FCS FLASH: Increase Brainpower
January 20, 2009
FCS FLASH ISSUE Number 96: January 20, 2009
January 23: Monterey: CCCECE Winter Institute: Technology in Our Teaching
January 25: Los Angeles: Autry National Center: Cut from a Different Cloth
January 30: Los Angeles: CCCECE Winter Institute: Technology in Our Teaching
February 6: Cajon: CCCECE Winter Institute: Technology in Our Teaching
February 20: Rocklin: CCCECE Winter Institute: Technology in Our Teaching
March 6: Downey: Student Design Event: "Persuasive Presentations and Communications for the Design Professional"
March 6: Sacramento: CDE/ECE Faculty Initiative Project
March 13-14: San Francisco: Interior Design Student Career Forum at the San Francisco Design Center
March 15-19: Las Vegas: Joint Conference National Council on Aging/American Society on Aging
March 20: Pasadena: CDE/ECE Faculty Initiative Project
March 26-28: Sacramento: CAEYC Conference California Association for the Education of Young Children
April 3: Novato: CDE/ECE Faculty Initiative Project
April 17: Downey: Save the Date! 2009 Culinary Arts and Hospitality Competition
April 22-24: Lake Arrowhead: 2009 Workforce Leaders Institute
April 24: San Diego: CDE/ECE Faculty Initiative Project
September 25-26: Sacramento: CSA Western Region, 2009 Symposium “Costume in the American West” Call For Papers
New News for a New Year: Roger Gerard, Shasta Community College, recounts a recent tour his class took of a winery and provides a first hand account of the biodynamics of wine making. In addition, read Alan Guttman’s contribution about reform in ECE/CD, as it happens to coincide with a certain inauguration taking place this week.
FCS FLASH: Use Facts to Increase Brainpower
We hope you are using some of the brain rules we discussed last semester to improve teaching and learning in your classrooms. To get 2009 off to a great start, here are five additional ideas to increase the brainpower in your classroom, using some recent facts from the brain sciences.
- Call them by their names: Greet a person through speaking that person’s name, for a spike in personal awareness. (#22)
- Cultivate a supportive and positive attitude: Encouragement can change the chemistry of a brain through raised serotonin. (#18)
- Create opportunities for students to use the skills and information they learn in class: Dendrite brain cells use the outside world and take shape or grow based on what you do. (#6)
- Connect new information to what they already know: Hook even difficult facts onto one thing you know and learning increases in less time. (#12)
- Care to build a friendly, helpful classroom culture: Environment counts, and a healthy setting helps people transform problems into solutions. (#2)
To develop a more caring culture in your classroom, right from the beginning, help students make connections with each other by finding out what they have in common. In a classroom where people know each other and are friendly with one another, they are more relaxed, contribute more, and are willing to take risks and make mistakes. Here is an activity to get them doing and thinking about their similarities.
Before class, review your roster and randomly group students – with 3 to 5 students per group.
After taking attendance, adjust groups to reflect those students actually in class.
Explain to students that you have grouped them according to things they have in common.
Read off the groups.
Have groups gather.
Explain that they have (5 to 10) minutes to identify three things they all have in common with each other e.g. birth order, marital status, career ambition ...
When time is up, have groups identify the things they have in common.
Admit that you randomly grouped them and you had no idea what they had in common but felt confident they would discover some remarkable connections.
Discuss the value of finding commonalities.
This newsletter was brought to you by a grant from the California Community College Chancellor's Office Family and Consumer Science Collaborative Grant (#06-0160).
Please contact Joann Driggers (jdriggers@mtsac.edu) with any questions.
MT. SAN ANTONIO COLLEGE 1100 N. GRAND AVENUE, WALNUT, CA 91789
909-594-5611 x5203