5 Brain-aligned strategies for your middle school classroom!
Are you teaching Grade 7’s and finding yourself constantly telling them to stop talking, sit down or something similar?
I’m here to help! A long time ago in Queensland, Australia our 12-year-olds were in their final year of Primary School, being taught by Primary trained teachers in a Primary structured environment. In 2015, Highschool was restructured to start at Grade 7 – meaning our little grade 7er’s were now heading off to Highschool to be taught by high school trained teachers in a high school setting. To ease this transition the department gave the opportunity for Primary school teachers to also “transition” into high school positions because the department understood the difference in teaching practices between high school and primary aged students.
I was one of those teachers who “transitioned”, and I loved every minute of my first-year teaching in Highschool!! It was on this journey that I fell in love with the brain. Teachers in my staff room were taken aback by my “quirky primary school ways” – luckily it was a small town and I was already friends with most of my staffroom or else I may have been quickly kicked out! I would spend my spares laminating small group activities, creating behaviour reward charts and calling parents just to “check in”. I quickly realised that these things were not the norm in a high school setting and in the beginning, I wasn’t sure how to respond when teachers asked why I put so much effort into making my lessons interactive or having a behaviour chart on the wall. But… when other teachers who were also teaching my grade 7 classes started coming to me asking for help to get them to “behave” or “interested” and saying things like, “they just are so immature”, “I can’t get them to stop talking!!!” I realised how important my “quirky Primary school” ways were!
Enough of my backstory let’s get to the fun part… The Brain!
I nerd out quite a bit when I talk about how important understanding brain development is when teaching any aged student but in particular the middle years!
Because only when you start understanding the development stages and changes you really can understand your students’ behaviours and learning needs. Which of course makes you better equipped to engage, teach and manage behaviours within your classroom!
Even though a teenage brain is fully grown, it is far from fully developed. The brain is undergoing immense development and fine tuning during the teenage years! This ‘pruning’ and maintenance begins at the back of the brain – the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for higher-order thinking, decision-making, impulse control and social interactions, isn’t fully developed until early 20’s!
Because the prefrontal cortex is still developing, teenagers generally rely on a part of the brain called the amygdala to make decisions and solve problems more than adults do. The amygdala is associated with emotions, impulses, aggression and instinctive behaviour…
sounds like a grade 7 classroom, am I right?
So how can we, as teachers, benefit from this understanding?
5 teaching strategies that work WITH the adolescent brain
1. REPETITION and STURCTURE!!
The prefrontal cortex is responsible for a lot of things including working memory and information retention. While this part of the brain is developing it is important to take that into account when you are planning lessons.
Rapid recalls and revising previous lessons are essential for new information to “stick”. There is a great statistic (that of course I CANNOT find right now) about how many times a teenager needs to hear, see and do a certain task before it moves into their long- term memory… it is a lot!
Incorporating a repetitive structure into your lessons is a great way to train your students’ brains. By alleviating the mental strain of comprehending expectations, you create space for focused learning.
Want to know more about implementing routines into your classroom? Check out this blog –“Creating Effective Classroom Routines”.
2. REAL WORLD RELEVANCE
“When am I ever going to need this”, Hands up if you’ve every been asked this question in the classroom?
Making connections between content and real-life is always important, especially in the middle years. Students not only need to know the importance of learning but it will also tap into the student’s developing ability for abstract thinking, which of course we want to foster and encourage.
3. ACTIVE LEARNING
The adolescent brain thrives on engagement and hands-on experiences. Active learning methods can include but certainly not limited to: group discussions, cut and paste/sorting/interactive activities.
Something that I have always found students love is “whole body learning”. I am a maths teacher and there are so many ways you can incorporate a little drama into the lesson. Create a human number line, fractions, data representation – I have even made a human food web!
For every lesson I intentionally plan an active learning activity so that I am stimulating various parts of my students’ brains which will enhance retention and understanding of the topic being taught!
4. GROUP WORK
I know a lot of teachers quiver at the thought of group work in a Grade 7 classroom – I get it! A LOT of boundary and expectation setting needs to happen before you will see the benefits from group work activities!
Peer interaction is a major part of a teenagers developing brain – they crave it! Incorporating group work within lessons provide students with opportunities for this desired interaction while still learning!
Group work also develops communication skills, teamwork and collaboration, and developing social skills.
5. REFLECTION AND CRITICAL THINKING
As adolescents are refining their analytical and reasoning skills, their brains undergo the “pruning” process in the prefrontal cortex, using the “use it or lose it” approach. We must encourage reflections through discussions, journals, or open-ended problem-solving so the brain recognises the importance of these skills and encourages its development, refinement and enhancement.
Implementing a combination of these strategies can create a dynamic and supportive learning environment for our developing teenagers!
ACTIONABLE TAKEAWAYS
During your next planning session for your “challenging” junior secondary class, do these TWO things:
- Incorporate a group work activity in the lesson – this might be as simple as a “turn-and-talk” or a little more adventurous “Group Brainstorm – Poster Creation”.
- Create a clear structure for a daily routine e.g. Before students enter the room provide them two instructions. OR create a routine around getting ipads/laptops at the beginning of the lesson
