.W Fisher 2008). There is much to learn about the brain, and we must nurture the growth of students' brains. 


References:

Fisher, K. W. (2008). Dynamic cycles of cognitive and brain development: Measuring growth in mind, brain, and education. Cfans. http://cfans.org/downloads/Dynamics%20cycles%20of%20cognitive%20and%20brain%20development.pdf 

Hess, Karin. (2023).  Rigor by Design, Not Chance: Deeper Thinking Through Actionable Instruction and Assessment. ASCD ASSN SUPERV CURR DEV, 2023.

Comments

  1. Dr. Beth Walsh-MoormanOctober 23, 2023 at 1:54 PM

    I love that you went to the brain science -- very brave of you! I wonder, though, how these ideas relate to the competencies you bring up earlier.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Lucy PattisonOctober 24, 2023 at 10:21 AM

    I find brain science so interesting. I am curious about what creative ways teachers can use for students to retain information. I wonder if mnemonic devices are a way teachers can help students retain information. It would be interesting to see if a study was done to evaluate how non-meaningful feedback affects the brain. As a future math educator, I want to understand why the parietal lobe is important in math courses. Overall, I am excited to understand the brain more to be an effective teacher.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Megan SchanzOctober 27, 2023 at 6:01 PM

    This blog was very informational. I did not know how the brain functions and affects our decisions and responses. I wonder what strategies are most beneficial in adjusting behavior of students in the classroom and what ways of teaching are most effective for students to retain information. From this, it seems that meaningful feedback can help students retain information. As a future elementary teacher, I plan to give meaningful feedback for student to help them advance their learning.

    ReplyDelete

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