Brain Rules Book Study
Gabrielle Smith
Principles That Affect Me As A Student
Throughout the book, Brain Rules, I discovered some basic principals that I believe will not only benefit teachers, but me as well. John Medina hit learning on the head with his 12 rules: exercise boosts brain power, brain evolution, brain wiring, attention span, repeating to remember, remembering to repeat, sleeping, lowering stress, stimulating senses, vision being the best sense, males/females learn differently, and brains are powerful explorers. When I learned that exercising improved test scores, it completely changed my view points on exercising. I started walking around my neighborhood, and my assignments and test scores improved. Knowing how the brain evolved really affected the way I viewed the brain. Learning basic information when you are younger really affects the way you will learn in the future. In elementary school, if you are really far behind and do not learn on-level material, there is a chance your brain might not even evolve the correct way. When you are younger it is critical that you are caught up in school. Another thing that impacted me as a learner is that brains are wired differently by the environment you are placed in, and obviously your genes. Our neurons fire into the synapse, and this is how we retain our knowledge. Different things fire our neurons, and as a student I know that neurons fire better when I am learning audibly and visually. Also, everyone has the same attention span. People don’t like listening to boring things! This would include lectures at school. That is why it is important to give students brain breaks because they will learn better. Sometimes I don’t pay any attention in College World Literature because the teacher talks the whole class period, and none of what she is saying is stimulating my brain. The reason their is no stimulation is it is boring, and it's a bunch of random information. I need brain breaks! One other thing that was very interesting to me is that humans cannot multi-task. Multi-tasking is all about how fast you can go back and forth between each task. Teachers need to keep mind that it is hard to write, listen, and remember the information they are giving. That is why they need to take their time, and not speed through their lesson. Short-term and long-term memory play a lot into how we learn in school. It is all about constantly repeating to remember, and remembering to repeat. In high school students base all of their learning on memory. I learned that not repeating something in 30 seconds, you will forget immediately after. Now when I do my studies I make sure that I repeat information in 30 seconds. Also, if you reproduce the environment you are in where you learned something new, you will remember it better. Obviously, we have made napping a fun thing in this generation, but this is not good for your body/brain. Naps should only lasts about 10 minutes because it can mess up your sleep cycle. I usually take 4 hour naps, so now I definitely don’t do that anymore. Sleeping is a very important thing for your brain because without it you cannot learn. Now I sleep at the appropriate times, and for the correct amount of times as much as possible. Something else that is important that your brain must not have is stress. Stress puts a very big roadblock to learning. Students need to relax about grades, freaking about a test can actually make you do worse. Students should instead focus on increasing their senses. Vision is the most important sense of them all. We learn by observing, and using our other senses as well. Students can learn way more about things by simply observing what is around them. Another thing that impacts me as a learner is my brain is genetically very distinctive from males. We learn differently, and we are both better at certain things. This helped me understand more about myself as a learner. Lastly, students must know that our brains are natural explorers. We must explore in order to learn new things.
Amazon Review
Principals Used In Future/Current Classroom
Brain Rules By: John Medina
Read this book!
Questions
I wonder what rule John Medina thinks is the most important out of his 12 rules?
I wonder how many teachers have read this book, and how it has impacted their teaching technique?
I wonder how many teachers have unconsciously followed John Medina’s brain rules?
I wonder what rule teachers, students, and others think is the most important of this book?
I wonder what kinds of activities/brain breaks could not only give students a break, but help them learn something new? Or help them learn better afterwards?
I wonder what kind of memory teachers try to influence the most (short-term or long-term)?
Should every teacher read this book? Not only to themselves, but to their students?
I wonder why John Medina decided to write a book about these specific rules?
I wonder how often it is that students brains are stimulated?
I wonder what people thought was the most interesting rule out of this book?
If they haven’t yet, why has no one ever done a study on the difference between teachers classrooms without reading the book as to teachers that did read the book?
- I wonder what other rules John Medina think should be applied to classrooms that he did not mention in the book?