HOW DO WE LEARN? 25 THINGS THAT ARE IMMENSELY HELPFUL TO KNOW WHEN TEACHING ANYONE ANYTHING! SECRETS FROM BEHIND THE VEIL OF EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 1.LODGING When a mountain climber scales El Capitan in Yosemite, it’s typically done in two days. After he climbs about 1500 feet, the climber will rest for the night in a hammock which is fastened to metal stakes called pitons that are anchored into cracks in the rock. When you visit Yosemite, you can often see the climbers as little lights on the massive cliff in the darkness of night . The suspended climbers are having a great time eating, reading and enjoying the view…all because their equipment is connected to pitons which are lodged ​
firmly​
​
in the rock. To have something “lodged” is our word to have something locked in the mind firmly. We all have 10 times 10 lodged, but few have 25 times 25 lodged. A person may have over­learned a poem, script, or parts of the Constitution when a child and it can still be fresh–lodged– 30 years later. One of the great problems with education today is that many of the right things are not lodged and even if something very important is covered, it will not be lodged enough. A couple years down the road it can be so far gone that is is like the child never heard it once. Lodging the right things and lodging them well can make a phenomenal difference in the value of an education. In each academic subject, having the right things firmly lodged can make a significant difference. For instance, not having the short ‘e’ sound clearly set apart from the short ‘i’ sound can cause innumerable problems for a beginning reader. This lack of having just these two vowels clearly distinguished can set a child back slowly over the four years from kindergarten to 3rd grade so much that he eventually has fallen a full year behind what he could have attained by the age of nine. Not having the ALL the math facts of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division perfectly lodged can easily set a child back 1­2 years in math from where he could have been by the end of 6th grade. In Science, endless terminology is required to be memorized through the years of school for tests, but very little good Science vocabulary is truly lodged permanently and, more importantly, few significant and great concepts are lodged. 2.FLUID If I say “6 times 7”, can you tell me the answer in less than 2 seconds? To have an answer fluid, a child must know the answer ​
immediately​
. When I test children one­on­one in math, I note which math facts there is a delay in. Often a delay happens because they are counting in their minds to get the answers (or a host of other interesting things). Sometimes to get 8x8, a child will count the multiples of 8 to get to 64. While the feat is commendable, having to do this every time you are faced with 8x8 is fatiguing to the mind…and painfully slow. If a child is doing this kind of hoopla to say, ten of his addition and multiplication problems, it can cause BRAIN FREEZE when a teacher or parent is showing demo problems. The child can stop tracking with the problem that is being discussed and get frustrated, discouraged or afraid as their brain stops in its tracks. This can sabotage hundreds of good lessons teachers or parents give their children in math and other areas. If a child is fluid in all his math facts, it makes all the rest of math instruction amazingly productive. Interestingly, many very popular math programs often don’t adequately deal with this problem. They can address the problem that children have holes in their math knowledge–but don’t adequately fix the most significant problem –not being fluid in the math facts that they aren’t fluid in. And when the programs do address this problem, their solutions are often painfully rote­based and most of the time ineffective. If this is the case, it is like continually remediating a child with poor eyesight who can’t see the chalkboard instead of getting him a good pair of glasses. Get the glasses and he won’t miss stuff constantly. This applies especially to Science. Children can be required to read material that is unnecessarily riddled with complex Scientific vocabulary. While it may look impressive that the child is tackling such a big and complex book, the learning from the book may be dreadfully slow, painful, ineffective and be creating a strong distaste for Science rather than a love for it. And all the endless hours of trying to lock in the impressive text and vocabulary is often met by a big zero of real Science understanding at the time of High School graduation. Remember that the US is at the very bottom of the list in the industrialized nations in Science despite all its impressive material. Impressive shouldn’t be the goal. Real teaching should be. And real teaching can be loads of fun and exceedingly creative. 