At the beginning of each academic year, we teach our students about the brain.
When I first encountered this aspect of our curriculum, I doubted its value. Sure enough, despite teaching the different parts of the brain and making models of brains, the information failed to stick.
This is not an uncommon issue in primary school. All too often, we are guilty of expecting children to learn without really thinking about how this happens.
I first started thinking about this after overhearing a colleague speaking to a pupil about the fact that he had forgotten what they had studied the day before.
Neuroscience in primary school
Why did that pupil forget what he did yesterday? What is happening in his brain so that he cannot recall that information when others can? That is when I started reading about neural pathways.
Put simply, neural pathways are connections between neurons in the brain, sending messages so that our body knows what to do when completing a task. They are also an excellent way of representing the learning process visually for students of all ages.
The more times we complete a task, the better we become at it because the message has been passed between the neurons more often: the pathways between neurons have become stronger.
I decided I wanted to teach my primary class about this concept to help them truly understand how their brain works and how learning is formed. I turned to technology to help.
Robots to the rescue
We are lucky enough to have access to 10 Sphero robots in our school - small plastic spheres that can be programmed or driven manually.
After drawing brains on paper and using blobs of paint for neurons, the pupils were tasked with driving these Spheros between the neurons to create neural pathways.
Using the Sphero Edu app, the children selected the manual drive mode and began trying to control the robots between the blobs of paint. The virtual joystick control is very simple, but the task is surprisingly difficult at first. The more accurate the students became, the more paint they were able to spread between the “neurons”.
It was a lot of fun, of course, but my Year 5 students also came to appreciate the fact that the more times they drove between the neurons, the pathways we had created became stronger.
They could also see clearly for themselves how practising something helped them to improve, as their handling of the robots became more controlled the more they practised.
The stronger the pathways on the paper, the stronger the pathways in the learner’s brain.
We did this as part of our #IPC unit #Brainwaves. The kids loved learning about how their brain works, whilst also having a bit of fun with #Sphero. #HIS_Learning pic.twitter.com/b1gj9qVYLj
- Luke Edeson (@EdesonLuke) September 3, 2020
The learning process was no longer as abstract to them.
Turning the classroom into a brain
Of course, the robots made this fun but if you don’t have the same kind of access to technology, simply drawing lines or using string can also help to make this concept more concrete.
A shared piece of artwork, in which children take it in turns to draw or paint pathways between neurons, can become a useful display piece, which you can keep referring to throughout the year.
Turning the classroom into a brain and having children pass string between each other is another great way to make the concept more visual.
Throughout the year, I am able to refer back to these first-week activities when children are trying something new. It works especially well when pupils are finding something difficult and they are in need of a resilience boost.
Pupils understand more clearly why they are finding something challenging and are more likely to maintain a positive attitude towards their learning.
Home learning help
This strategy has worked equally well on my four-year-old daughter at home. At her age, it is common for children to become frustrated when trying new tasks.
Yet I found that she was very capable of understanding the concept of neural pathways.
Soon she started referring to the pathways herself, be it when she was trying to ride her bike, play tennis, read a new word or complete an addition problem.
If she is becoming stressed or frustrated, reminding her of the fact that she needs to strengthen the neural pathways always helps to calm her down and reassure her that she will be able to be successful with practice.
She is already developing a growth mindset, largely because of this understanding.
Give it a go
Overall, I have found speaking to children about this process and introducing them to metacognition a very effective tool in the classroom, and at home.
There is no reason why we should not be speaking to preschool children about their own learning process, building the foundations for them to become reflective, resilient learners.
And if this means that parents of preschoolers can avoid the odd frustrated tantrum along the way, all the better.
Luke Edeson is a primary teacher at HELP International School, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He has taught internationally for 13 years
