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TIPS from 2010 Seminar

Brain research has developed into a knowledge base that can be used to explain and provide solutions for important issues including intelligence, learning, memory, and the development of giftedness.

Understanding Intelligence
In the development of intelligence both nature and nurture are critical. The early years provide the foundation for intelligence and the platforms for building high levels of intelligence. In the growth of intelligence and brain development there is only progression or regression; the brain does not maintain and remain static. The essentials for the growth of intelligence are experiences with integration, connections, association, and feedback.

In The Gifted Brain
Cells have developed more dendritic branches creating more possibilities for synaptic connections. There are more connections among the cells that have been developed. More glial cell production results in more myelination of the axon and faster synaptic exchanges. The result is that the Gifted Brain needs higher levels of complexity, depth, novelty, and acceleration in learning experiences.

Integrative Education: Teaching The Way The Brain Learns: Strategies To Optimize Learning

Develop A Responsive Learning Environment. According to brain research, an enriched environment includes:

• Space for learning
• A wide range and variety of materials for learning
• Stimulation to all of the senses
• Novel challenges appropriate for the child’s stage of development
• Access to ideas
• Social interaction with intellectual peers
• Exposure to a broad range of skills and interests: mental, physical, aesthetic, social, and emotional
• Choices and the opportunity to choose
• Exploration as an active participant in learning
• Opportunities for self-evaluation

Integrate Brain Functions

• Integrate cognitive brain functions, both Visual-Spatial and Linear-Rational Cognition. Differentiate and challenge gifted learners with novelty, complexity, depth, and acceleration.
  Components that optimize cognitive growth – numerous and varied experiences; support for exploration and decision making; challenges in areas of skill and interest; centers; flexible grouping; continuous progress; a variety of materials; availability and challenge to higher levels of knowledge; encouragement of curiosity; complex problems to solve; use of compacting, multidisciplinary teaching, and differentiation.
• Integrate physical/sensing brain functions
  Components that optimize physical growth and sensing – activities for relaxation and tension reduction; room for movement; attractive and interesting spaces and places; and physical encoding.
• Integrate social/emotional brain functions
  Components that optimize social/emotional growth – opportunities for choice and perceived control; use of empowering language and behavior; opportunities to develop alternatives; mistakes seen as learning experiences; group openings and closings; flexible grouping.
• Integrate intuitive brain functions, including Rational, Predictive, and Transformational Intuition
  Components that optimize intuitive growth – expectation of creativity; frequent use of imagination, fantasy, and visualization to support learning; both adults and children valuing their hunches and insights; opportunities to estimate and predict.

Information Regarding Brain Function and Learning

STRESS AND TENSION PREVENT GOOD FLOW THROUGH IN THE CORPUS CALLOSUM AND CREATE BIOCHEMISTRY IN THE LIMBIC AREA THAT TURNS BRAIN CELLS OFF.

RESULTS

• Difficulty learning abstract and higher level concepts
• Limited ability to integrate both hemisphere processes
• Retention is limited

WHAT WE NEED TO DO

• Reduce stress, anxiety, tension, and fear.
• Teach strategies for tension reduction.
• Create an environment that is positive, productive, and encourages uniqueness and diversity of thought.

AS THE AMOUNT OF DENDRITIC BRANCHING INCREASES WITH STIMULATION, THE POTENTIAL FOR INTERCONNECTIONS BETWEEN NEURONS AND THE COMPLEXITY OF THOUGHT INCREASES.

RESULTS

• Unusual capacity for processing information
• Flexible thought processes
• Ability to synthesize comprehensively
• Heightened capacity for seeing unusual and diverse relationships and overall gestalts.
• Ability to generate original ideas and solutions
• Early ability to use and form conceptual frameworks

WHAT WE NEED TO DO

• Use all areas of brain functions in the learning process (i.e., physical, emotional, cognitive, and intuitive).
• Present a large variety of ideas at many levels, from a wide range of disciplines and eras.
• Provide instruction in the skills and structures needed for independent research.
• Use integrated curriculum with themes and interdisciplinary content focused on relationships and connections.
• Present learning from a variety of perspectives.
• Encourage original applications of knowledge and understandings, including hypothesizing and predicting.