3.BRAIN FREEZE See above. If parents learn about brain freeze, it helps them become more gentle and helpful teachers and tutors of their children. My dad, who eventually became a principal and superintendent of schools, could not read until his second year of college. He faked it all the way through. Why couldn’t he read? He became a very confident semi­pro athlete, but when he was still a little guy in second grade, a teacher terrified him by her ranting and criticisms because he didn’t get her type of reading instruction. So much so that he shut down for a decade whenever attempting to read. He was a man’s man and could do all sorts of great things but when it came to reading there was a secret shut­down switch in him that no one knew but him. How many other competent students have secret handicaps like he did? Brain freeze can happen to all of us if we don’t have certain skills or vocabulary lodged. This can be a problem even if only a few words have not been lodged. When a professor begins throwing them around, we can shut down because we can’t process the sentences he is using because we are lacking the knowledge of just a couple words. An very smart engineer friend of mine had trouble with a few professors in his university because they would freely refer to complex differential equations and he didn’t have those fully lodged. He’d get Brain Freeze in their classes because he couldn’t track fast enough with their instruction. Even big people get brain freeze. 4.WIRING THE BRAIN There’s a whole lot we don’t understand about memory, so let me give an example that helps to understand many things about how we learn. Imagine a child is learning to spell the word sheriff. He may write it 50 times to lodge it and succeed. (At least it seems that way.) What’s happening neurologically? The neurons that connect the visual memory of the letters s­h­e­r­i­f­f have little microtubules in them. When we write the word 50 times, we are somehow affecting the microtubules in the neurons connecting those” letters” to create the net effect that can be visualized as having grown 50 wires between the letters. If we do the reps enough times (painful), the spelling becomes lodged. See these next few definitions for some critical amplifications of this principle. 5.WRONG WIRING If a child writes the word “sheriff” the same amount of times as “sherrif”, his mind will take pictures of it each time and wire it wrong. The child may have as many incorrect wires in long term memory storage as he does correct wiring. This can be a bear to correct if a parent or teacher doesn’t have a good technique for correcting wrong wiring. An easy way to fix this specific problem is to say the words,”SHE—RIFF.” After a few reps, this auditory cue can nail it…The child now has a way lodged to escape his wrong wiring. Sometimes what is called dyslexia is caused by a child’s free­spirited approach to many things. The child may simply have a heyday wrong wiring himself in area after area and have all kinds of messed up wiring. Sometimes using great techniques can bring supposed and truly dyslexic kids out of the woods in many ways. An important note: If Suzie has 7x8 strong wired to 54,48,53 (and so on), a parent can drill in the correct answer by rote by saying it 200 times over a month and think the problem is licked…and it might be temporarily. However, as the child moves on in the months following her intensive rewiring, she can slowly begin to slide back to her wrong wiring that was firmly stuck in place in long term memory. After 6 months, she may no longer know what the answer is. One day it might be 56, another it may be 53 and so on. The problem is that because there was no good technique to firmly lodge the correct answer in place, over time severely messed up long­term memory slowly wins the battle. In time, all the answers begin to again carry equal weight and the child rolls back to where he or she began...and Dad and Mom can be quite frustrated. A trick or a system can give the child a way to get to the answer and keep the right wiring in place. For example, with this problem, merely showing that in 56=7x8–the numbers flow when the answer is put in front–5,6,7,8– is enough to lick the problem.(This is what I call a “trick” solution not a “system” solution.) HOWEVER ,THE BEST SOLUTION TO THIS SITUATION IS TO GET THE RIGHT ANSWER IN AT FIRST SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO DEAL WITH THE WRONG WIRING HEADACHE. A NOTE ABOUT WRONG WIRING IN SCIENCE Vocabulary can become a bear to kids if it not tied to things that help the child remember what the definition of words are. For instance, children will often confuse mitosis–division of cells to multiply them– and meiosis–the dividing of a cells DNA to create a cell that can be fertilized. These can easily become wrong wired. A simple way to nail which is which despite wrong wiring is to note that mitosis sounds a whole lot like “my toes’s”. So imagine that as you look down at your bare feet, the little toe begins to multiply itself and you quickly gain five little toes extra. Scary!, but it’ll do the trick. Meiosis sounds like “my O’s”. Imagine yourself with a big cheerio that you break in half. That’s all you need. The cheerio splitting is a visual representation of the DNA halving in cells. This little memory mnemonic can lodge this so well that after a few reviews, in 30 years it will still be in there strong. 6.SELF WIRING This is a weird one. If I say the word sheriff like shuriff or shariff or shiriff, you will still know what I am saying. It’s a BIG, BIG DEAL to understand why. When we hear, smell, or see something, our brain AUTOMATICALLY goes into search mode to connect it to previous information. This is why a person can go to a high school graduation and after 40 years can still tell who is who with lots of folks. The brain sees characteristics that are vaguely similar to past visual images and goes into search trying to connect the new older images with past images stored in memory. The fact that the brain does this is intensely complex and critical to our ability to think. To this day, I can be anywhere and when I smell a certain smell I’ll begin to have pictures running through my mind of my grandma’s house 45 years ago. Sometimes I’ll just start thinking of her house and not realize what’s happening until I notice that the smell is present. This search mode ​
