Customer Reviews

Worksheets Don't Grow Dendrites: 20 Instructional Strategies That Engage the Brain

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

For those great teachers out there, they will find they naturally use many of the strategies in this book. This books puts them all in one place and give you more ideas as well as the research to back them up. I do feel sorry for the rater that is having this approached forced on him or her. I am afraid to say that learner centered education is far from "trendy" nor is a constructivists approach to learning. Just throwing the books at the teachers not modeling the approach for even in teacher education, the adults should also construct meaning in their learning. I do agree with the reader that some teaching methods take more time upfront and there is a lot of pressure on teachers to hit all the standards but if retention is key, spend a little more time on the front end and they will retain it after a test rather than just for the test. This book is great if you want 20 specific ideas for injecting new way to learn in your classroom. It is not an all to nothing approach, just try one new thing while maintaining you own teaching style. Those teachers who are stuck in there own methods and fearful of sharing control of the learning with their students will have a hard time with this book.

I have been in early childhood education for 12 years. Within those 12 years, drastic changes have taken place. Year after year students come to my class with less knowledge. Everyday I try to find a new or better way to teach objectives. I have found that students need hands-on activities that help build the missing pieces of their educational foundation.
"Worksheets Don't Grow Dendrites" by Dr. Marcia Tate has been extremely helpful to me. I know you can't totally do away with all worksheets, but today's students need more than that. They need movement, music, manipulatives, and visuals in order to retain what they are expected to learn.
Thanks to Dr. Tate's book, I have another resource to use instead of the regular old "paper-pencil" method.

I bought this on Amazon. If hoping to find more verification that worksheets don't work for strictly for pre-school level, don't buy this book. It is more for elementary and older children, who have been in some cases, ruined educationally and bored by handling worksheets. Marcia Tate offers marvelous alternatives.

As a new teacher, I found this book informative and helpful. It gives great ideas as well as specific examples to enhance your classroom. I find the reliance on "busy work" and worksheets that some classrooms have destructive to the learning process. These ideas will help keep your students interested and looking forward to coming to school. I'm currently teaching in a first grade classroom, and I've already incorporated several of the ideas.

I wish I had this years ago. My kids love it and soaking up everything we do. This half of the year is going great!! I've never had a class so interested in anything!

This book is ok. I think it offers some good suggestions when you feel "stuck" while writing lesson plans. Its good to remember to mix things up and keep kids interested. However, I think "Classroom Strategies for Interactive Learning" by Doug Buehl is a better buy with more options and versatility. This strategy book is a little more basic.

This book was shipped by the Seller with lightning-fast speed. The book was in mint condition and I was thrilled.

...that have caused education in the U.S. to decline. Child psychology has replaced basic skills and a therapeutic culture has replaced a culture of achievement. Educators pour all their energy into cognition studies, but they don't know how students learn. They have all these great big Gestalt theories that don't work. Human beings don't learn that way. They learn in bits. Children need to be taught basic skills in a sequence that logically builds from the most elementary foundations to increasingly higher-order conceptual thinking. A misguided rejection of basic skills has caused much of the failure in our classrooms today. Instead of learning how to teach, teachers are taught how children learn. And yet, much of this developmental psychology--when it is not fundamentally flawed--is of remarkably little use in the everyday task of teaching.

You may be asked to think back and remember a particular project you did in school and then to think back and remember a particular worksheet you did in school. Finding that you are more likely to remember a project instead of a particular worksheet you are supposed to be led to the (illogical) conclusion that projects are better than worksheets. I do happen to remember a couple of projects I did in school, but I don't however, remember what I was supposed to be learning while doing them. On the other hand, I don't remember any phonics worksheets I did - I don't remember the first book I read - I don't even remember learning how to read - but that doesn't mean that I don't know how to read. Evaluating teaching methods should not be based on whether or not students remember particular projects or particular worksheets or particular text books, but rather, it should be based on whether or not they have the accumulated knowledge that they are supposed to have when they leave the classroom.

