California Learning Strategies Center 
                        
 
 
Why "Drill and Kill" Is Bad For Your Child's Brain June 2009
In This Issue
Boredom is a Brain Turn Off
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Dear Parents,

Do you know what happens in children's brains to make them love learning? 
 
In this newsletter we have neurologist-turned-classroom-teacher Dr. Judy Willis to tell us.  Dr. Willis also provides a list of interactive internet resources that will provide fun and challenge for your children over the summer break.
 
In addition to being a middle-school teacher, Dr. Willis lectures and writes extensively on how brain and research-based strategies can be used to improve learning for all students, including advanced and gifted learners. 
 
Parents who want to find out more about what they can do to  encourage their children's love of learning can check out Dr. Willis's books, including her most recent publication, Inspiring Midddle School Minds: Gifted, Creative and Challenging.  Highly recommended!
 
If you want help working with your school so that your child is appropriately challenged and continues to love learning, our consultants can help.  For information, please go to  www.LearningStrategiesCenter.com/products.html or call 805-642-6686. 
 
Please feel free to forward this newsletter to family, friends and colleagues.
  
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Susan Goodkin 
Executive Director
California Learning Strategies Center
805-642-6686
 Boy with book
Boredom is a Brain Turn Off
 
By Judy Willis, M.D.,M.Ed. 

 "I've always been in the fast math class where it has always been challenging, but not impossible. That is when I pay attention best."                                                                                                      Austin (my math student)                                   
 
      Imagine having to spend your day on the bunny hill when you are an expert skier, throwing darts at a target two feet away, or doing a crossword puzzle made for children in 3rd grade. You would feel frustrated or bored just as a gifted child does when there is inadequate challenge to engage his brain in lessons at school or homework.
           
      You know it would do nothing to promote your child's interest in a subject or awareness of her gifts if she took a test of a topic she mastered years before, such as having your 5th grade daughter score 100% on a math test of adding single digit positive integers. Unless students feel the achievement is a challenge, there is no intrinsic satisfaction from success.
           
     Often teachers move through the curriculum at a set pace regardless of students' individual levels of mastery. Even students who are not negative about school in general, will become bored when lessons are at a level they already mastered.
           
                              Achievable Challenge
    
     For students to be engaged in their learning they need relevant, achievable challenge. It is only from authentic achievements that students experience the reward of their competence, effort, and perseverance. This is when the neurotransmitter dopamine is released from a brain structure called the nucleus accumbens. When the brain solves a satisfying problem with appropriate challenge, the increase in dopamine release is associated with feelings of pleasure and intrinsic satisfaction. Because the brain is a pleasure-seeking organ, it will look for more opportunities to get that same satisfaction and pleasure. 
 
     Students who have these satisfying experiences develop perseverance and tolerance for even greater challenge. They are engaged and focused on learning activities that are meaningful and challenging. They see themselves as learners, and regard learning as pleasurable. They build the confidence, curiosity, and willingness to persevere even after making mistakes. Gifted students need achievable challenge to grow as learners and reach into their gifted potentials. These challenge experiences are vital while they develop the skills they need to use their gifts to the fullest, such as flexibility, perseverance, interest, and inventiveness.
     
       Challenge is a powerful motivator when students take on a challenge they find meaningful. Now the intrinsic rewards are powerful, and the dopamine-pleasure reaction encourages subsequent similar pursuits. However, because the brain's emotional filter, the amygdala, blocks learning when students are bored, gifted students need teachers and parents to provide opportunities for success at their individual challenge level appropriate for their mastery and background knowledge.
  
     If learning opportunities are not compatible with a gifted child's level of intelligence, background knowledge, and development, his brain drops into the stress reactive state. This part of the brain functions at the reactive, involuntary, unconscious level. The brain's only options at this operating level are fight/flight/freeze, which manifests with reactions such as low participation, failure to complete homework and other assignments, disruptive behavior, or simply zoning out (and sometimes missing important material because their brains are no longer paying attention).
 
     If your gifted child is losing interest in school, not finishing homework, doing poorly on tests, or coming up with excuses not to go to school, consider the possibility that the lack of challenge is a powerful brain stressor. Start a dialogue with your child to find which subjects are the most "boring" and create extended opportunities for more in depth independent study at home, such as with interactive internet websites where the levels of challenge increase as mastery increases. There is a list of these at the end of this article.
    
     When you have some samples of your child's independent, advanced work, schedule a meeting with his teacher, bringing the work your child has done. Use the meeting to collaborate with the teacher to work with you to raise the bar with appropriate challenge. See if he or she can offer your child more guided independent work as well as evaluating his mastery before a new unit and eliminating the repetitive drill and homework that is the boring, frustrating, turn-off, like throwing darts at that target only two feet away. Unless the negative association with boredom and school is eliminated, it gets more difficult with each passing year for your child to become reconnected with joys of learning.
 
     Your intervention in the school negativity that is the consequence of your child not being engaged at his appropriate achievable challenge level, can make the difference in his attitude, not only about the value of school, but of the joy of lifelong learning.
 
                Interactive Internet Resources (some are free)
 
Dimension M, math games by Tabula Digita such as work to stop a biodigital virus from taking over the world, while learning about functions and solving equations.  http://www.dimensionm.com/  
 
Knowledge Matters, business simulations that allow students to manage sports teams or stores. http://vbc.knowledgematters.com/vbc/sports/about
 
  
Picture memory sequencing match games:
http://www.prongo.com/match/index.html
 
Pattern matching:
http://primarygames.com/patterns/start.htm 
 
Maze puzzles to build patterning skills:
 Mathematical Association of America Digital Classroom Resources: Free online learning activities elementary through middle school levels.
http://Mathdl.maa.org/mathDL/3/  
 
 http://coolmath.com
 
 http://www.shodor.org/interactivate/activities
 
 
Dr. Judy Willis, a neurologist and classroom teacher, combined her neuroscience knowledge and classroom experience to become an authority in the field of learning-centered brain research. She has written five books and gives national and international presentations. Her two books for both parents and educators are How Your Child Learns Best: Brain-Friendly Strategies You Can Use to Ignite Your Child's Learning and Increase School Success published by Sourcebooks for parents of children K-8, and for middle school students, Inspiring Middle School Minds: Gifted, Creative, Challenging, published by Great Potential Press. Website with articles and other books by Dr. Willis: www.RADTeach.com
 
About California Learning Strategies Center
  
We help parents get their advanced and gifted students the education they deserve, inside and outside the classroom. 
 
Check out our website for resources including advice for parents from mathematicians, authors and scientists:  www.LearningStrategiesCenter.com/resources.html.
 
Need help working with your child's school, or finding ways to challenge your child at home?  To learn more about our consulting services, call 805-642-6686, or go to www.LearningStrategiesCenter.com/products.html.