automatically​
wires the brain ​
in the process of making the connection. Again, this is HUGELY important to understanding memory. And if you can use it in education, this alone can be a complete game changer–especially in nailing vocabulary. For instance, if I tell students that the Japanese phrase “ski des” means “to like” and one child thinks,”Hey that sounds like “Ski–Desk,” he’s on the way to easy mastery of it. If he thinks about liking to ski and he imagines a little skier skiing down his desk top and jumping off the pencil holder at its base, he will have the word locked in for life WITH ONE REPETITION. Years ago there was a study using these types of Mnemonics to learn French. They found that students could learn and retain French 3x faster when ​
good​
Mnemonics were used. (It’s ​
real​
easy to have bad technique or use mnemonics when one shouldn’t). THREE times faster. That’s incredible! Why isn’t every class in the US using this for foreign language…and science,and history… to help lodge terms? Again, this works by self–wiring. Because ski des and ski–desk sound alike, the brain automatically associates them by the “search mode” of the brain. ​
Every time the brain auto­finds the word that is similar, it wires it with the bio–wiring I mentioned above. This self­wiring can be so effective that it is like a child is wiring his brain with 10x more wiring every time he reviews something that is connected by sounds or appearance to something he knows as compared with rote wiring (repeating something over and over–either visually or auditorily–with no connection at all.) My oldest son had to memorize 100 difficult new vocabulary words quickly one week in his senior year of high school. He was very skilled at mnemonics and had a ball knocking them all out in 2 hours with a friend. Remember, though, mnemonics must be done well to work well. ​
Without great technique, bad mnemonics can be a huge distraction from true learning. There is a keen art to knowing how and when to use mnemonics. 7.MIND FLY Imagine you have a great interest in Biology and you’ve wired yourself extensively in it. Out of curiosity, you attend a lecture by me about 20 wonders of the animal and plant world of which you had no prior knowledge. Your memory of the lecture one month later can literally be 100x that of someone else who heard the lecture that has no wiring in biology. Why? THIS IS ​
VERY​
IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTAND! It’s because your mind flies to previous info “webs” in your brain (“webs” of wiring) and travels all around in them as I am speaking. Some have said that you can think five times faster than a person can speak. I think, however, that when a person begins moving into previous “knowledge webs” comparing, analyzing and “wowing”, the amount of thinking–and therefore wiring –may be significantly greater– maybe one hundred times greater. Helping children to mind­fly is ​
critical​
for getting them to learn really well–and think really well. Incidentally, if a parent or a teacher brings out fascinating infomation constantly in his instruction, his students will mind fly in their private moments outside the classroom. The lessons taught can be mightily magnified with “mind fly” by the child’s curiosity and desire to learn in new situations. 8.NATURAL MEMORY I had one of the most embarrassing Ed moments happen to me after teaching a class on memory when I was 25. I was excited with what I was learning about memory and was teaching a group of adults in a night class about it. I’d just covered snazzy ways to remember names and faces and after class, seven people came up and circled me, firing questions at me. I turned around the circle asking them their names and a giving them quick answers to their questions. I came full circle but didn’t realize it when I asked the lady in front of me what her name was so I, the great guru of education, could give her my pearls of wisdom. She politely reminded me that she had already introduced herself a couple minutes before…Ugh. Embarrassing. But that was the beginning of a clearer understanding of my own memory. Many people can remember faces, but not names, because they have excellent “natural” (innate) ​
visual​
memory. Mine is awful beyond belief. A very close friend shaved a full beard after having one for ten years. When I saw him, my comment was,”Something’s different, What?” I couldn’t remember he had a beard! Good grief. Since then I’ve realized that my natural visual memory is substantially less than most people’s–even children’s. Sometimes, however, I beat my children at figuring my way out of locations we’ve driven to…but it’s not because of my visual memory. I use a different technique to often out­navigate them without trying – the technique of mind fly. For instance, we were lost driving around in a larger city near LA trying to find our way to the freeway to go back home after a convention we attended together.. The kids couldn’t knuckle­down any landmarks to give them a sense of direction out of the mess. But I did. I began noticing little and large details that I recognized. I saw a huge fence by the road used to keep stray baseballs from landing in the street from the baseball diamond behind it. As we passed it the first time several days earlier, without any effort on my part, I thought, “That is the biggest fence I’ve ever seen by a road…Oh it’s a baseball diamond…Why is it so close to the street?…Oh it’s because they have no land in this crowded city.” So I wired the fence effortlessly many times more than my kids by conceptual mind fly and I remembered what way to go to go home from it. There were several other key landmarks I saw that got me going the right way and each one I remembered ​
