Chapter 3 Brain Research Applied to Middle School

This chapter of Meet in the Middle really connects to my groups book talk book of A Whole New Mind. It has a lot to do with the brain, and how we can format it to get it’s best memorization. Memory is a coherent process, and an easy tool that can be used in the classroom. In this chapter Wormeli gives some good ways to help students remember things from class discussion. He talks about a triad response, where you call on one person, and then you ask another to give a response to their classmates answer, and then a third classmate is able to respond, and the original student is able to have the last word on what was said based off his response. This causes students to not just shut off their brains when someone else in their class is responding, so they have to listen in case they might be asked to respond to their classmates answer or input. Wormeli continues that we remember things by a process called chunking. This is something I have already heard of, I believe it was in practicum. He also says a good way to get students to remember something is to add emotions to it. He says that “students respond well to emotional cues and retain information as a result”. The one thing that I found very interesting about this chapter was how important staying hydrated is for the brain and learning. It makes sense, but at the same time it’s not something that you think about.