Stage One Workshops

Challenge

Success Through Self-Awareness

My Interests

Skill Building: Professional Communication

Watch Me Learn

Expression

Watch Me Learn

Experience

Launching the learning and making connections to past knowledge.

Time needed for this section: 15 minutes.

Say: “Typically you are interested in things that you are good at. It feels good to be successful. We naturally want to be successful. Therefore, in addition to knowing what you are interested in, you should know what you are naturally talented at. One of the talents that we all have is a learning style. We can group people into categories based on these learning styles. There are also suggestions to help you be more successful once you know your learning style. To try this out we are first going to start with a game to test our memories. I am going to pass out a piece of paper to each of you that has directions on it. You will read those directions to yourself and then follow them.” **Note, it is very important that students are silent while reading the directions as talking will reveal that the directions are different and will ruin the activity. Pass out the Visual Memory directions to half the class and the Auditory Memory directions to the other half of the class (copied on different color paper if possible). Ask students to read the directions and when finished turn their papers over.

When all students have their paper’s turned over, read this list of words to students while stating the numbers in order. (Example: Say, “one, sun…two eyes…”). Read slowly so students have time to think about the words. Read the list only once. When finished set a timer for one minute. The room should be completely silent during that time.

After the minute has passed ask students to turn their directions paper over and write down as many words as they can remember, in order. Next, read the list aloud again and have students give themselves points for each one they got correct. Typically students get 4-5 correct out of the 15.

Lead a discussion about what they did to remember the list. Expected student responses:

• I said the words over and over in my head (auditory).

• I tried to picture the words as you said them (visual).

• I did really well at this activity because I came up with relationships for the numbers and the words. I know that there is one sun and twelve eggs in a dozen. **Note: this student didn’t follow the directions. Ask, “Why did you do that? What did your directions say?” This can be a good way to have students discover that their directions were different.

If needed, help students make the discovery that their directions were different. There are different ways to remember and learn things. We will be most successful if we use a little bit of all of the ways. Ask students, “What if I told you I could teach you how to grow your brain and remember this list of words all in order in 5 minutes?”

Discover

Discover something new.

Time needed for this section: 25 minutes.

Pass out this quick Learning Style Inventory. Have students write their results on their Reflection Document.

All of our brains are different. We need to take our strengths and weaknesses, understand them, and work to improve ourselves. This helps our brains grow. Continuing to learn and challenge yourself keeps your brain healthy.

Students should read and annotate the article You Can Grow Your Brain. Some suggestions for annotations are:

• Write a one sentence summary for every couple of paragraphs

• Ask 2-3 questions per page

• Underline new or unusual vocabulary

Have students answer the following questions on their Reflection Document.

• What is something that I am already good at?

• What is something that I currently find difficult that I can learn to help me grow my brain?

Define

Seeing the new discovering in action.

Time needed for this section: 10-15 minutes.

Say: “Let’s practice our new discovery in action and grow our brains! In our last activity we learned our strongest learning styles, but we also learned the importance of trying new things, especially those that are difficult for us. To complete our experiment of learning that list of 15 words in order we are going to use all three learning styles together.”

Lead the group through the memorization strategies on Watch Me Grow Memory Activity teacher guide.

After students have practiced all of the strategies and learned the list of words set the timer for one minute for them to sit silently without practicing to mimic when they heard the list of words the first time. When the timer goes off, have students return to their Visual Memory or Auditory Memory directions sheets and fill out the second set of numbered 1-15 with all of the words. Expect most, if not all students, to remember the entire list in order.

Reflect

Applying the information to real life.

Time needed for this section: 5 minutes.

Have students review the tips for their learning style and the other learning styles on their Reflection Document by highlighting or underlining the strategies that they are interesting in trying.

Optional Extension Activity: Group students by learning style and have them develop their own list of strategies they feel like are effective using the provided list as inspiration. Have students present their ideas to the class and/or publish these to a poster that can be hung in the classroom as a reminder.