because of my thoughts about it–not the visual image.​
I won the day as the skilled navigator over all my kids by mind fly, despite their combined far better natural visual memories. A feather in my cap. Yet another example of Father Knows Best. 9.STORIES GREATLY WIRE THE BRAIN I’ve deliberately gone long on my examples in this little piece. I’ve taken the time to tell you stories illustrating the principles so it will help you remember them. Some of the examples I’ve given you may be with you the rest of your life. The mantra,”You only remember 5% of what you read and 10% of what you hear” is a bunch of hooey. You’ll probably never forget that I called the reading retention mantra hooey for the rest of your life, too, as another example that this saying is baloney. And, if you really want to cement it in your brain, the next time you hear an educator say, ”You only remember 5% of what you read“ to get your vote to spend more money on electronic education, shout, ”That’s Hooey!” I guarantee that if you do this you’ll never forget it and you’ll also bash the mantra that you only remember 10% of what you hear. If you manage this act of courage, no one in the room will ​
ever​
forget it–even if no one sees you for one second. 100% retention by 100% of the hearers. Not bad. It’s well worth the time to tell stories in written or auditory format.. It’s ​
WELL WORTH the time to dig up and craft good stories for your children and students. With one hearing, many can be remembered for a lifetime. Stories build suspense and interest. They engage people. People wonder where the story is going. With scattered facts there is no frame to hold them together so they “fall.” A good story can glue many things together ​
and get the brain moving again​
. A GREAT STORY IS BETTER THAN THE BEST EYE CANDY (“Eye candy” is snazzy visuals). Besides, The best EC may be great now but laughable in 10 years–but a good story endures forever. Which brings up the next point. 10.THE UNUSUAL CAN GREATLY WIRE There was a professor at San Diego State who always brought in a new science experiment every day he taught for his history class. He wanted to add a little fun to his class. Years later the kids remembered a BIG ZERO of all he said but every one of his experiments. The funny ones that went wrong especially stand out. The unsual sticks. They say in movie making to take your viewers where they have never gone before. This is a principle that educators can use hugely too. It’s a good idea to keep this in mind if you’re writing a curriculum or teaching your kids or a class. Realize, too, that the unusual can be quite simple like teaching a lesson on atoms dressed in an atom suit with the electrons in the outer shell demonstrated on your costume– or a million other creative things that can be done. Which brings up the next point. 11.HUMOR PLEASANT­FIES. ​
AND ADDS PHENOMENAL RETENTION AND HELPS EVERYONE STAY AWAKE AND KEEPS THE MIND FLYING. Such benefits! Humor is ​
really ​
important. If I wrote the letters of that last sentence 10 feet tall, you’d get a good idea of how important it is. Who doesn’t enjoy tasteful, encouraging, and fun humor? We were created to laugh. God made the ability (I’m so glad He did) and He made puppies, camels (ever looked close at a camel’s snout?) and big­britched little boys who think they’re really tough who give their dads an endless stream of laughs. I still call my youngest son “Big Jon” in memory of those little years that were so delightful. If “everything’s awesome” and great for long term memory, it’s got to have humor mixed in. A spoonful of sugar still helps the medicine go down. If an educator pops in humor every few minutes, he can drone on with the important info between the humor bursts because he’s won his audience’s hearts and they are waiting for the next bit of humor. This is CRITICAL. ​
It also makes people want to come back to what you’ve presented​
and this is really big for long term recall. It is “warm” to them and we’re people, not robots, so this is important. Who wants to go back to a AP Bio or CHEM book? Not many. Not me… Ever. How many future scientists have been derailed by our torturous science programs in our schools and universities? One study shows that 60% of STEM students entering the university drop out because of how the Sciences are taught there. Isn’t anyone thinking? 12. EMPHASIZING THE RELATIONAL ASPECT HELPS GREATLY, ESPECIALLY WITH CHILDREN If a professor regularly tells stories about himself and they are warm, moral and interesting, students will relate to him in a good way and will mind­fly much more both in and out of class. The relational aspect makes everything easier to hear and easier to remember. Have you ever had a droning professor who rambled on and on with his “great” knowledge? I had many. My only memory of them after class was,”I’m glad I’m outta there.” And the final day of these classes was always a big “Yahoo!” How sad. Pain and gain may work in sports but it’s lousy for remembering things effectively. Stick the great relational aspect even in diagrams, illustrations and CGI and they’ll be a whole lot more effective–​
