Brain-Based Teaching for All Subjects: Patterns to Promote Learning

(Paperback)

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Description

Brain-Based Teaching for All Subjects describes cognitive instruction that builds on brain reactions in everyday life and explains how teachers lead students to see commonalities in examples of a particular concept. The common traits lead to a visual pattern or model of the concept, with language labels attached. Teachers can refer to the pattern in future classroom work as the topic is studied. Two patterns are especially influential: an event framea sort of empty comic strip that allows analysis of a story, historic event, or even a novel by visually representing actions of a person or character as the plot unfolds; and the culture box, which shows six concentric boxes representing the self or individual in the center, surrounded by other aspects of life, from family to economy. The book contains chapters on basic concepts with examples of visual patterns.

Reviews

Dr. Laster's work emphasizes global and specific understanding as students consider the pieces that make up the whole or provide evidence for the overarching concept...an important part of teacher education programs and professional development programs at a variety of levels. -- Katherine P. Simpson, English professor and assessment coordinator, Lord Fairfax Community College, Middletown, VA
The writing is so engaging that the reader finds it difficult to abandon a chapter before reading the last sentence....The book forces it reader to examine ways that educators teach and, introspectively, also to explore instructional methods that the reader himself/herself would employ to teach a specific subject matter....In sum, [the book] is an interesting, entertaining, and useful resource. The book will certainly prompt readers to consider current and potential teaching methodologies. * Metapsychology Online *
...[A] book of this nature is overdue because brain research on learning and memory has been going on and accumulating for some time, but very few teachers have applied its important findings in their teaching strategies. The reason lies in the fact that no one has really designed a basic approach for teaching those initial concepts. What Madlon T. Laster has done is to translate these important theoretical concepts into practical terms that can be easily understood by teachers, and can be applied creatively in their classrooms without anxiety or difficulty. -- Julinda Abu Nasr, director of the Preschool Laboratory of the Lebanese American University in Beirut, Lebanon

Author Bio

Madlon T. Laster is retired after forty-two-years teaching in Winchester City Schools, Winchester, Virginia, Ohio, Tennessee, Tehran, Iran and Beirut, Lebanon.