STEM: Leading the Way in Active Learning for Curious Young Minds

1. STEM: Leading the Way in Active Learning for Curious Young Minds Contact Information: Kenneth Wesson (408) 323-1498 (office) (408) 826-9595 (cell)San Jose, CA kenawesson@aol.com www.sciencemaster.com

2. Brain-STEM: Astonishing! “Let me keep my mind on what matters, which is my work, which is mostly standing still andlearning to be astonished.” -- “The Messenger” by Mary Oliver Child development – theGreatest Show On Earth! …an excursion into the developing brain.. Wesson – ECE + STEM - 2014

3. Only the Gray Matter Matters in Learning • Our students come in a variety of colors, but all brains are basically gray. It is only the gray matterthat truly matters in learning and neuroscience. • Boosting achievement and maximizing student potential hinges on educators developing a respectable knowledge reservoir for teaching STEM with the brain in mind. Wesson – ECE + STEM - 2014

4. STEM: Active Learning for Curious Young Minds • The astonishing young brain and how we can nurture its full development • What are the causes of cognitive/academic under-development • What are the preferred strategiesby which we can incorporate STEM into our ECE curriculum? (p-s, making connections, and interdisciplinarity) • Quick writes and table-talks

5. The Knowledge Explosion “The sum total of humankind’s knowledge doubled between 1750 and 1900. It doubled again between 1900 and 1950, again from 1950 to 1960, again from 1960 to 1965. It’s been estimated that the sum total of humankind’s knowledge has doubled at least every five years since then. It’s been further projected that by the year 2020, knowledge or information will double every 73 days.” Dr. James Appleberry - President, American Association of State Colleges and Universities Wesson – ECE + STEM - 2014

6. A Framework for K-12 Science Education • Children are born investigators • Understanding builds over time • Science and Engineering require both knowledgeandpractice Wesson – ECE + STEM - 2014

7. Expanding the Traditional Model of Thinking and Learning Does the name “Pavlov” ring a bell? Stimulus Response S R Teaching Learning Thinking and learning are neurobiological processes that take place inside the brain, just as digestion is another biological event that takes place in the pancreas and the stomach. Wesson – ECE + STEM - 2014

8. Factors Influencing Stimulus Response In addition to desires, tendencies, appetites, instincts, inclinations… Genetics +Epigenetics and early nutrition +Pre-natal care +Age +Early development (0-3) +Emotions/emotional state +Parenting +Gender +Physical history +Perception/expectations +Neuro-physiology +Memory +Prior learning (situated L’) +Diet +Prior experiences +Self-esteem +Need state +Disability +Strengths +Neural circuitry/plasticity* +Formal Education +Stress factors Learning/Behavior * Neural plasticity: The flexible nature of the brain to modify structures, alter its functioning and re-route neural circuitry as a response to new stimuli and ongoing learning experiences. Wesson – ECE + STEM - 2014

9. Amazing: Connections • The brain confers on us the ability to know things todaythat we did not know yesterdayand to do things today that we could not do yesterday (With time: a growing repertoire of knowledge and cognitive skills) • We improve the quality of our responses today because of what we learned yesterday, when we said, “Oh, I’ll never do that again!” (emotionally tagged “avoid-in-the-future”) Wesson – ECE + STEM - 2014

10. Primarily Two Types of Cells in the Brain • Neurons • The brain cells we care about most when discussing human learning • 1. Sensory processing (learning) • 2. Storage (memory) • 3. Retrieval (application) • The sameneurons for a lifetime • Glia cells (glue) • Support – blood supply, nutrients, oxygen, energy, remove waste • More? Active in slower processingof information – consolidating memory? • The “Mind”

11. Astonishing Potential for Learning and Processing Neurons and synapses. The number of neurons (the information processing cells) inside your brain is approximately equivalent to all of the trees found in the Amazon rain forest (100,000,000,000).The # of plausible permutations and combinations of brain activity > the # of elementary particles in the universe. They operate by making connections with one another. The number of connections (synapses) inside your brain is comparable to all of the leaveson all of the treesin the Amazon rain forest (approx. 62 trillion connections among the 100 billion brain cells.) Wesson – ECE + STEM - 2014

12. Making Connections Egg yolk Baseball ball round yellow basketball coconut Tennis Brown School bus banana fruits Taxi Apple persimmon pear Orange Train pineapple Wesson – ECE + STEM - 2014

13. Maintaining and Strengthening Memory Bridge BuildExtend 10% 80% 10% Past content New information Preview Wesson – ECE + STEM - 2014