and​
fun too! What a concept ­ enjoying true learning. 13.PARENTS CAN ​
GREATLY​
INCREASE LONG TERM RETENTION One of the gravest mistakes of American education is that we’ve largely said to parents, “We’re the teachers. We’re the experts. Not you.” In so doing, we’ve crippled our greatest help in our nation’s children’s education. An involved parent in children’s schooling can make a phenomenal difference. Casual conversations at home, around the dinner table, after watching informative videos, about great school work, after great lectures, in the car, on a walk, etc, can be so beneficial. Why isn’t every school in the nation using the web to fascinate the kids and the parents? Why aren’t we having free fascinating show­lectures occasionally at night for parents and their children​
so that they can discuss afterward and go to the web for additional materials? Education should draw parents and children together, not separate them. At Crosswired, we want to help parents through the web and have science and math lecture­shows across the country to get the parents working with us in our efforts to show the wonders of what God has made. And we want to convince them that they can be unbelievably important in their child’s future. Ben Carson, one of the world’s leading neurosurgeons, was saved from the slums by his single mom who got him to read one book per week. ​
From his mom he learned he could learn​
. We can groan over the current state of many parents and pity their children, but we can help many parents do it better. For children, their parents are the only parents they will ever have and any help we can give can make a big difference in the child’s education and well being over the next decades–and the parents’, too. Why not help parents to become great tutors of their children? We’d be able to double our effectiveness with children if we did. And if we taught parents and children better communication skills, how many hundreds of billions of dollars could be saved in business, education, and big government assistance programs? We drain a whole lot of our national resources and hinder maximum productivity by not ​
excelling​
in this area.. If we give parents a love for good knowledge , they can also aid in long­term memory for the child: “Alice, remember when ​
we ​
learned those amazing things about hearing on that website?” Things we put into both child and parent can be reinforced by the parent without even trying… and the same parent is with the child for a lifetime. It’s like having your class lecture notes recorded onto a CD player and the CD player permanently stuck to the student’s head. Great! One excited parent can do far more than a thousand homework assignments. Sometimes too­large homework loads do the exact opposite of their intended purpose in the long run, because they separate the children from their parents. If we increased the “Science literacy” or “History literacy” of the parents, guess who else’s Science and History literacy would increase? My oldest is over forty now, with four children of his own. i have the great blessing and privilege of being able to be a large influence on him, his wife and my grandchildren. And so it is with all eight of our children. And so it could be with all of America if we made the effort to help build parents and children together when the children are in their childhood. What a boon to education and social well being–and happiness– this would be! 14.CONCEPT WIRING​
– ​
Build great “mini­concepts” and great large concepts and crosswiring them. A great mini­concept of Science is “An Introduction to ATP Synthase”. The mini­concept on this topic might begin with explaining what the molecule does. These bio­molecular motors are the smallest motors in the universe. They consist of about 500 atoms. You could fit way a whole lot more than a million of them on the head of a pin! There are a thousand to a million of these in a cell, each of them spinning at over 9000 RPMs–150 times a second–which is faster than almost all car engines. (Say wow for me!) The spin is caused by the breakdown of glucose sugar. The hydrogen atoms broken off the sugar channel through the ATP synthase like water in a turbine. Each spin produces three of the energy molecules of the cell– ATP. This means that one of the more powerful cells in our body can make over 400 million ATP​
per second​
. Wow! The concept would continue and include information about turkeys and whales. The turkey uses its legs much more than its wings so the leg muscles have more of the molecular motors in them. But if there are more motors there has to be more access to oxygen. That is why the leg meat is dark when you eat a turkey leg at Thanksgiving. The dark color is billions of molecules of myoglobin. Myoglobin is a special protein that acts like a mini­scuba tank and holds oxygen​
inside​
the muscle cells. The turkey breast meat is white, on the other hand, because turkeys don’t fly a whole lot. Not much myoglobin is needed for the motors there. The hawk’s leg meat, on the other hand, is whitish and the breast meat dark because they fly a great deal and the motors and the myoglobin are more numerous in the muscles that move the wings. Where the myoglobin is greater, the ATP synthase is greater making the ATP production greater. Gotta power those wings! A sperm whale has so much myoglobin in its muscles that they are black colored. It hyperventilates to fill its countless trillions of myoglobin molecules in its muscles with oxygen before descending up to a mile for over an hour. It can do this because most of its ATP synthase engines in the swimming muscle cells are fueled during the hour a mile down​
