All presentations are tailored for your group’s needs.

Becoming a Wiz at Brain-Based Teaching

This user-friendly presentation discusses expert findings about brain growth, structure, and functions to help teachers and administrators foster a love of learning in all students. By creating an enriched, brain-compatible environment, educators can effectively counter such existing negative influences as stress, sleep deprivation, poor nutrition, and genetic predisposition to disorders in order to cultivate successful lifelong learning.

Beyond Translation: Applying Brain Research in the Classroom 

            The fields of neuroscience and education have found a common ground. Educators who have a background in the neurobiology of learning and memory have a distinct advantage in their classrooms. Take this opportunity to listen to a teacher and ASCD author who has been applying the research in her classrooms since 1989. It is one thing to talk about brain-compatible learning, but using it with students requires a different kind of understanding. Creating stress-free environments, enhancing complex cognitive skills, and understanding memory become essential. Receiving, encoding, storing, and retrieving information make sense as the memory pathways are defined. Assessing student learning becomes the simple task of accessing the same lanes that were used for teaching.

Brain-Compatible Teaching from Scratch

            Other teachers are incorporating brain compatible teaching and finding success. Don’t know where to begin?  Years of experience will be used to demonstrate how to set up a brain compatible classroom. The “why” and the “how” of movement, procedure, music, and memory will be experienced as we go from trying to create classroom compatible brains to a brain compatible classroom. In this interactive session, a “from scratch” recipe will bring great results!

Differentiation: How the Brain Learns Best

Differentiation is doing the best that you can to meet the kids where they are and take them to the necessary levels to meet and exceed standards. The process of differentiation, offering students multiple ways of taking in and expressing information, begins with educators examining four areas: content, process, product, and environment. The idea is to find out where students are in the learning process and offer opportunities for forward movement. Differentiation is the way the brain learns best!

How to Teach So Students Remember

Finally! Strategies to use on Monday to help your students remember on Tuesday! Neuroscience and cognitive psychology provide information for a teaching approach that ensures students remember what you taught. Get an in-depth understanding of the brain structures that influence memory, and learn how you can promote better recall for daily classroom learning, high-stakes tests, and beyond.

The study of student memory is a topic long overdue. With high stakes testing, state and national standards, and No Child Left Behind, educators are charged with the huge responsibility of creating lasting, accessible, and transferable memories for their students. Incorporating the seven steps to memory, scientifically based instructional strategies, and higher level thinking skills, it is possible to take our students from attention to retention. This workshop provides a step-by-step progression to increase our students’ capacity to receive information in immediate memory, act on it in working memory, store it in long-term memory, and retrieve and manipulate it in unanticipated situations. For our students to perform well on high stakes tests and go out into the world with conceptual understandings, we must teach for long-term memory.

             Matching Instruction and Assessment Using Memory Pathways

            Understanding how memory works provides an advantage for every educator. This presentation gives participants the opportunity to gain an understanding of the different types of memory, how to access each for instruction, and how to create assessments that match. Receiving, encoding, storing, and retrieving information can make more sense to our students when knowledge of memory and transfer are utilized.

Memory Lane is a Two-way Street

Current research is revealing more information about how and what the brain learns and remembers. What is the truth about our memories? How can we help our students improve theirs? We continue to be concerned about higher-level thinking, but how can our students analyze, synthesize, evaluate, and apply what they know, if they don't know anything? Learn how memory works and how to apply that knowledge to help students become successful learners. Receiving, encoding, storing, and retrieving information makes sense as the memory pathways are defined. Assessing student learning becomes the simple task of accessing the same lanes that were used for teaching. Strategies that can be implemented immediately will be shared.

Neuroscience in the Nursery: Birth to Three

A child begins life with an astonishingly unfinished brain. Life experiences help “wire up” the brain. What occurs in the early years has a lasting effect on that wiring. This presentation addresses the importance of increasing attention, using play for learning, and communicating with these young brains. Practical examples will be provided.

