Learning is like playing the blues.

If you wanna get really good at it and be able to improvise, you must practice playing the blues a lot. You must also understand it. The scales, the chord progressions, the beats, the turnaround, the stories, the mood; the "how to blues."

If you wanna get really good at learning you must practice learning. You must also understand it. The brain, the habits, the strategies, what works, what doesn't; "the how to learn."

If you understand how your brain learns you might be able to hack your learning; to improvise and modify sketchy study strategies that mostly don't work and make them more effective.

Today, I attempt to do that with cramming and if you read my last post What's The Brain Deal With Cramming? you know that I don't recommend it and instead advocate for smart spaced practice. 

Remember the story of Icarus?

Here's my take...

Icarus died, because his father Daedalus was a bad teacher. The youngster flew too close to the sun, causing the wax binding his wings to melt and his body experience terminal velocity before it hit the sea.

But his father warned him! you may be thinking. He sure did, but the problem is that Daedalus did not teach his boy the secret methods to understanding the power he possessed. Without the understanding, Icarus did not learn. He did not learn, so he perished.

The legend of Icarus reminds me of education today. Fortunately, most of our students don't perish as a result of it. Unfortunately, many fall victim to miseducation. This is what Sir Ken Robinson suggests when describing a shortage of skills and abilities in the workforce needed to fill today's industry needs. To combat this, he emphasizes the importance of lifelong learning, which, I conceive, requires knowing how to process information effectively to understand, learn, and apply it in new ways.

Check out Part 2 of my previous post, "Prompts to Pump Up Creativity and Imagination." The upcoming "sparks," all crucial areas in education, don't get enough time in our classrooms. They can be used in various ways: a "wake-up call" in the morning to get students thinking and feeling. The prompt can be written on the board or said orally to students. Give them a minute to understand what the statement, question, or "equation" means. Add another minute for reflection-and-thinking about their interpretation. Follow up with a class discussion about the prompt and all its associations, connections, meanings, and practical applications in everyday life.

You might want to add writing to this mini-lesson. Instead of just discussing the prompt with students orally, ask them to write a short paragraph response to it. Follow up with kids reading their responses to classmates and discussion. They would think about and reflect on the prompt's meanings, associations, connections, as well as their practical applications in everyday life, and write out their answers. It all culminates with students' oral readings and a class discussion.

Note: The mini-lesson should not exceed 30 minutes. Scan the different prompts and see which ones would be suitable for your students. This would work for upper elementary/middle school to high school students. 

CREATIVITY PROMPTS 

We make sense out of the world around us by forming connections in our brains. The more of these connections (information chunks) we have, the easier it is for our neurons to form new connections and understandings. Some concepts presented to young minds in schools are so new that they struggle with the initial understanding.

It is important for parents and teachers to be able to explain that this lack of understanding is NOT A RESULT OF BEING DUMB, which is a common stigma facing learners of all ages. Rather, the information does not make sense, because the needed neural network, the "chunk," hasn't had the time to fully form yet. 

We also need to tell our students that if they keep practicing, recalling, and using the information they will indeed grow the necessary neural structures. If they don't give up on learning tough concepts too quickly and we don't give up on them they will MAKE SENSE OUT OF NONSENSE.

This was Infographic #4 in the BRAIN-BASED LEARNING SERIES. Please check out Infographic #1 to learn how to Leverage Sleep to Maximize Learning, Infographic #2 to get Strategies on How to Fight Procrastination, and Infographic #3 to maximize Memory Retention.