by oxygen already inside its muscle cells​
. That’s how a mini­concept might look. The only difference between a mini­concept and a large one is what is to be expected–its length. STORIES AND CONCEPTS It’s worth the time to tell good stories as well as build great concepts because stories are like great concepts–they have a whole lot of wires to them–and you remember better with more wiring. With one hearing, many stories can be remembered for a lifetime. And it’s also worth the time to dig up phenomenal concepts. Again, one hearing can last a lifetime. Two hearings can last even longer. : ) Rote facts DROP very quickly. If someone spends years memorizing many dull facts, it’s not all that unusual to have near zero recall in the long run. Multiplied dullness doesn’t mean multiplied retention: it means multiplied forgetfulness. If someone spent the same amount of time in school mastering​
1500 great webbed concepts instead of dull facts​
, the memory retention would be phenomenally better by the time of high school graduation.. (The exact amount would be determined by pre­wiring, interest, natural memory, the concepts themselves and how skillfully they were presented initially and crosswired as time went on.) 15.PREWIRING When I was 16, I tried to learn the guitar with a friend. I gave up. Why? Because after 3 months my friend was much better than I was and I had practiced much harder than he did. My conclusion? He had talent and I didn’t have any. Therefore why bother trying? What I didn’t know is that my friend’s father loved to play music and analyze it. Whenever he heard music, he’d help his little son as he was growing up to hear different instruments by helping him isolate the sound of each instrument in a piece of music. He’d often even tap out the rhythm with his hands for his son. My friend particularly outshined me in the rhythms that he naturally threw into his strumming. He got them, however, because he was so much more PREWIRED than I was due to his dad’s efforts. When I shared this example in a class on learning, one student named Brian who had received the award for being the best high school pianist in California, raised his hand and shared with our class the most unusual experience. When he was five, his piano instructor played him a complex piece one day thinking he’d really stretch his little student. However when Brian sat down at the piano he played it all…perfectly...the ​
first ​
time. He exclaimed to us, ”I wasn’t a prodigy! Now I realize what happened. My mom frequently played that piece on our stereo from the time when I was a year old. I’d always sit on the stereo and listen. I was literally wiring it through the seat of my diaper!” Brian indeed was. He was pre­wired and he was skilled at decoding music when he heard it. Hearing the piece refreshed it and brought it into his “RAM” memory (brought it back to mind) and he simply heard it in his mind and played what he heard. If someone has prewiring going into an area, it can ​
tremendously​
increase memory by mind­fly and other things– and it can make it much more pleasurable to learn the new information. One of the greatest things that could be done for the youth of America in Science would be to create a solid foundation of pre­wiring from 4 years­old up through the elementary school years. Then there would be an interest to learn more when so many Junior Highers are derailed by a host of negative influences. The best way to do the instruction and protect from the negative influences might be to home school (which I love) or at least to have the parents much involved in the lives of their children. 16.CROSSWIRING Crosswiring is to move from one content area to another and give the new area a good amount of time (at least a couple minutes). For instance, in the above example of ATP synthase, it might be a great idea to crosswire to the massive generators creating electricity inside Hoover Dam. You could teach for 2 minutes about how the electricity is made and transmitted. Then compare the flow of the water that spins the turbines to the flow of protons that spin the ATP synthase. 17.TIES Ties are what we call quicker blips to previous material–a quick crosswire. For instance, if I was talking about how a bat lets out an inaudible high­force sonar wave, I would share how the bat can do this 200 times a second and disengage its ear bones that fast to protect its ears. Then I might ​
tie​
for 10 seconds to an animation we have of actin­myosin muscle fibers and point out that they do the disengaging and the reengaging of the bones in the bat’s ears. Then I might high speed the a­m fibers and comment that at 200 times per second, they can really move out. Finally, I might slip in that this is how a bee can flap its wings with its a­m muscle fibers–200 times per second. Ties are CRITICAL for long term retention and especially for e­learning curriculum. AND THEY CAN ADD A WHOLE LOT OF INTEREST AND FUN. These ties must be ​
masterfully​
