Cognitive skills

Educational neuroscience: where are we?

scameron — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 16:00:07 +0000

The rise of educational neuroscience

An innovative approach to support pupils with profound or complex needs

sara — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 12:28:26 +0100

Supporting pupils with profound or complex needs

Edited by Mick Archer

This resource describes the Shared Goals Project, an approach implemented by the therapy team at St Nicholas School in Canterbury, to support pupils with profound or complex needs.

Cognitive acceleration

jlee — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:32 +0100

There are some ideas in education which have real ‘legs’ – they just go on running as a hailstorm of fashions, fads, strategies, and initiatives are pelted at schools by well-meaning governments, gurus, and less well-meaning snake oil salesmen. Examples include learning by enquiry, constructivism (students need to take an active role in their learning), the use of well-distributed open questioning, and cognitive acceleration.

Child abuse and its effect on brain development

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:09 +0100

I have worked with many children and adults who have experienced abuse in childhood and have come to be fascinated by the way that survivors manage to carry on leading often very successful lives despite traumatic experiences.

Vygotsky and the child apprentice

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:08 +0100

Lev S. Vygotsky taught at the Institute of Psychology in Moscow for ten years until his death in 1938. Since then his ideas have been worked into a coherent theory which focuses on on three areas.

Piaget and the development of intelligence

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:06 +0100

The Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget (1896-1980) researched the development of intelligence in children. Although many of his theories have been contested by subsequent psychologists, they have strongly influenced educational practice for nearly a hundred years.

Piaget’s theory of cognitive development

Activities to develop visual discrimination skills

jlee — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:19:57 +0100

Pupils who have difficulties in this area may:

Activities to develop visual memory

jlee — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:19:57 +0100

Pupils who have difficulties in this area may:

Activities to develop auditory memory

jlee — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:19:57 +0100

Pupils who have difficulties in this area may have:

Activities to develop semantic knowledge

jlee — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:19:57 +0100

Semantics refers to the meanings of words and how they relate to each other. This may be affected by poor auditory memory skills and can have serious implications for pupils in the classroom. If they cannot retain an understanding of the mearning of new vocabulary, they will have difficulty understanding new concepts and ideas. This will also affect their ability to express their own ideas.

Pupils with difficulties in this area may have:

Activities to develop auditory discrimination skills

jlee — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:19:56 +0100

Pupils who have difficulties in this area may have:

Activities to develop and improve listening skills and attention

jlee — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:19:56 +0100

Pupils with listening and attention difficulties are generally experiencing one of two problems. Either they cannot screen out what is unimportant from what they hear and so listen to everything, or they may not be very skilful at controlling attention and therefore miss large chunks of information.

Activities to develop word finding skills

jlee — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:19:56 +0100

Some pupils have difficulty in recalling the right word when they need to use it. They often have to describe the word rather than naming it, eg. 'It's hot. You make tea. You put water in it.' (kettle). This may be caused by difficulties associating an abstract label with a concrete object. The pupil may be able to describe the features of something, but not be able to 'find' the correct word in their memory bank.

Pupils who have difficulties in this area may have:

Activities to develop verbal comprehension

jlee — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:19:49 +0100

Pupils who have difficulty in this area may have:

NLP - understanding your students

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:19:38 +0100

But how much of that is down to them, 'that's just how they are', and how much of it is influenced by us? Is there anything we could do differently that would affect the 'basic nature' of our students? How might NLP help?