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How can we make the curriculum more meaningful and relevant for our students? Often our students can't relate what we teach them to their lives, and as a consequence:

• it's irrelevant in their world
• their brains say, why remember it or use it?
• we can't impose relevance, but we can inspire our students to make connections to their worlds

There is an innovative method that enables students to see connections between their lives and subject matter. They can see where it fits for them; it makes sense in their world.

The key is to use the wholeness of the brain and how it can be changed by experiences:

• firstly, when the brain experiences something it tries to make sense of it
• the left side and right sides of the brain have differing perspectives of the experiences

Memorising information is short term because the brain doesn't relate it to what it knows:

• it has little meaning
• there are no common patterns or relationships with the material

Provide every student with a large spiral bound notebook and then set the ground rules:

• they can personalise it with a cover page
• there must be a chronological index as the contents grow
• they can use colours should they wish to
• the aim initially is to give them licence to use their dominant multiple intelligences and preferred learning styles

When introducing a new topic:

• do a class brainstorming exercise asking students to record the responses on the right hand page
• then allow individual students time to make sense of it for themselves on the left hand page; finding meaning in their worlds
• they can use whatever method they wish including
• drawings
• symbols
• flow charts
• rubrics
• poems
• mind maps
• analogies
• songs
• venn diagrams

As the topic develops, the learnt/taught materials is written or glued in on the right hand page while individual perceptions and relevance of it in their world is depicted on the left hand page.

 

 

 

 

 

It's all about using the whole brain.

verbal, linear, singular, ordered and sequential step by step

- works with the right side of our bodies; thus the right hand page.

holistic big picture, relationships, visual, exploratory, random multi directional in search of sense and connections

- works with the left side of our bodies; thus the left hand page.

Each of us has a dominant side of our brain

• by using both pages, we increase brain effectiveness by encouraging our more dominant side to work with our less dominant side.

As teachers, we use the right page for our directed learning; we must vary our presentation to engage; avoid note taking from the board, give handouts to glue in.

Our students use the left page to jot down, draw, list, write, colour whatever connections that they can make to the right page material. They can

• express feelings and relationships
• offer opinions
• create a rubric, e.g. issues matrix
• use higher level thinking tools such as Six Thinking Hats, Habits of the Mind, Y-diagrams, PMI, KWHL Grid, SWOT Analysis and Think, Pair, Share.

There is no right or wrong on the left page, it's where authentic/real learning is occurring.

“When you are faced to face with a difficulty, you are up against a discovery." Lord Kelvin