made to maximize learning. 18. ISOLATE THE UNKNOWN, AND ALSO THE CRITICAL When I was in college, I succeeded at tests without much effort because I made a list of all I didn’t know. Then I checked off things as I mastered them. After that I studied only the unknown material. Flash­carders do this. When I was in 6th grade, I did the same with spelling. I’d isolate the difficult words and spend most of my time on these. This is straightforward. What isn’t always so straightforward is the IMPORTANCE factor. Figure out what is really important, and isolate that and THOROUGHLY master it. For example, the most important aspect of phonics is keeping the short vowel sounds very distinct in a child’s mind especially the ‘i' and the ‘e’. In math, for example,in the 3 times tables, the most important to master well is 3x6, 3x7 and 3x8. These are the only difficult ones when a system­based method is used for the 3’s . The rest are obvious. It takes 2 minutes to get down the difficult ones and these three in particular need to be monitored to make sure they don’t fall. (“Fall” or “drop” means “be forgotten”.) All knowledge in any area is not equal​
. This needs to be remembered. For example, in the popular Math programs various areas are sometimes given equal weight to mastering multiplication. Multiplication, however, needs to be treated as ten times more important than any other mini­skill of 3rd grade because with it and with the other foundational math facts, mastery of the other 99 mini­skills of 3rd grade math is easy–as well as so many other math concepts and facts all the way through Calculus. But without multiplication being thoroughly mastered, more and more mini­skill areas will not be mastered in each grade because the math wagon has broken wheels. 19. NOT ELECTRONIC ONLY E­Curriculum can be very good but it is not a replacement for hands­on experience. Who forgets a field trip or a science experiment? How much fun they add to science education! The use of manipulatives for math and even phonics can be tremendously effective– far more than anything communicated by a computer screen. A visiting guest speaker can change someone’s life. Props used in a home or a classroom can be wonderful and cement all kinds of great things in a child’s heart and mind. Woe to the e­only people. Drab living lies ahead with mountains of forgotten material. 20.USE BUZZWORDS–CUE WORDS Skillful use of buzzwords can produce extraordinary results. A cleverly chosen word can wrap up a whole concept and communicate it in a flash. We use them above with the words mind fly, lodge, wire, crosswiring, wrong wiring, etc. 21.CAREFULLY SELECT VOCAB WORDS & FREELY BUTCHER SOME FOR THE SAKE OF TEACHING GREAT CONCEPTS TO YOUNGER CHILDREN Every vocab word is a potential stumbling block to real learning. Never forget the importance of carefully weighing whether a certain term is needed or whether it can be eliminated or substituted for another more “kid­friendly” one until the child grows older. For instance, we call all the male parts of the flower by one of the parts, the staMEN. It works well because the word “men” is in stamen. We use just the word “stigMA” for all the female parts because, you guessed it , MA is in it. We can worry about the details of the official terminology later. It is far better to understand great concepts and forget the words we educators attach to them than to have children with nothing upstairs. Hollow space is a headache to deal with in future years. When done right, careful regulation of vocabulary and making it kid­friendly like we did with mitosis and meiosis above, can open phenomenal doors for great concepts to be taught to younger children. A good rule of thumb for Science instruction is “Don’t throw away great things by using completely unnecessary vocabulary”. Said shortly, “Don’t kill richness by vocab.” 22.SKILLFULLY USE LOCI The ancient Greeks used their homes to remember their speeches. They would imaginarily tie parts of their speech to objects in their homes in the order they would see them if they walked through their homes. When they gave their speeches, they would imagine themselves walking through their homes and the next parts of their speeches would come to mind. The “loci” system of memory involves using locations to lock in material. It can be very effective. One of our goals for CrossWired is to tie the wonders of Creation to locations around home, around the country and around the world. We are planning to have a global map with markers that would indicate what happened in the filming at many locations. We want to shoot footage from many fields in the same memorable locations, emphasizing different aspects of each location. For example, we could film in Yosemite or the Grand Canyon and tie 10 wonders into each location from several different fields. This would allow for very creative “re­covering” of material. Re­visting the precise locations visually in a review would bring back the varied concepts as you moved from place to place. The fact that the varied concepts were wired in in the same location would be a significant way of wiring them all as a group into life­time long­term memory. Loci can also be used just by the order things are found on a paper or on a computer screen. Loci can be used in very helpful ways in this way to cement math facts, phonics sounds and specifics of Science. 23.RE­COVERING OF MATERIAL IS ESSENTIAL–BEYOND BELIEF–FOR LIFE­TIME LONG TERM MEMORY The greatest material ever taught in the history of the world can “fall” and be gone forever if it is never re­covered, discussed or amplified. And as children grow older they are able to comprehend material at far deeper levels. Re­covering material previously presented with new material infused into it, greater CGI, new exciting video links, new presenters, tied to new info, etc. can be ​
