A Roadmap for Teachers

• Create an emotionally and physically safe and comfortable learning environment.
• Make the content relevant and meaningful to students.
• Present the new information linked to prior knowledge or skills.
• Identify the immediate relevance and the possible future use of the lesson content.
• Thematic instruction is a powerful tool to bind the subject matters together and to find how they relate to each other.
• Make learning fun and interesting. Use interesting instructional strategies that make the skills so interesting that they can’t help but learn it;
• Provide students with a lot of alternatives or choices in their learning.
• Integrate the skills in the learning process. Make use of different modalities (visual, kinesthetic and auditory) at each lesson.
• Use hands-on learning, active learning in your lessons. It always arouses interest and joy.
• Use discovery learning. Develop problem-solving skills. Donot give them the answers, rather provide them with questions, which makes them find their own answers and construct their meanings.
• Infuse some surprise, humor or spontaneity into the learning. Use clothes, songs, games, puppets or props to get their attention.
• Let them speak, discuss and share their ideas.
• Try to spark interest and confidence by giving positive and inspiring suggestions with your words, intonation of your voice, your body language and your attitude.
• Present the information into meaningful chunks so as to make the information useful and manageable to remember.
• Provide as many real-life, authentic experiences as possible to minimize the experiential differences between students. Examples may include field trips and experiential learning by using hands-on activities, simulations, websites, models, experiments and guest speakers.
• Provide high-volume input for the students because such an environment makes the brain’s cortex more fully functional. The cortex manages higher-level, more meaningful thinking processes including problem-solving, creativity, critical thinking, analysis, synthesis and decision making.
• When some control and choices are provided for students, the content relevance is increased, their interest is heightened, stress is reduced, learning styles and ability levels are better accounted for, and both motivation and effort are enhanced.
• The more ways we present information, the more senses are involved, the more chances we give our students to understand and remember the material.
• Each student should experience a sense of success through their dominant intelligences and should be encouraged to strengthen their weaker intelligences in a multi-sensory, rich stimulating learning environment.
• Brain-compatible assessments should be learner-centered , performance and curriculum-based. These assessmens may be formal or informal. Assessment should match the nature of instruction process. If the brain-based instruction involves active participation, emotional engagement, stimulation, activities addressing to senses and different intelligences and integration of music and movement into the curriculum and application of what has been learned, that is, skills and knowledge, then the assessment should be designed accordingly.
  
  Essays, products, performances, oral presentations, portfolios and demonstrations can be given as examples for such assessments.