Maximizing Brain Function during Tests! Eeek!

This post will help you give your students' brains the best chance of successful functioning during testing! David A. Sousa outlines these steps in his book, "How the Brain Learns" which I HIGHLY recommend. 

First Sousa explains there are two things brain cells consume as fuel...oxygen and glucose. These steps help make more of both of those things available for the brain during stressful test taking.

1) Quick exercise: Get your students up for about two minutes of jumping jacks or calf raises before they start the test. These movements will increase blood flood and move more oxygen up to the brain. 

Everyone loves a visual! : )

2) Eat some fruit: It is an excellent source of glucose and will give those brain cells some energy! Glucose helps increase recall from both long-term memory and working memory significantly. Obviously this is very important for success on a test! Sousa suggests raisins for convenience in the classroom, but other fruit work too. However, fruit juices don't quite have the same effect. They have more fructose than glucose, so bypass those.

Mmm...mmm...my brain is working better already!

3) Wash that fruit down with some water. This is key because water will help the glucose get into students' bloodstream faster. We want hydrated brains!

Do these steps with about 5 minutes until testing...and you should be good to go for about a 30 minute test. If you're giving a longer test than that, take a break and have your kids repeat the steps.

Well there you have it..."How the Brain Learns" by David A. Sousa...I'm telling you, it's some good stuff! Buy it for your professional library!

I bet you didn't know...

*Note: This is a repost from my personal blog, but I felt it appropriate for this new educational blog as well*


Here are some tidbits I learned or had reinforced from a recent conference I attended at MIT. The conference was entitled "Learning and the Brain" and is part of a movement in the new field of Educational Neuroscience also known as Mind, Brain, and Education. I think you'll find these tidbits very interesting!

Tidbit #1: A person's intelligence is NOT fixed  (this was not new to me from the conference because of my job working with a program called Arrowsmith, but the following benefit of it is). Studies show that students who think their intelligence can't change tend to give up on tasks and in school. If its tough, they think it will always be tough and there is no hope for school to get better. However, if kids do understand that their brain canchange and they aren't just stuck with what they've got, they tend to persevere and work harder . It can make a huge difference in behavior and performance. So if your a teacher or a parent, make sure your kids know their brain can change!!

Tidbit #2: The reason there are more boys than girls with learning disabilities:
Think back to good 'ol high school biology (shoutout to Mrs. Pam Williams), boys become boys because the have an X and a Y chromosome. Girl become girls because they have two X chromosomes. As it turns out, many learning disabilities are located on the X chromosome. Since girls have two X's, if one has a mutation for a learning disability, the other X can sort of override the issue. Unfortunately for boys, they don't have two X's...so if the one X they have has a mutation for learning disability, they are most likely going to have the disability. It's also the reason more men than women are color blind as well as is responsible for "male pattern baldness." Sorry guys, gotta hate that Y-chromosome.

**It should also be noted that there is a disproportionately large percentage of boys in remedial reading classes. They tend to be overly-identified because of issues other than true disability like behavior or high energy. In that same breath it should be noted that girls are under-identified and sometimes don't receive the services they need because they are compliant and often read fluently...hiding real comprehension issues.**



Tidbit #3: Have you ever wondered why REM sleep is such a big deal?? We hear about how we miss out on it if we don't have enough hours of sleep, but who really cares, right? No dreams for the night but that's no biggie. Well, it's actually kind of a big deal, especially for students who don't get enough sleep to have REM cycles. During that REM time, our memory is consolidating or coding information learned during the day from our working memory to long term memory. So when it students don't get enough sleep, it's hard for their brains to store the information they've learned. Scary!!

Tidbit #4: Ever heard that we only use 10% of our brains?? I know I have. But it's completely untrue. People don't use only 10% of their brains...they use all of it!! I learned this when I started work with the Arrowsmith program, but I fear that many people still hold this misconception. It lingers from a misquote or misinterpretation of research from way back when.

And finally, Tidbit #5: Labeling people as right-brained or left-brained is a little out of control. While the two different sides of the brain have some different functions, the brain is quite connected and interdependent. Brain imaging technology shows that most processes such as language processing or spatial ability have factors in both hemispheres of the brain.

Now if tidbits 1-5 weren't enough for you...learn a little more about ADHD look-a-like factors. 
One of the presenters, David A. Sousa, an author and consultant in Educational Neuroscience, talked about 6 factors that produce ADHD-like behavior...but aren't really ADHD. As you probably know, more and more kids are getting misdiagnosed for this. Here are his 6 factors that produce hyperactive behavior:

1) Diet. 3 things in particular that cause problems: caffeine, aspartame (which is actually snuck into some children's vitamins to make them taste better), and food preservatives. The hyperactivity from caffeine can also ultimately lead to depression. Sad.

2) Sleep Deprivation: The average high school kids gets only 5-6 hours a night. The lack of sleep leads to irritability as well as hyperactivity. It also reduces the amount of REM time...which if you read the tidbits...you know is bad for long term memory! Eeek!

3) Stress. Stress releases a hormone called Cortisol, this results in hyperactive behavior.

4) "Pain in the butt syndrome"...now this theory of his isn't so scientific, but true. Some kids are simply not taught the rules of behavior. These days, many kids spend far more time with technology than they do with their families. In fact, one recent survey found kids spend 18 times more time connecting to the outside world than they do connecting with their parents and families. On average, the survey found kids spent only 47 minutes a week engaging in meaningful conversation with family. These days we don't spend time around the dinner table, we're too busy! But the consequences are grave.

5) School induced ADHD (he was running out of time so he didn't go through this much...but I think he meant that kids get so bored they freak out)

6) Environmental Factors (drugs, heavy metals, etc) and actual physical disorders such as OCD, dyslexia, etc.

The Gap

It has long been noted by myself and many others that there is a monstrous gap between those conducting educational research and actual educators battling it out in the classroom everyday. Change happens so slowly in education and unfortunately most educators don't spend the time it takes to constantly comb new research for best practices. Perhaps this isn't because we don't want to, but because we are wives and mothers and busy, busy people who are so exhausted at the end of every day that we can't even think about reading papers written in science mumbo jumbo. So that's where I come in. As nerdy as it may sound, I kind of like the science mumbo jumbo. So the purpose of this blog is for me to do my part to bridge the gap between research and educators. I'm no superwoman, and I am a classroom teacher (or perhaps that one fact does mean that I am a superwoman), so the posts might not be frequent. But as I learn, I promise to pass along any new and interesting knowledge I gain so that other educators can use it to better serve the needs of their kids. It is my firm belief that teachers should always be learners. Every parent wants the best, most up-to-date doctor for their child when they are sick...and they deserve the same thing for their child's mind! So here's to be a lifelong learner and sharing that knowledge with others!