WHAT: NW Noggin @ Sunnyside Environmental School

We did it!!!

Learning through mistakes!

WHERE: Sunnyside Environmental School, 3421 SE Salmon St, Portland, OR 97214

WHEN: Friday, January 20, 9:30am – 12:30pm 

Contacts: Asa Gervich & Jeremy Thomas, 4th Grade Teachers, Sunnyside School

Brains and Skills:
Learning through Mistakes!

Brains are constantly changing, depending on what you do, and what happens to you when you do it.

Your brain is a mass of interconnected wires, made up of cells, that let you see, hear, feel, think and move. When you’re born you have about 200 billion brain cells called neurons, and another 200 billion cells called glia, that reach out worm-like projections and form connections  –  known as synapses  –  with each other. This process is ACTIVE, takes energy (food and air) and requires light, sound, touch, muscle movements and other forms of experience.

It also kills a lot of your cells! In fact, by the time you’re done with high school, you’ll have only HALF as many neurons and glia left in your brain! But the ones that remain will be wired up into adult networks that properly route information from your eyes, ears and body to your brain for perception, cognition, and decision making  –  and from your brain out to your muscles to let you move well and act.

4th grade teacher Asa Gervich demonstrates his skill on the drums!

Sometimes  –  like when you’re learning something new  –  you have to think hard about how you’ll move, and you’ll naturally make a lot of errors. But each error, each mistake, is important feedback for your neurons and glia, which respond by physically changing how they connect. Your brain’s wiring changes, you get more skilled, and you’ll require less hard thinking and effort to play the guitar, make a basket, give a speech, ride a bicycle, drum!

There is a LOT of new research pointing to the importance of the cerebellum  –  our little brain  –  in so much of what we do implicitly;  that is, automatically and with ease and skill. And other deep areas of our brains, including the basal ganglia (a set of subcortical, “below the cortex” nuclei)  –  along with the cerebellum  –  also let us carry out these skilled, implicit, “feel the force” type behaviors.

We’ll join students to consider what skills and abilities we already have or are developing, and what it takes to re-wire frontal lobe, cerebellar and subcortical networks to make this happen (HINT: it takes practice, practice, practice  –  and learning from mistakes :).

Read for background

It’s Just Like Riding a Bike…Except It’s Not!

COMMITTED PARTICIPANTS
1. Bill Griesar, PSU/OHSU/NW Noggin
2. Jeff Leake, PSU/NW Noggin
3. Kai Hosea, PSU
4. Julian Rodriguez, PSU
5. Isabella Starr, PSU
6. Kristin Preston, PSU
7. Asha Powell-Stormberg, PSU
8. Kaya Burd, PSU
9. Allonte Barakat, PSU
10. Marc Chenard, PSU
11. Denesa Lockwood, OHSU/NW Noggin
12. Jadyn Harris, PSU
13. Martin Lemke, PSU
14. Roman Cimkovich, PSU

FROM NOGGIN VOLUNTEER KRISTIN PRESTON (PSU):

“It was wonderful to see the raw enthusiasm and excitement today at Sunnyside! The two fourth grade classes had so many intuitive questions including, why we do not understand the thoughts in our brains even though we are aware of our thoughts, and if a brain was transplanted, would the recipient gain a new brain or a new body?  Such philosophers are ten-year-olds!

We also discussed the development of neural pathways in the brain by revealing what happens as we improve at a skill we are learning. We discovered too through Asa’s demonstration on jazz playing, a mistake can simply be a new note in the song. Like walking through a field of tall grass, the more we do a thing, the more fortified the pathway becomes, and through making mistakes, we learn and improve all the more!”

FROM NOGGIN VOLUNTEER ASHA POWELL-STORMBERG (PSU):

“Working at the station with different animal brains was super fun. The kids were all so shocked at the size differences and thought that the brain size was correlated with the intelligence. It was fun to point out the brains with more grooves (surface area) had more intelligence then those with brains with less surface area.

I also thought it was interesting that both groups of kids wanted to know why we have headaches. It is hard to believe that a 10 year old would be suffering from headaches but I thought it was a great question. Can’t wait for the next teaching experience.”

FROM JEREMY THOMAS, 4th GRADE TEACHER

“…the report I got from folks was that it was AWESOME as usual. One of my volunteers said it was the most focused my class has ever been! Thanks so much!”