2. 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.
The teen brain responds to stimuli differently than the adult brain.
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.

3. The teen brain reacts in the same way to emotional threat as it does to physical threat.
The average teen needs more than 9 hours of sleep every night.
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 minutes to process new information.
10. There are no physical differences between kids of today and yesterday; only their attitudes have changed.

4. Learning Is
Connecting

5. How are teen brains different?

6. Neural Pruning Use it or lose it!
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!

8. What fires together wires together.
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.

9. Stages of Brain Development Parallels Piaget’s Stages
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
Four Stages of Brain Growth
Sensorimotor (birth-2years)
Large motor and visual system
Pre-operational (ages 2-7)
Language Acquisition
Concrete Operations (ages 7-11)
Manipulate thoughts and ideas
Formal Operations (ages 11-15)
Higher-order thinking
Only 50% of the adult population reaches the highest level of thinking.

10. What’s happening with teens’ emotions?
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…

12. Too much emotion… 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

13. What emotion is this woman expressing?

14. The teen brain responds differently to the outside world.
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.

15. 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.

17. Stop. Write a 1 to 2 sentence summary of what you’ve learned
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

18. 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

19. 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

20. 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

21. Dumb Decisions! 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!

22. 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

24. 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…

25. Highly Effective Strategies for Today’s Students:
Arguing/Defending Position
Project-based learning
Novelty
Technology incorporation
Self-assessment in relation to goal
Collaboration

26. Constructivist Learning
CONSTRUCTIVISM
Traditional Learning
Constructivist Learning
Part to whole, emphasize skills
Strict adherence to curriculum
Rely on textbooks, workbooks
Students are “blank slates”
Teachers disseminate info
Teachers seek correct answer to validate learning
Assessment/Teaching separate
Whole to part, emph. concepts
Pursue student questions
Rely on prim. sources, manip.
Students are thinkers
Teachers mediate, interact
Teachers seek students’ knowledge to make decisions
Assessment/Teaching are interwoven

27. 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.

29. 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?

30. How Are Today’s Kids Different?
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
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

31. 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. “

32. Stop!
Find the Reaction Guide you completed at the beginning of this session.
Check your answers.
Do you have any questions?

33. Ideas that “struck” you
Ticket Out the Door
Ideas that “struck” you
Questions you still have
Thoughts, connections or suggestions