This Week's Jungle Monkey

I had the pleasure of going into jungle this week and seeing a teacher putting into practice some new strategies he had just learned...

The video below starts off with Mr. Thompson giving his students a few minutes of mindful breathing.  Mindfulness puts students into a relaxed state so they can be ready to learn. It does this by deactivating the amygdala in the brain.

Check out this information from the Scientific American Blog..

MRI scans show that after an eight-week course of mindfulness practice, the brain’s “fight or flight” center, the amygdala, appears to shrink. This primal region of the brain, associated with fear and emotion, is involved in the initiation of the body’s response to stress.

As the amygdala shrinks, the pre-frontal cortex – associated with higher order brain functions such as awareness, concentration and decision-making – becomes thicker. 

As the video progresses you will see Mr. Thompson use more brain research.  He describes his "Memory Palace" that he uses to try to remember something.  Read more on Memory Palaces below from Art of Memory.com-Memory techniques wiki. 

A Memory Palace is an imaginary location in your mind where you can store mnemonic images. The most common type of memory palace involves making a journey through a place you know well, like a building or town. Along that journey there are specific locations that you always visit in the same order. The location are called loci, which is Latin for locations. (Singular: locus; Plural: loci)

How to Create a Memory Palace

1. Step 1: For your first memory palace, try choosing a place that you know well, like your home or office.
2. Step 2: Plan out the whole route -- for example: front door, shoe rack, bathroom, kitchen, living room, etc. Some people find that going clockwise is helpful, but it isn't necessary. Eventually, you will have many memory palaces. You will also be able to revise the memory palace after you test it a few times, so don't worry if it's perfect on the first try.
3. Step 3: Now take a list of something that you want to memorize -- a shopping list of 20 items is a good place to start: carrots, bread, milk, tea, oats, apples, etc.
4. Step 4: Take one or two items at a time and place a mental image of them in each locus of your memory palace. Try to exaggerate the images of the items and have them interact with the location. For example, if the first item is "carrots" and the first locus in your memory palace is the front door, picture some giant carrots opening up your front door.
5. Step 5: Make the mnemonic images come alive with your senses. Exaggeration of the images and humor can help.

After reviewing the memory palace strategy, Mr. Thompson transitions into a review using Quiz, Quiz, Trade.  There are so many things I could write about all the excellent strategies inherent in his Lesson, but as they say on Reading Rainbow..."Don't take my word for it!"

It's so great to see you all learning new strategies and trying them out!  Our Striving Readers Team is getting the opportunity to learn new strategies and fresh ideas by observing in one classroom for 10 minutes by Fall Break!  This is FANTASTIC!  If anyone else wants to take part this would be so cool!  I can't wait to hear about your visits and see what you learn from each other!  Keep on learning, learners!!!!