AS GLIAL CELL PRODUCTION INCREASES THE NEURAL CELL IS BETTER NOURISHED AND SUPPORTED

RESULTS

• Unusually varied interests
• Heightened self-awareness accompanied by feelings of uniqueness or difference
• Early development of an inner locus of control and satisfaction

WHAT WE NEED TO DO

• Create a safe learning environment, rich and varied in stimulation.
• Provide choice throughout the curriculum and encourage products that challenge existing ideas, produce new ideas, and use a variety of techniques, materials, and forms.
• Encourage self-initiated exploring, observing, questioning, feeling, translating, inferring, and predicting.
• Study problems as opportunities for learning and encourage novel solutions.
• Value the unusual and divergent
• Provide inquiry and exploration into disparate and incongruent patterns of experience that lead to new, original, and reorganized knowledge.
• Encourage original interpretations or restatements of existing information, risk taking, collaboration, and multiple solutions.

THE MYELINATION OF THE AXON IS INCREASED AND THE FLOW OF ENERGY WITHIN AND BETWEEN CELLS BECOMES STRONGER AND MORE FREQUENT

RESULTS

• Early development of an unusual degree of curiosity
• Early ability to delay closure
• Early ability to think in different patterns, in alternatives, and in abstract terms
• Advanced cognitive and affective capacity for conceptualizing and solving societal problems
• Early ability to sense consequences, make generalizations, and visualize solutions

WHAT WE NEED TO DO

• Provide a range of materials, including levels of difficulty and complexity, in a variety of disciplines.
• Arrange for mentors, using specialized skills and knowledge from community members.
• Compare past, present, and future events related to the study topic
• Instruct from the concrete to abstract, familiar to unfamiliar, known to unknown
• Examine topics by determining facts, concepts, generalizations, principles, and theories related to them.
• Teach the terms/language of a variety of disciplines
• Use dissonant events to solve problems

AS THE NUMBERS OF SYNAPSE AND THE SIZE OF THE SYNAPTIC CONTACTS INCREASE, COMMUNICATION WITHIN THE SYSTEM BECOMES FASTER PACED AND MORE COMPLEX.

RESULTS

• Accelerated pace of thought and learning
• Advanced comprehension
• High level of language development and verbal ability
• Extraordinary quantity of information and unusual retentiveness
• High level of visual and spatial ability

WHAT WE NEED TO DO

• Assess the student’s level of knowledge and skill and document content that has already been learned; teach what is not known.
• Make it possible to accomplish a range of learning in a shorter span of time by use of learning packages, peer tutoring, centers, and folders.
• Provide a wide range of levels of materials and resources
• Provide self-paced instruction with the use of mentors or tutors, individual contracts, and/or independent study
• Use flexible grouping based on needs and interests

THE RETICULAR FORMATION, LIMBIC SYSTEM AND THALAMUS ACTIVELY SELECT STIMULI AND RESPOND POSITIVELY TO NOVELTY, THE UNEXPECTED, AND TO DISCREPANT INFORMATION

RESULTS

• Attention and concentration rely on the impact the environment on the brain
• Repetition of activities creates automatic responses without thought, boredom turns the thought processes off in the cortex

WHAT WE NEED TO DO

• Develop a responsive learning environment that has multiple levels of materials, allows flexibility, and encourages self-direction
• Use novelty, surprise, and dissonant events in learning experiences
• Reduce drill and repetitive activities especially when teaching complex and abstract thought processes

AS THE BRAIN BECOMES MORE EFFECTIVE AND MORE EFFICIENT, MORE USE IS MADE OF THE ACTIVITY OF THE PREFRONTAL CORTEX OF THE BRAIN

RESULTS

• More future planning
• Higher degree of insightful thinking
• Increased use of intuitive experiences
• An increased level of creativity is used

WHAT WE NEED TO DO

• Model the valuing and use of intuition
• Provide experiences in which the child can demonstrate evidence of intuitive processing
• Use imagery, fantasy, and visualization to support the learning experience
• Use “what if” and open-ended, future thinking strategies
• Encourage the use of creative thinking