14. “Failure To Connect” • Lack of adequate brain “wiring”(poorly “wired” brains) • No emotional connections • Little or no prior experience • Delayed development • An injury to the brain • Teaching a developmentally-inappropriate concept to young children (a lack of brain “Readiness”) • Cannot find meaning (“sense-making” or “meaning-making”) • Thinking back on our “tennis ball” network model, what are the typical causes of these “failures to connect”? • 1. Lack of adequate brain “wiring” • Poorly “wired” brain (a delayed development issue, no prior experience, no relevance, no emotional connections) • An injury to the brain • Teaching a developmentally inappropriate concept to young children (a lack of brain “Readiness”) Wesson – ECE + STEM - 2014

15. No emotional connections Learning requires effort, and one of the best predictor's of students’ effort and engagement in school is the relationships that they have with their teachers (Osterman, 2000.) Students function more effectively when they feel respected and valued and function poorly when they feel disrespected or marginalized (National Research Council, 2004) Wesson – ECE + STEM - 2014

16. We Learn Student Survey (Grades 6-12)217,596 student voices We Teach Instructional Staff Survey 21,028 voices

17. Participants’ Poll

18. Teacher – Student Comparisons

19. Participants’ Poll

20. Teacher – Student Comparisons

21. Emotions and Learning 1. Students find that what they care about becomes the easiest to learn; they remember best what they understand. 2. Students don’t care what you know, until they know that you care. 3. “Students learn as much for a teacher as they do from a teacher.” Linda Darling-Hammond Stanford University Wesson – ECE + STEM - 2014

22. Afraid to “fail” “Failure is not an Option” Performance avoidance Failure is nearly always a prerequisite for future learning and success in science. Most initial learning occurs via trial-and-error. Wesson – ECE + STEM - 2014

23. “If you're not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original." --Sir Ken Robinson Jonathan Plucker (Indiana U): Creativity (“CQ”) was three times+ more accurate as a basis for predicting an individual’s lifetime creative accomplishments than IQ. Wesson – ECE + STEM - 2014

24. STEM: Emotions, Engagement, and Curious Young Minds • The best way to engage students in STEM is to introduce one or more scientific “FUNomena” (a focus question, a discrepant eventdemonstration, etc.), where we make science intriguing, personal and relevant (the catalysts for further research) – now, students want toinvestigate. Wesson – ECE + STEM - 2014

25. Will this bulb light if the connection is in water? Electromagnetism • Is water a conductor of electricity? • Plasma Light • Electricity→ Magnetism→ Electromagnetism • → Light • Electromagnetism 1 of the 4 fundamental forces in our universe (gravity, E-M, S/W nuclear forces) Wesson – ECE + STEM - 2014

26. Is CCSS+NGSS A Mixture or Solution? A mixture is the results of 2 or more materials distributed evenlyafter being mixed together, but each maintains its own identity (visible). A solution is the combination of two or more substances where the original parts become homogenized and indistinguishable. If we try to combine oil and water… What do you predict will happen? Wesson – ECE + STEM - 2014

27. The Science of Learning Instead of saying:Use MINDFUL LANGUAGE by saying: “Let’s look at these two pictures.” “Let’s COMPARE these two pictures.” “What do you think will happen when…?” “What do you PREDICT will happen when…?” “How can you put those into groups?” “How can you CLASSIFY…?” “Let’s work this problem.” “Let’s ANALYZEthis problem.” “What do you think would have happened “What do you SPECULATE would have happened if…?” if…? “What did you think of this story?” “What CONCLUSIONScan you draw about this story?” “How can you explain……?” “What HYPOTHESES do you have that might explain...?” “How do you know that’s true?” “What EVIDENCEdo you have to support…….?” “How else could you use this…..? “How could you APPLYthis ……..?” Wesson – ECE + STEM - 2014

28. Making a Lava Lamp • Materials: • Oil • Water • Colored dye • Alka-Seltzer • Flashlight • Procedure: • Pour 1 part water 4 parts oil into a container. Let the mixture settle. Pour 2-3 drops of colored dye into the container. Add ½ tablet of Alka-Seltzer. • ECE + STEM = more of a solutionthan a mixture Wesson – ECE + STEM - 2014

29. 2. Little or no prior experience The concepts at the heart of STEM— curiosity, creativity, collaboration, and critical thinking - are in demand. They also happen to be innate in young children. STEM Education Must Start in Early Childhood -- JD Chesloff Wesson – ECE + STEM - 2014

30. Wesson – ECE + STEM - 2014

31. In which direction is bus going? • American school bus entrances are always on the right side of the bus near the curb, which must be on the other side of this picture (the right side facing forward), which underscores the importance of prior knowledge, experience, and recognizing cues to make pictorial inferences (logic). • Regularexperience (reinforcement): Since school children have more frequent experiences riding buses, they are much better at answering this question than teachers; and teachers are better than non-educators.

