What do I know about the teenage brain?
Answer True or False
1. The brain is largely a finished product by age 12.
2. During adolescence, the brain is becoming more efficient,
but it is also losing some of its potential for learning.
3. The teen brain responds to stimuli differently than the
adult brain.
4. Hormonal changes are responsible for teens’ emotional
outbursts.
5. We notice depression and mental illnesses more during
the teen years because teens are more dramatic.
6. The teen brain reacts in the same way to
emotional threat as it does to physical
threat.
7. The average teen needs more than 9
hours of sleep every night.
8. The reason teens struggle to get up in
the morning is because they don’t go to
bed until late at night.
9 . The teen brain should stop every 10 - 15
minutes to process new information.
10. There are no physical differences
between kids of today and yesterday;
only their attitudes have changed.
Learning
Is
Connecting
How are teen brains
different?
Neural Pruning
• Starts in the womb when neurons over
populate
• Neural pruning ends around age 3
• Like pruning a tree; the strong survive
• Scientists see this happening again
around 11
• More neural pruning…over half by age 15
Use it or lose it!
Stop!
• Think of a teen you know.
• What does he/she spend most of their
time doing…reading, writing, studying,
playing an instrument, playing a sport,
listening to music, working, TV,
movies, video games?
• How are they wired?
What fires together wires
together.
Neural Pruning
If neurons are not used at appropriate times during brain
development, their ability to make connections dies.
Stages of Brain Development Parallels Piaget’s Stages
Piaget’s Four Stages of Child
Development
Sensorimotor (birth-2years)
Four Stages of Brain Growth
Pre-operational (ages 2-7)
Language Acquisition
Concrete Operations (ages 7-11)
Manipulate thoughts and ideas
Formal Operations (ages 11-15)
Higher-order thinking
Large motor and visual system
Only 50% of the adult population reaches the highest level of thinking.
What’s happening with teens’
emotions?
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During puberty, hormones are released
Impacts serotonin and dopamine levels
Information is processed differently
Rely on amygdala rather than frontal lobes
React, don’t process
An appetite for thrills
Fewer frontal lobe functions
-reasoning, motivation, planning,
goal setting…
Too much emotion…
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Produces adrenaline
Produces cortisol-stress hormone
Energy is re-directed—fight or flight
Difficult to think and remember
Brain can not differentiate between
emotional and physical danger
• If rejected, takes 32x before you feel
safe
What emotion is this woman
expressing?
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100 % of adults identified shock
Fewer than 50% teens saw shock
Teens saw confusion, anger or fear
Teens often see hostility where there is
none
• Teens read visual cues differently
• Boys were more impulsive
The teen brain responds
differently to the outside world.
Teens used less of the prefrontal region
while more emotional regions were
activated
Studies by Yurgelun-Todd, Director of
Neuropsychology and Cognitive Neuroimaging,
Belmont, Mass.
Stop!
Write a 1 to 2 sentence summary of what
you’ve learned. Use any 4 of these 6 words:
adolescent
dendrite
neural pruning
dopamine
amygdala
frontal lobe
Share with your neighbor
During adolescence mental
illness can surface…
• In the 10th grade, 64% of boys and 89% of
girls report being concerned about a friend
who is depressed.
• Higher percentage teens used drugs and
alcohol- irregular Dopamine levels
• Schizophrenia & Bipolar
Disorder is thought to be
triggered during adolescence
More Vulnerable to Addiction
• Brains tuned to be responsive to
everything in their environment—why they
learn easily
• Addiction is essentially a “form of learning”
• Addiction happens faster and stronger
• A teenager who smokes pot will show
cognitive deficits days later
• An adult returns to cognitive baseline
much faster
Teen Drinking May Cause
Irreversible Brain Damage
• Compared brains of heavy drinking teems with
those who don’t
• Damaged nerve tissue/dings in white matter
• Affects attentions span in boys
• Comprehension and interpret visual information
in girls
• Seem to have higher tolerance for immediate
negative effects of binge drinking-headaches
and nausea
• Abnormal functioning in hippocampus
Dumb Decisions!
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Risk assessment studies
When will you run a yellow light?
Teens, when alone, reacted as adults
Teens, when with peers, showed risky
behavior
• Immature nucleus accumbens-motivation
• Prone to engaging in behaviors with either
high excitement or low effort factor
• Emphasize immediate payoff!
We need our sleep...
• Our brains review and sort material
while sleeping
• Information is stored and discarded
• Rats reconstructed their days in their dreams
• Studies have shown sleepers perform better
• Teens need 9.25 hours of sleep; most get 7.5
• Teens Melatonin levels differ
How does the teen brain learn
best?
• Scientists saw more activity in the
Cerebellum—physical coordination
• Use movement
• Use emotion
• Take brain breaks
• 20 minute maximum attention span
• Review 10, 24 and 7
• Pause, reflect, discuss, connect…
Highly Effective Strategies
for Today’s Students:
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Arguing/Defending Position
Project-based learning
Novelty
Technology incorporation
Self-assessment in relation to goal
Collaboration
CONSTRUCTIVISM
Traditional Learning
Constructivist Learning
• Part to whole, emphasize skills
• Whole to part, emph. concepts
• Strict adherence to curriculum
• Pursue student questions
• Rely on textbooks, workbooks
• Rely on prim. sources, manip.
• Students are “blank slates”
• Students are thinkers
• Teachers disseminate info
• Teachers mediate, interact
• Teachers seek correct answer to
validate learning
• Teachers seek students’
knowledge to make decisions
• Assessment/Teaching separate
• Assessment/Teaching are
interwoven
Why can’t they do it?
• Neural connections are developed through
environment and stimulus
• Experiences create neural pathways that
determine how we will learn
We are all born with a brain,
But the mind is developed.
How Have They Changed?
Compare how today’s children play to
children’s play 20 years or more ago.
How do your lists differ?
What impact do these differences have on the
way our students learn?
How can we as educators address these changes?
How Are Today’s Kids Different?
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Change in diet
Drug and medication use
Less crawl-time and physical activity
Social/economic stability—1960, 90% unwed mothers
gave up their child/today, 90% keep them
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School budget cuts—music, drama, art, PE
Threat, stress, violence
Television and video games
Less time in creative play
Less interaction with adults/reading/discussion
Writer, Mark Bauerlein, speaking about today’s students
surfing the Internet:
“Their choices are never limited, and the initial frustrations
of richer experiences send them elsewhere within
seconds. With so much abundance, variety, and speed,
users key in to exactly what they already want.
Companionship is only a click away….Why undergo the
labor of revising values, why face an incongruent outlook,
why cope with disconfirming evidence, why expand the
sensibility…when you can find ample sustenance for
present interests? Dense content, articulate diction and
artistic images are too much....They remind them of their
deficiencies, and who wants that? Confirmation soothes,
rejections hurts. Great art is tough, mass art is easy.
Dense arguments require concentration, adolescent
visuals hit home instantly. “
Stop!
• Find the Reaction Guide you
completed at the beginning of
this session.
• Check your answers.
• Do you have any questions?
Ticket Out the Door
Ideas that “struck” you
Questions you still have
Thoughts, connections or suggestions