Engage the Brain: How to Design for Learning That Taps into the Power of Emotion

by Allison Posey

Research on the brain has shown that emotion plays a key role in learning, but how can educators apply that research in their day-to-day interactions with students? What are some teaching strategies that take advantage of what we know about the brain?

Engage the Brain answers these questions with easy-to-understand explanations of the brain's emotion networks and how they affect learning, paired with specific suggestions for classroom strategies that can make a real difference in how and what students learn. Readers will discover how to design an environment for learning that

Makes material relevant, relatable, and engaging.Accommodates tremendous variability in students' brains by giving them multiple options for how to approach their learning.Incorporates Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles and guidelines.Uses process-oriented feedback and other techniques to spark students' intrinsic motivation.Author Allison Posey explains how schools can use the same "emotional brain" concepts to create work environments that reduce professional stress and the all-too-common condition of teacher burnout.

Real-world classroom examples, along with reflection and discussion questions, add to the usefulness of Engage the Brain as a practical, informative guide for understanding how to capture the brain's incredible power and achieve better results at all grade levels, in all content areas.

Genres: Teaching, Education, Nonfiction, Psychology

180 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 20, 2018

Reviews

[Anubha (BooksFullOfLife, LifeFullOfBooks) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is written from a teacher's pov to instruct other teacher about how to follow UDL guidelines, teach amidst variable students with variable experiences. Find solutions for teachers' dilemmas and students' needs. It has taken account of various psychological and scientific researches. And theories/ models are explained very well with examples from day to day lives.

[Angel Boucher · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is absolutely terrible. It's so hard to stay engaged with this book, much less just sitting longer than 5 minutes reading it. It's very repetitive and filled with medical jargon. It's extremely unrelatable, hard to follow, unrealistic. I don't know why they recommended this book to read on figuring out how students function. It does absolutely no justice to students or teachers. It's awful, and I would never recommend it.

[Alex Kennedy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A promising start that got a little wishy-washy in the middle. I read this book for a Professional Development course, which I picked specifically because the brain is fascinating and I want to understand the actual processes that lead my students to act and react as they do so that I am more empathetic and empowered to help them. I like stretching my brain with good science, and figured this would be just the ticket. And it was, most of the time.

The book gives great insight on how memories are formed through sensory input from all different senses, how chemicals like cortisol can impede memory and thus learning in students who are in crisis, and which structures of the brain are involved in emotion processing and memory and how those structures can be impacted by disabilities. Somewhere in there, though, it felt like the language got dumbed down in parts, but not in others, which made it hard to keep reading. I kept having to stop and rant or make snide comments in my notes document because it was sort of jarring. I never really reached a state of flow while reading, which is unfortunate because it's all about reducing barriers to student learning so they can reach flow in their work...

Also, I appreciate UDL as a framework, it's what I was trained in to begin with, but quite a few chunks of this book seemed like ads for UDL and didn't suggest supports for teachers who are not using UDL for whatever reason. She kept acknowledging that UDL is a big step for an established teacher because it's a complete curricular and classroom management overhaul, so maybe just take a baby step and try with one assignment or one unit, but it still got really repetitive.

Overall, there was definitely a lot of good information, I just think it could've been better if she'd allowed herself to nerd out more.

[Stephen Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

What a strange book!

I've written and given training before, plus I have a strong interest in neuroscience, so I thought this would be an interesting read. And it was, although not in the way I expected.

When I was reading this I was not expecting to see direct links drawn between the myelination of neurons and "Hey, we're in a classroom and we're learning about stuff!"

It's a bit like "I'd like to learn how to drive a car", and then hearing that the atoms of metal in your car came from the hearts of exploding suns! It's true, but is it strongly relevant?

I'll leave others do debate this. I liked the book, personally.

I would suggest if an educator isn't familiar with gloopy brain stuff that they skim those parts, or maintain a "Well, I didn't know that! How interesting!" approach to it and not assume that they absolutely need to know the exact nature of a particular structure in the human brain to create engaging content.

And visa versa for the gloopy brain people who want to create training content!

[Cristina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Books about teaching and learning have a tendency to be too authoritative or prescriptive-this book is the right mix of how-to and exceptional research on the brain. I was able to put it to use right away with teachers and students.

[*Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book for a class to get credits for a lane change. There were elements of this book I found useful. And it’s a great book for newer teachers. I felt like I knew most of the information in here, so I’m giving it 3 stars because it is a worthwhile book, but for me it was really a 1 or 2.

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

What I enjoyed about this book was the parallels between actionable teacher processes and the actual brain science behind them. This is the future direction of education writing.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25

[Shikeal Harris · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book provides a decent amount of usable information, but I would hope many would already understand the concept of utilizing a child centered approach to teaching.