32. Play and Piagetian Theory of Conservation Piaget: the pre-operational stage → children perform in characteristic ways on conservationtests. Piaget: conserving = to preserve an mental internal representation(ages 5 - 7). The Conservation of Liquid Quantity: 1. Shown two short beakers each with a wide radius → filled with 100 ml water → child watches → child is asked “…more or the same?”(the 2 beakers have = amounts of water) → the child agrees 2. Shown a tall narrow beaker with small radius → water is poured from one of the short-wide beakers into the tall narrow beaker → child asked, "Which contains more, or do they contain the same amount?" children ↓ 6 → “the tall beaker has more” (swayed by perceptual cue of height) Wesson – ECE + STEM - 2014

33. The Conservation of Mass: • Was Piaget correct? Yes, but only for children with ↓ experience playing with water. • Children in Thailand and Brazil who live along rivers→ correct answers well before age 6. • Piaget’s Conservation of Massexperiments? • Children in Central/South America, Mexico and Africa who grow up in pottery-making cultures → correct answers • considerably earlier in their • development Wesson – ECE + STEM - 2014

34. 3. Delayed development: • Development is Never Guaranteed No land = No frog During this sensitive period, tadpoles slow down the process of metamorphosis if there are no signs of nearby land. Development is environmentally-dependent. Wesson – ECE + STEM - 2014

35. Cleft Palate, Brain Circuitry and Language • Young children can only mimicthe language sounds that reach the auditory cortex, which is where they actually “hear” the sounds (not with his/her ears, just through the ears. • The problem is not that he/she cannotunderstand language; the problem is that the child has not clearly heardlanguage yet, and therefore cannot reproduce language articulately (can comprehend gestures). Wesson – ECE + STEM - 2014

36. Poverty and Brain Development Factors leading to cognitive deficits, as well as mild to profound brain damage include the following: • inadequate prenatal care • poor perinatal nutrition • smoking during pregnancy • second-hand smoke • lead poisoning from lead pipes and lead-based paints • premature births • babies with low birth weights • prenatal substance exposure Wesson – ECE + STEM - 2014

37. Neuroplasticity: experiences determine… • which brain cells communicate with which other cells • whichstructureslink together and to what degree • which cells release which neurotransmitters,when, and under what specific conditions they are released • the precise calibration of structure-function correlationsinside the brain. Wesson – ECE + STEM - 2014

38. Optimal window Secondary Window Extent of Future Developmental Possibilities Vision 0 – 6 months 6 – 24 months The lack of visual stimuli entering the eyes will eventually cause permanent blindness in a perfectly healthy eye. (Primary visual cortex must process incoming visual information.) Motor develop-ment 0 – 24 months 2 – 4 years Capabilities rapidly decrease with advancing age. (Functionality of the cerebellum/motor cortex for balance/coordination can be lost). Auditory develop-ment 0 – 6 months 6 – 18 months Severe learning and language problems will result from CAPDs based on the lack of stimuli processed by the auditory cortex. Problems occur from the absence of any sounds to handle and/or distinguish. Language skills 0 – 24 months 2 – 5 years With the onset of puberty, “new language” mastery begins a sharp and typically uninterrupted decline. Reading skills 4 – 5 years old (girls) 6 – 8 years (boys) 7 – 12 years old (puberty) Learning to process symbolic language can occur throughout one’s lifetime. It becomes more difficult (1) with time, and (2) if there are only modest opportunities for auditory processing of the rich usages and varieties of ideas. Early drawing provides a foundation for languaging. Emotional develop-ment 0 – 24 months 2 – 4 years Screening events through one’s emotional filter becomes difficult; personal relationships are characterized by weak attachments that are easily terminated. (Similar to limbectomized mammals) A second language 0 – 5 years old 7 – 12 years old Learning a second language after puberty is far more challenging than language learning at any other prepubescent period. The “second” language will almost invariably be accompanied by an accent. Musical abilities 0 – 6 years old 7 – 12 years old Research suggests that early musical exposure enhances the development of spatial and mathematical skills. Beyond puberty, learning a musical instrument (particularly learning to read musical notation) is frequently as complicated as learning a new oral language. Wesson – ECE + STEM - 2014

