Latest News and Comment from Education

Thursday, October 24, 2013

10-24-13 Motivation, Attention, Memory, Cognition, and Action — Whole Child Education

Motivation, Attention, Memory, Cognition, and Action — Whole Child Education:

Klea Scharberg

Motivation, Attention, Memory, Cognition, and Action

Human beings are born to learn. During the last few decades, developmental science has exploded with discoveries of how, specifically, learning happens. This provides us with an unprecedented window into children's minds: how and when they begin to think, perceive, understand, and apply knowledge.
Author, Whole Child Podcast guest, and Whole Child Virtual Conference presenter Wendy Ostroff builds on this research and, in her book Understanding How Young Children Learn: Bringing the Science of Child Development to the Classroom, shows you how to harness the power of the brain, the most powerful learning machine in the universe. She highlights the processes that inspire or propel learning—play, confidence, self-regulation, movement, mnemonic strategies, metacognition, articulation, and collaboration—and distills the research into a synthesis of the most important, takeaway ideas that teachers will need as they design their curriculum and pedagogy. Ostroff writes:
Incorporating developmental science research into the classroom means shifting the focus of education from teaching back to learning. In the United States, the content of schooling is determined at the state, local, and national level and is often given the highest priority. Students' ability to remember facts for standardized tests determines how well their schools will get funded. But 


The Tools for a Successful Young Learner — Whole Child Education
The Tools for a Successful Young Learner — Whole Child Education: THE WHOLE CHILD BLOGThe Tools for a Successful Young LearnerOctober 23, 2013 by Pauline GremaudEducation begins in preschool and kindergarten for a reason. These are important formative years where students build skills and develop behaviors to carry them through many years of learning. As a kindergarten teacher, I make it my goal f