phenomenal​
for long­term memory. Masterful re­covering something is similar to reupholstering furniture. If you recover a quality piece of old furniture, it becomes wonderful. Why can’t we re­cover concepts in increasingly wonderful ways with new info, new ties, new crosswiring, new humor and new pizzaz as children grow older? Re­covering and enriching material can also take the form of teaching it to others. They say, “If you want to remember something, teach it.” This is an excellent idea. We encourage children of all different ages to teach CWS concepts to younger children. This gives the little children an infrastructure–a skeleton–to hang great info on which will help them remember it much better. It’s hard to hang great things in a bare closet. The little ones mind­fly more, too, as they hear material on video if they first hear portions from older children. And the student presenters will remember phenomenally more because they have re­covered the material in a big way. Teaching littler ones also has the benefit of focusing children on others. It helps enormously to escape from the “me, me, me” syndrome that captures so many of today’s youth. We recently had a young lady in our fellowship and her beau announce that they were going to enter into courtship together. Her young man is a person that any parents would be delighted to have their daughter marry. Her mother became a believer a little more than a decade ago and has focused her personal ministry on reaching children. Her little daughter went with her everywhere and they served the Lord together, with Dad joining in when he was off work. The result has been from her homeschooling that she’s quite smart and from working and serving with Dad and Mom that she is quite giving. She was well prepared for the second most important decision of her life–her future mate and family. Just smart isn’t near enough. Feeding His sheep needs to be cultivated all along the way. Teaching those younger in ones own family and outside it is one of the great ways this can happen. 24.ONLY LEARN FROM KEEPERS CS Lewis said that he would only read things that were worth reading twice. Good advice. So much for all the textbooks in the US. Life is too short for them. Besides, if the book and article reading of children is done from life­long resources, a good deal of knowledge is locked in by its position on a page, illustrations around it and its proximity to other concepts. Using excellent video resources and beautifully illustrated books that exquisitely cover different areas of Science as well as masterfully researched and written Science magazine articles is the way to build an excellent –and remembered–foundation for the future. So what of textbooks? Into the circular file with the whole bunch. 25.TIE INTO EXISTING WIRING (TEW) Anything that can be done to cleverly tie into a person’s existing wiring is worth its weight in gold. You can do this when interlocking large concepts as we mentioned in the tying and crosswiring sections previously or you can tie into existing wiring in the smallest of ways. One quick example is how we wire in the sound of the short ‘i.’ It looks vaguely to a little child like a worm that’s lost its head (Use your imagination!) Right? Of course. So what do you say when you see a worm that’s lost his head? iiiiiii (The first sound of “icky”) Right? You bet! This really does the job for the little guys. They affectionately know the short i as “Wormy”. Here we wired into existing info both the shape –even kids that haven’t seen a dismantled worm get it anyway– and the sound that most of us use when we see something gross. Numerator and Denominator. New trick for an old dog. I’ve known for 35 years that to knock out the terms numerator and denominator for fractions that a memory hook was the best way to go. I always used demon to denote that denominator went on the bottom (Because demons come from down there”) and never got a good hook for numerator so I’d just say the other one goes on top. Just last night a dad told me of the one he was taught years ago as a kid: N=North and d =down. I shook my head . How could I ever miss anything so simple as down for denominator . Good grief. But then I couldn’t figure out how North told you that it is on top of the fraction bar. Just this morning I had an AH­HA moment, ​
That’s it. Ingenious. When you hold a compass up, North is always on the top of the circle of the compass.​
So clever…and it ties into existing wiring for most people. Science Science is a whole lot more complex to tie into existing wiring than skill areas like Math and Phonics. It involves building very involved concepts from the ground up and crosswiring them all along the way. At Crosswired we are crosswiring over 1500 concepts between themselves and into other things. There are over 10,000 components to our program including the concepts and details of them, photographs, illustrations, diagrams, collections, experiments, activities, oral and written presentations, research areas, shorts, full videos, books, articles, field trips, websites, apps and more. Wiring into existing info can be quite an art and quite an effort…but, it’s EXTREMELY valuable. It makes the difference of greatly glorifying God in Science and not. I’d travel a 1000 miles for a good tie….uh…well maybe a mile on a nice day. : ) That’s it for now. Any comments would be appreciated! Don Miller wonders.science.math@gmail.com copyright don miller 2014