       Raising Student Achievement by Improving Memory

   Recent research suggests that increasing working memory raises IQ and achievement in many content areas. High achievement on assessments relies on the ability to take information provided on the assessment, make connections to prior knowledge, and manipulate the two in order to comprehend and answer questions.
This session will provide research and techniques to increase both working and long-term memory in students. Teachers must be able to get information into immediate memory, have students manipulate that information in working memory, and make connections to place it in long-term memory. These permanent memories must then be retrievable. Following a seven step process which includes proper review, lasting memories can be formed so that test time becomes less stressful and less time is needed for test preparation.

Rich Brain, Poor Brain

Neuroscience has revealed what enrichment can do for the brain. How can we take a “poor” brain and make it rich? Is it wealth or experience that makes a brain increase connections and background knowledge? In this session learn how brains from poverty can thrive in our middle class school system, and how rich brains can get “richer. From urban to suburban settings, raising student achievement applies to all students.

Syllable from Sound: The Brain’s Language Pathways

There are six thousand languages in the world, and babies are born with the ability to master any of them. But the brain changes as children develop and language acquisition can become more difficult. In this presentation learn how children learn their native language and how the brain’s approach to new languages changes with age. 

The Adolescent Brain

Research in understanding the adolescent brain has brought new and exciting information to help us apply strategies that work. Middle and high school students are utilizing brain structures that may cause them to take unnecessary risks. Educators must be aware of what tactics can be used to satisfy the need for novelty and risk as teaching and learning take place. This workshop will not only reveal the development of various brain structures, it will also take you through a day in the life of the adolescent brain. Working with this brain, rather than in opposition to it, can make a difference in motivation, attention, and learning.

The Developing Brain: Ages 3 to 8

The brain is the only organ that is shaped through its interactions with the environment. Learn how the brain develops from age 3 through age 8 and what developmentally appropriate activities enhance its growth. Consider best practice as you learn about ages and stages in the areas of reading, language, cognition, emotion, and physical development. These are the years in which you can really make a difference!

The Emotional Brain: The Power of Emotional Intelligence

The power of emotional intelligence can be felt in leaders, in teams, and in organizations. What truly makes organizations productive is the ability of leaders and groups to be intelligent about emotions. Learn about self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. Neurological research suggests that being attuned to our feelings helps us find the meaning in data and make better decisions. Create harmony, get commitment, and meet challenges for your learning organization.

What Every Educator Needs to Know about Brain Compatible Teaching

We've learned more about the brain and how it functions in the past two decades than in all of recorded history. Today's imaging techniques allow us to look at the specific brain areas a person uses when recalling a noun versus a verb, or when listening to music versus composing a song.  The more we understand about the brain, the better we'll be able to educate it. By following the brain-based teaching principles we can create an enriched, brain-compatible environment and effectively counter such existing negative influences as stress, sleep deprivation, and poor nutrition.  Reflect upon the myths and mysteries of the brain, classroom environmental considerations, and the role of emotions in learning.

Wiring the Brain for Reading 

Current research on how the brain learns to read points to exciting opportunities for helping educators increase student achievement. In this dynamic workshop, based on educational neuroscience, scientifically based research and personal research and work with students from pre-kindergarten to high school, Marilee Sprenger makes reading research meaningful and then personally models practical principles for effective instruction.   Reading is a very rich, complex, and cognitive act. The brain is hardwired for spoken language but not for reading. Yet reading skills serve as the primary foundation of all school-based learning. Teachers are always searching for strategies that will unlock the door to content-area learning for their students.

A Tale of Two Brains: Reading Robby and Struggling Sam

Why do some kids seem to spontaneously read and others struggle in all subjects because of their inability to “break the code?” In this workshop, we’ll look at how reading brains are wired and what happens when that wiring is misfiring! Follow the reading roads of two brains: one that wires easily for reading and one that resists reading pathways. Help prepare the brain for reading through movement, procedures, and other brain-compatible strategies.

Eight ways to Help You and Your Students Remember

Train their brains and change their lives! If you remember to come to this workshop, you’ll leave with eight strategies to improve memory. Brain rules and brain tools will be shared, modeled and practiced so you can use them immediately. As educators, we change brains everyday, let’s wire them for success. Impress your students with your ability to build their memory powers. Handouts will be provided.