THE BRAIN ORGANIZES BY USING PATTERNS AND INTEGRATES ALL AREAS OF BRAIN FUNCTION FOR OPTIMAL EFFICIENCY AND RETENTION

RESULTS

Students taught using the integration of brain functions
• are more creative, try more unusual solutions, and engage in more alternative and higher-level cognitive activities
• initiate more learning activities
• are more positive and enthusiastic about their learning and more highly motivated
• are more independent and responsible
• understand more deeply and retain information and concepts more effectively

WHAT WE NEED TO DO

• Use learning strategies that include use of all senses and integrates all areas of brain function, including the physical, the emotional/social, the intuitive, and the cognitive, both the linear and the spatial modes

Caution: In this electronic world children are in danger of losing their sense of three dimensionality and their ability to image, fantasize, and create. Be sure that a part of their time is engaged in real world activities and in meaningful engagement and face-to-face exchanges with family and friends.

Essential Provisions for All Gifted Programs

• A Responsive Learning Environment
• Differentiation
• Flexible grouping
• Integrative education
• Continuous progress
• Intellectual peer interaction
• Continuity
• Teachers with specialized education in working with gifted learners

A Partial List of References

Brizendine, L. (2006). The female brain. New York: Morgan Road Books.

Clark, B. (2008). Growing Up Gifted (7th ed.) Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, Merrill-Prentice Hall.

Diamond, M., & Hopson, J. (1998). Magic trees of the mind. New York: Dutton.

Edelman, G. M. (2004). Wider that the sky: The phenomenal gift of consciousness. New Haven, CN: Yale University Press.

Hawkins, J., & Blakeslee, S. (2004). On intelligence. New York: Times Books/Henry Holt.

Kandel, E. R. (2006). In search of memory: The emergence of a new science of mind. New York: W. W. Norton.

LeDoux, J. (2003). Synaptic self: How our brains become who we are. New York: Penguin Books.

Restak, R. (2003). The new brain: How the modern age is rewiring your mind. Rodale.com

Siegel, D. J. (1999). The developing mind. New York: Guilford.

Model what you want children to learn

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TIPS from 2007 Seminar

Brain research has developed into a knowledge base that can be used to explain and provide solutions for important issues including intelligence, learning and memory, the development of giftedness, gender differences, and underrepresentation of some cultures in the gifted population.

Key Points for understanding and applying brain research in your home:

• Intelligence is dynamic in development – both nature and nurture are critical.
• Neuroplasticity is available throughout life.
• Essentials for the growth of intelligence – Experience, integration, association, and feedback.
• Integration of brain functions develops understanding and retention.
• Memory requires change in the cell body – powerful experiences change short-term to long-term memory and create learning.
• Movement supplies oxygen to the brain and allows efficiency in learning.
• Belief is powerful; it affects all learning.
• There are important differences in the development of the brain by gender.
• The early years provide the foundation for intelligence.
• Memory requires change in the neural cell body, changes short-term to long-term memory, and creates learning.
• The culture of poverty critically affects brain development, especially during early learning. It also creates possible underrepresentation of some populations.
• In the growth of intelligence and brain development there is only progression or regression; the brain does not remain static or simply maintain.

According to brain research, an enriched environment includes:

• Space for learning
• A wide range and variety of materials for learning
• Stimulation to all of the senses
• Novel challenges appropriate for the child’s stage of development
• Access to ideas
• Social interaction with intellectual peers
• Exposure to a broad range of skills and interests: mental, physical, aesthetic, social, and emotional
• Choices and the opportunity to choose
• Exploration that engages the learner as an active participant in the learning process.
• Opportunities for self-evaluation
• For cognitive growth your child needs – numerous and varied experiences, support for exploration and decision making, challenges in areas of skill and interest, a variety of materials, availability to higher levels of knowledge, encouragement of curiosity, and problems to solve.
• For affective growth your child needs – choice & perceived control, opportunities to develop alternatives, mistakes to be seen as learning experiences, empowering language, and a safe place to be heard.
• For physical growth– relaxation, ways to reduce tension, room for movement, attractive and interesting spaces and places.
• For intuitive growth your child needs – expectation of and opportunities for creativity, frequent use of imagination, fantasy, and visualization to support learning, and opportunities to estimate and predict, and to know and be with both adults and children who value their hunches and insight.

