how to help with Adolescent Learning
Ideally you would like to have a brain that has the
organisational skills of Henry Ford, the planning
skills of Hilary Clinton, the humour of John
Cleese, the spiritedness of Steve Irwin, the
gentleness of the Mother Teresa, the ferocity of
Mike Tyson, the romance of Casanova and the
passion of Martin Luther King Junior.
Unfortunately most adolescent brains have the
planning skills of a Teletubbie, the humour of
Ghengis Khan, the reliability of Lindsay Lohan,
the can do attitude of a sloth on a holiday, the
cultural sensitivity of Pol Pot and the
communication skills of Paris Hilton.
Let’s face it, adolescence is an awkward time
and it is no more troublesome than for the poor
adults trying to guide these gangly, anxious
narcissists towards maturity.
Despite all of this, most adolescents get along
quite well with their parents and teachers most of
the time. Most succeed in school, have positive
relationships with peers, do not become addicted
to drugs or alcohol, and become productive and
healthy adults.
The adolescent brain is set up for being fast and
impulsive and we need to help it move towards
becoming slow and smart.
Slowing adolescent minds down so that they
don’t have to do the first thing that comes into
their heads requires kind coaching in reflective
rather than impulsive decision making.
During childhood the brain develops an
enormous number of connections (called
synapses) between brain cells. At birth, you had
about 2,500 synapses per brain cell. By your
third birthday you had 15,000. By the time you
were 9 years of age, your brain had more
connections than it needed and so it began a
process known as” synaptic pruning”.
Jay Giedd and his colleagues scanned the brains
of 1000 healthy children and adolescents aged 3-
18 years old. Just prior to puberty between 9 and
10 years of age there is a huge growth spurt in
the frontal lobes with millions of new synapses.
Then around the age of 11, massive pruning
occurs. This time of life represents a great
opportunity for educators to develop the neural
architecture that will lead students on to success.
Mindset
Carol Dweck’s research shows us that students’
mindsets directly influence results. Adopting a
growth mindset enables students to remain
engaged and achieve well. Students with a
growth mindset outperform controls because they
believe in effort and are resilient in the face of
setbacks. Teachers who have a growth mindset
have students who improve faster.
Changing students’ mindsets from a fixed (I can’t
do any better) to a growth (I can improve) raises
their achievement scores.
Our aim should be for each student to develop
their potential. To this we need to praise effort
not intelligence and improvement over
accomplishment.
Momentum
Many students develop rapidly during their
primary school years only to slow and falter in the
early adolescent years.
We need to get better at capturing the skills,
leadership qualities and passions of students as
they enter these years.
Copyright Andrew Fuller www.andrewfuller.com.au 2
Planning
Lot’s of teenagers would have trouble planning
their way out of a wet paper bag with a fine wind
behind them. This is because their prefrontal
cortex is being refined during these years. Most
teenagers should have a sign on their foreheads
that says” closed for re-construction”.
While the connections in the prefrontal cortex are
being refined or pruned, it is also a time of great
opportunity. It is in these years that thinking,
problem solving and creativity can surge if
nourished.
It’s all about the frontal lobes at this time and
once they are wired, they are harder to change.
Key things we can do to boost the performance
of the adolescent brain:
* structure learning so that most of the initial
organisation is done for them. They will absorb
the structures later;
* provide opportunities for mastery learning; and
* give them activities that develop the frontal
lobes- prediction games, anticipation of
consequences, mazes, discussions about the
long term effects of social issues.
Emotional Processing
Adolescents like intensity, excitement, and
arousal. They are drawn to music videos that
shock and bombard the senses. Teenagers flock
to horror and slasher movies.
At this time, hormones become more powerful
and adolescent’s brains show more activity in the
emotional parts of the brain (known as the limbic
system) than they do in the planning and impulse
control parts of the brain (known as the frontal
lobes and the pre-frontal cortex).
This means that adolescents learn best when
there is emotion involved!
Stress
When emotional, adolescents have lower activity
in their frontal lobes and more activity in the
amygdala than adults.
The amygdala is your own security watchdog. It
keeps you safe. If it becomes over-activated, it
moves into survival mode and not much learning
occurs. This means that classrooms that are
threatening, sarcastic, shaming or have teachers
who yell are non-learning classrooms.
Adolescents display considerably poorer
cognitive performance under circumstances
involving everyday stresses and time-limited
situations than under optimal test conditions.
Optimal Support
Adolescents achieve improved results when they
have deeper relationships with fewer teachers
than a variety of teachers.
A pod is a group of 3 teachers who between
them care for the learning, emotional needs of a
group of students as well as being the main link
point for family liaison in high schools. Ideally the
3 teachers continue with the same group- of
students throughout their time at the school.
Most students will be able to relate to all 3
teachers. Some students however are unable to
hear mixed news (praise as well as suggestions)
from the one person. For these students we split
the roles of the pod into:
Manager
Boundary Rider Advocate
The boundary rider’s job is to put consequences
in place. The advocate’s role is to engage and
support the student and to remove themselves
whenever possible, from disciplinary processes.
The manager’s role is to oversee the process
and to have the final say in the event of
professional disagreements about student
management.
Successful teachers of adolescents base their
work on relationships rather than power.
Teachers need to “own” their own classrooms
so they can develop support and routines,
implement guided practice and create a visually
interesting, engaging and safe learning
environment.
Copyright Andrew Fuller www.andrewfuller.com.au 3
Teach the main skills
As early adolescence is a time when the neural
pathways and habits of success are laid down, it
makes sense for us to assess and then create
improvements in the following skills:
* Removing unnecessary noise- this means having
some moments of a lesson in silence.