39. "Open Architecture" Author Joseph Epstein said, "We are what we read." Neuroscientists would modify that statement to say that “We are what we experience.” The human brain is the only organ that depends on experience to determine its development (how, where, when and if it develops) Wesson – ECE + STEM - 2014

40. 4. An injury to the brain • Avoid Dangerous Play: • “…want him to learn teamwork.” • Cortical Damage from Contact Sports • ECE “Teamwork” experiences • Orchestra/band • Maker’s Club • Creativity Club • STEM Club Wesson – ECE + STEM - 2014

41. 5. Teaching a developmentally-inappropriate concept to young children (a lack of brain “Readiness”) “Cognitively-appropriate" is defined as presenting students with content, concepts, and skills all within a context where we donot exceed a child's expected cognitive capacities. Wesson – ECE + STEM - 2014

42. Attention Span: Ages 2-3 - Have attention span 3 - 4 minutes Ages 4-5 - between 5 - 10 minutes Ages 6-8 - 15 - 20 minutes Ages 9-12 – 22 - 35 minutes Wesson – ECE + STEM - 2014

43. Which is Not Like the Others? Has webbed feet - Duck The only one people can ride - horse Soft to pet – eliminate the pig Digs with its nose - pig Large - horse Hibernates - Rabbit Can fly - duck Has 2 legs – Duck Lives underground - Rabbit Can swim - Duck Delivers singlet babies - horse The only one we don’t eat – horse Doesn’t have visible ears - Duck Wears shoes - horse Has a beak - Duck Wesson – ECE + STEM - 2014

44. Which is Not Like the Others? • Based on biological taxonomy: • All of these animals are vertebrates, but the horse, pig and sheep are classified as part of the order Mammalia. • The duck is of the order Aves. • The “grownup” and “right answer” (aves) is not an answer based on a child’s developmentally- appropriate thinking. Wesson – ECE + STEM - 2014

45. The Neural Foundation for Concept Development If I Can… Then I am Able To… 1. Experience it first-hand Discuss it orally (“Hands-on, minds-on, heart’s-in” “Wow! experiences) 2. Discuss it orallyUnderstand what others mean, when they talk about it 3. Understand when I discuss it Communicate it in written form and when and others discuss it 4. Communicate it in written form Read my own writing 5. Do it, see it, discuss it, hear Explain it to others coherently/intelligently about it and write about it 6. Explain it to others Ready to read other’s writing 7. Understand the writings of Begin reading (the writing of others) within others on the subject general content area Excerpted from Memory and the Brain: How Teaching Leads to Learning. Wesson, K. The Independent School, Volume 63, Spring 2002

46. 6. Cannot find meaning(“sense-making” or “meaning-making”) A newspaper is better than a magazine. A seashore is better place than the street. At first it is better to run than to walk. You may have to try several times. It takes some skill, but it is easy to learn. Even young children can enjoy it. Once successful, complications are minimal. Birds seldom get too close. Rain, however soaks in very fast. Too many people doing the same thing can also cause problems. One needs lots of room. If there are no complications, it can be very peaceful. A rock will serve as an anchor. If things break loose from it, however, you will not get a second chance. On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not Robert A. Burton, M.D.

47. Cognitive Rehearsals When playing with objects,learners are simultaneously manipulating and playing with ideas(using internal dialogues to attach words and meaning to actions) and building the brain’s fundamental circuitry Exploring and experimenting involve examining relationships, interactions and systems, where learners formulate their own personal “theories” (mental constructs) Thinking is a rehearsal for discourse Discourse is a rehearsal for writing Wesson – ECE + STEM - 2014

48. Cognitive Rehearsals Playing with objects and ideas, exploring and experimenting, thinking, talking, and writing become rehearsals(background knowledge) for reading. Writing and reading clarify one’s thoughts, generate coherent thinking, and cultivate precisionin expressing one’s inner thoughts Discourse and writing become rehearsalsfor assessment Source: Kenneth Wesson (2011). Education for the Real World: six great ideas for parents and teachers. Brain World, Issue 2, Volume 2. Wesson – ECE + STEM - 2014

49. STEM: Leading the Way in Active Learning for Curious Young Minds 2. How can we plan ECE experiences to meet the goals of STEM? Wesson – ECE + STEM - 2014

50. Scientists, Mathematicians and Engineers “Reading and writing comprise over half of the work of scientists and engineers.” (NRC 2011) Wesson – ECE + STEM - 2014