Topics explored during the Seminar provided these tips:
The adolescent years
Teens can cry, laugh, or get angry all in a short time. They can love and hate things and people at the same time. These mood swings are just as baffling for the teen as for the family. With gifted youngsters their high level of sensitivity can make this normal process even more disruptive and their perfectionist tendencies make this period more extreme. Parents can:

• Discuss feelings and emotions, especially mood swings, with their teens as a natural, but sometimes hard to handle, brain/body process.
• Read up on the specifics of these changes and how they affect the emotions and share the information with their teen. Be specific and supportive.
• Praise them often for things that go right. Help them establish supportive routines to provide stability in their lives.
• Try not to worry the small things. Listen with acceptance of your teen and a non-judgmental attitude of what is said even when you do not agree.
• Look at consequences with the youngster. Allow alternatives and choice.
• Celebrate successes.

Multitasking
Studies show that doing more than one thing at a time or switching back and forth from one task to another involves time-consuming alterations in brain processing that reduce our effectiveness at accomplishing either one. These shifts have been shown to decrease rather than increase efficiency with both time and energy becoming depleted.

• Multi-tasking, so valued by our children, and even seen as necessary by many adults, actually results in inefficient shifts in our attention. Brain research has shown that actually our brain can work on only one thing at a time. It is designed to work most efficiently when it works on a single task and for sustained rather than intermittent and alternating periods of time.
• Multi-tasking or interrupting our concentration decreases our efficiency and our ACCURACY. Memory is affected and the important synthesis and connections the brain can so effectively create are lost.

The Gifted Brain
The gifted brain is the result of a dynamic, stimulating interactive process that leads to high levels of intelligence and quantitative and qualitative differences in performance. How giftedness is expressed depends both on the genetic patterns of the individual and on the experiences provided by that individual’s environment.

• Children are not born gifted, but they are born with a unique and nearly unlimited potential.
• There are conditions needed to build the strong, integrated, flexible, complex brain we will call gifted.
  • a variety of quality experiences from our early beginnings as the neural patterns and sequences are being formed.
  • development of the concepts of integration, choice, patterns, and sequences starting with a child’s early experiences.
  • feedback throughout the acquisition of knowledge and skills.
  • enrichment of the environment and the experiences that the environment provides so that the growth of intelligence is facilitated and expanded rather than limited and inhibited.

The qualities found in a gifted brain are:

• more complex thought because of the larger number of dendrites the cells have developed as a result of stimulation
• thinking in more depth because of the biological changes in the cell body from continuing stimulation
• faster and more powerful thought processes due to more glial cell production resulting in increased myelination of the axon sheath resulting in faster synaptic exchanges.
• all of these processes are dynamic and require stimulation at the level of the child’s development.
• If there is not progress, there is regress; it is not possible for a brain to just maintain function
• Optimal learning and intellectual development requires that the environment be viewed as a support for learning including the physical environment, social-emotional environment and the instructional environment.

For further reading on this area of inquiry and research a few suggestions are:

Brizendine, L. (2006). The female brain. New York: Morgan Road Books.

Clark, B. (2008). Growing up gifted (7th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill/Prentice Hall/ Pearson.

Diamond, M., & Hopson, J. (1998). Magic trees of the mind. New York: Dutton.

Edelman, G. M.(2004). Wider that the sky: The phenomenal gift of consciousness. New Haven, CN: Yale University Press.

Hawkins, J., & Blakeslee, S. (2004). On intelligence. New York: Times Books/Henry Holt.

Kandel, E. R. (2006). In search of memory: The emergence of a new science of mind. New York: W. W. Norton.

LeDoux, J. (2003). Synaptic self: How our brains become who we are. New York: Penguin Books.

Restak, R. (2003). The new brain: How the modern age is rewiring your mind. Rodale.com

Permission Statement

This article is provided as a service of the Davidson Institute for Talent Development, a 501(c)3 nonprofit dedicated to supporting profoundly gifted young people 18 and under. To learn more about the Davidson Institute’s programs, please visit www.DavidsonGifted.org.