* Identifying similarities & differences- how
concepts overlap and differ.
* Summarising & Note taking – paraphrasing and
organising information.
* Reinforcing effort & providing recognition for
that effort.
* Homework & deliberate practice
* Presenting new information non- verbally
* Co-operative learning- teamwork.
* Setting objectives & providing feedback
* Generating & testing hypotheses
* Using cues, questions & advance organizers
Repetition
It takes humans 24 repetitions to get to 80% of
competence. Repetition also builds mastery and
synaptogenesis.
One major implication of this research is that
schools should think long and hard before
sacrificing regular (daily) exposure to the
information in each subject area for longer
learning times but fewer repetitions.
Spaced repetition pays off even more
“Spaced repetition” has a positive impact on
learning. Instead of concentrating the study of
information in single blocks, learners encounter
the same material in briefer sessions spread over
a longer period of time.
Spaced repetition produces impressive results. A
study completed at the University of CaliforniaSan
Diego in 2007 found that Year 8 history
students who relied on a spaced approach to
learning had nearly double the retention rate of
students who studied the same material in
consolidated units.
This research implies that the more times
students encounter information the more likely
they are to understand and retain it.
Reading
Today’s early adolescents read differently than
most adults do. If we track eye movements,
most adults read in a zigzag fashion down the
page, most teenagers read in a F pattern.
Most teenagers won't read texts thoroughly in a
word-by-word manner. The first two paragraphs
must state the most important information.
There's some hope that users will actually read
this material, though they'll probably read more of
the first paragraph than the second.
Start subheads, paragraphs, and bullet points
with information-carrying words that teens will
notice when scanning down the left side of your
content in the final stem of their F-pattern.
They'll read the third word on a line much less
often than the first two words.
Expectations for themselves
Teenagers who have lower expectations for
themselves ask for help less often and are less
likely to use feedback to improve outcomes.
While we want to praise effort more than ability,
we also want to make sure our students know
that we think they are capable and clever.
Numerous teenagers are sapped of motivation by
the fear of failure. Shame is toxic to learning.
Build a classroom culture in which “having a go”
is expected and mistakes are looked upon as
steps towards a correct answer.
Tuned into the peer group
Teenagers are highly tuned into the opinions of
those around them, especially their peers. They
tend to be preoccupied with what others think
and will sacrifice success for social acceptance.
This means we need to manage the peer culture
by giving all students ways to be helpful, have a
go at new activities and succeed.
Nothing overcomes reluctance and low
motivation faster than challenges and a whiff of
success. In this area we need to emulate
computer game designers.
Copyright Andrew Fuller www.andrewfuller.com.au 4
Listening
Between 5 and 10 % of teenagers have hearing
and central auditory processing disorders. This
often leads to language problems in vocabulary
comprehension, speech reading writing and
decoding information. These students spend 3
times as much time decoding information and
often never store it in long term memory.
For this reason we need to keep instructions
simple and deliver them in small steps, repeat
them, check that they are understood (for
example, “now Harry tell me what we are doing”)
and back key messages up with visuals.
Visual Learners
Most early adolescents are visual learners.
When new information is presented orally with no
image present only 10% of what was presented
is retained 72 hours later. If a picture is added
the retention rate rises to 65%.
Multi-tasking
Doesn’t work.
Memory
Memory is increased by repetition but is also
increased when the new information is used to
perform some tasks. Describing the new
information in different forms and organising the
new information so it is meaningful also
increases retention.
We need to provide well-structured practice
opportunities and frequent reviews.
Graphic organisers outline processes and
procedures can also be used to enhance. Aim
to create multiple descriptions that can be used
flexibly (diagrams, outlines story boards,
cartoons, hierarchies)
Sleep Patterns
Most teenagers’ brains aren’t ready to wake up
until 8 or 9 in the morning, Adolescents need
more sleep than they did as children and that
their circadian rhythms appear to be set later
than children’s or adults.
Sleep declines from an average of 8.3 hours in
Year 8, 7.5 hours in Year 10 to 7 hours in Year
12. Most teens function optimally on 9.25 hours.
Sleep deprivation is associated with weight gain,
moodiness, poorer attention, and increased use
of caffeinated stimulant drinks to become alert.
Adolescents getting only 5-6 hours of sleep lose
out on the last two REM cycles and thereby
reduce the amount of time the brain has to
consolidate information into long term storage.
Assessment
While frequent testing does not improve learning,
exposing teenagers to quizzes, puzzles and short
challenging tests inoculates them against later
exam anxiety.
The most effective study strategy is to review and
study the entire subject, test the entire subject,
study the items you got wrong, and then test the
entire subject again.
Teaching students how to revise and prepare for
exams should begin in the early adolescent
years.
Passion Projects.
Students learn best when the information is
emotionally engaging and is relevant to them.
The perceived relevance of the topic is more
powerful in improving learning than whether you
have a student or teacher centred curriculum. It
is more powerful than providing electives or
negotiating curriculum.
Shedding some of the “busy” work that plagues
most schools to free up time for students to
develop passion projects makes sense.
One possible structure of a school day that would
suit early adolescents would be to have skill
sessions in the morning followed by passion
projects on at least a few afternoons each week.
Students completing projects of interest to them
results in amazing leaps in learning. The findings
of Big Picture Schools, Montessori education and
Challenge–based learning are impressive in this
area and show that these types of projects can
contain rigour and mastery.
#Adolescent #Learning
#AdolescentLearning
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