...anything will facilitate learning -- art, field trips, group discussions -- ANYTHING!...even WORKSHEETS -- gasp! -- will faciliate learning analogies, for example...so what you end up getting is a list of activities -- period...no arguments for chosing one over another...no documentary evidence regarding the degree to which an activity facilitates learning more than a worksheet -- a pertinent point, I believe...after all, field trips are cumbersome and expensive...I want some evidence that'll show me exactly how much more the kids will learn from the field trip than the worksheet!...and some of the activities are questionable -- e.g. playing music while teaching...there is NO evidence that playing music facilitates learning even in children with so-called "musical intelligence" -- regardless what Howard Gardner might believe...and, as an aside, I wonder why does the author choose Baroque music to play?...moreover, like most of these "strategy" books, the author never addresses what to do when the student doesn't wish to cooperate with your strategy...finally, most of the teaching strategies in this book, if not all, I believe, are things that an average teacher would have been taught already -- e.g. word webs, graphic organizers, mnemonic devices, visualization, etc...nope, I have to recommend skipping this book...I recommend a briefer, more practical, and more accurately described as "brain based" book by LeAnn Nickelsen called "Memorizing Stategies"...

This workbook is being forced on us in the school where I teach. I have to say that I strongly disagree with the ideas presented, but I don't have a choice of whether or not I want to use them in my classroom. If you have a choice, I firmly urge you to do some research on teaching methods. I don't mean "brain-based" research, psychological research, or any kind of research on "how children learn." I mean look for long-term, consensus research on methods that have been proven to work in the classroom. To adopt nonconsensus science as the basis of school policy is to conduct very perilous human experimentation on a large scale without license and with little hope of practical success.

"This theory is very popular among trendy education thinkers and professors. It holds that children learn best by discovering knowledge for themselves through hands-on projects and problem solving, rather than reading something out of a textbook or taking down what the teacher says. The idea is that knowledge you acquire for yourself is more likely to be understood and retained than a piece of information handed to you by someone else.

This view of education is seductive. It sounds so natural, energetic, and ambitious. Taken in moderation, it makes sense. As we all know, the lessons we figure out for ourselves tend to sink in deepest and stick with us longest. It is also true that there are some topics, subjects, and assignments where discovery learning is important. A lab experiment in science, for example, is a form of discovery learning. So is making a map of the school grounds, and collecting and classifying leaves. A good education obviously includes such activities. Virtually no one believes that learning should consist only of listening to teachers and reading from textbooks.

But discovery learning has real limitations in practice when schools try to turn it into the main way children learn academic lessons. First, it is truly inefficient. Having children figure out mathematical operations, for example, by playing games and making things takes a lot of time. There are not enough hours in the school year for students to unearth all there is to know on their own. When you rely on children to "construct" knowledge or skills-rather than systematically introducing material to them-learning can become a disorganized and time-consuming process. Mathematics is a highly structured body of knowledge and does not lend itself to haphazard learning. Second, unless the teacher is ready with corrections, a lot of things one "discovers" for oneself turn out to be wrong. Third, in some places discovery learning becomes a vehicle to reject the idea that there are important skills and information that all children should learn.

To many in the education establishment, the mental process of searching for answers is far more important than mastering any particular body of knowledge. What matters most to them is "learning how to learn." Schools are enthusiastic about making sure students acquire "higher-order thinking skills." Learning goals typically call for teaching kids to "think critically" and "solve problems." Give children the skills to find information and reflect upon it, the argument goes, and they'll become "lifelong learners." There's no need to force them into demonstrating specific knowledge. The problem with this rationale, of course, is that skills don't help students much without knowledge to apply them to. Modern education philosophy seems to have forgotten that knowledge makes you smarter. People we think of as creative geniuses are "brilliant" in large part because they have devoted long years to mastering knowledge in a particular field; what they know has become second nature, and their minds are free to focus and invent."

-The Educated Child

"Watching schools implement untested theories about "kinesthetic," or other intelligences when they can't teach reading looks suspiciously like one more fad. The hard truth is that today's youngsters, as never before, must hone their academic skills. Knowledge pays and pays handsomely; ignorance costs more than we can afford, individually or socially. Schools may want to teach English, mathematics, or physics by using music, dance, or football, but they cannot be permitted to lose sight of their academic mission."

-10 Traits of Highly Successful Schools