THE ADOLESCENT BRAIN
Piaget's stages of cognitive development
Piaget beleives that a child's collaboration with their environment is key to their mental developmentand is activated in them either through assimilation or accomodation with external information.
Here are some awesome scaffolding techniques to try with students of all ages:
The notion of egocenticism is an important element of adolescent mental development. Two themes of adolescent thinking are the personal fable and the imaginary audience
I think all the brain rules are important to think about but my personal favorites and the ones I am going to implement into my classroom are: music, attention and motion.
To have a classroom that allows more room for motion is important. I wouldn't limit my students ( especially the ones with learning disabilities) to sitting in a desk for the whole class. If they need to walk around I would allow for that. Also, stretching before the lesson is a good way to activate brain activity. When we did it in our 304 class, I noticeably felt more alive during the lesson. I would also try to present information in 10 minute intervals since our brains aren't wired to pay attention to one thing for more that 10 minutes. I would allow for group discussion and student partipation to switch up the activity and not lecture for too long. Using boring powerpoints is something I would try to avoid. I think it would also be interesting to activate our brains even more by utilizing classical music when it is appropriate in my classroom. For example, if I gave students 15 minutes to brainstorm some ideas ( either in groups or alone) I would have a smooth study classical playlist playing in the background. I actually found a really great youtube channel for study music and I will post it here. This channel has mixes ranging from 30 minutes to 8 hours!!
The link is: https://www.youtube.com/user/YellowBrickCinema