Worried about your kids not achieving good grades?
Friends and family giving all sorts of random advice?
Kids not enthusiastic about learning and studying?
Aims of the hack
Anatomy of the Hack
The Details
Mindset
A child is more likely to learn if they accept and adopt the mindset that their intelligence is not static, that they can improve. This is a phenomena that has been extensively studied by psychology professor Carol Dweck. A child is able to learn and achieve more if they have the mindset that they are able to master any topic as long as they can keep practicing it. If their mindset is wrong, and they think that they were born 'dumb' then they are much more likely to give in to failures and not attempt to bridge the gap of understanding.
Their Brainology program helps students understand that intelligence and learning is a trained skill that can be excercised, and shifts the mindset of the student to one that is resilient and able to overcome failures on the learning journey.
Paying Attention
Unless your child actually pays attention to something, it will only engage their brain in a fleeting non lasting way. So how do we hack their brain so it is in a receptive state, and is ready to take on information?
Think about when you ask them to perform a chore for you or do a task, and they are busy playing a game. They will acknowledge your request, and possibly even intend to actually do what you have asked, However 15 seconds later, the thought is completely gone and they will continue to do what they were doing before, blissfully ignorant of your interaction. They did not pay proper attention, they did not engage with the intent of .
A key to this is asking questions. If you start with a question, the brain engages a few facilities to try and work out the answer - memory, reasoning, intuition, estimation, context. It looks for all the information that it knows, or can deduce about what it is being asked about. The last two sentences are very important, and there is an enormous volume of work that has been done to understand how the brain reasons and learns. but for our purposes, you have just engaged a very very powerful learning mechanism - curiosity. It kills cats - but also enormously supercharges learning.. The first part of that sentence was a joke of course. I love cats.
Kids are naturally curious - their brain is hungry for knowledge and experience and making connections about and between things. So we just need to get the brain primed for new knowledge by asking some questions.
Example: If you are teaching a young child about fractions, do you start by hammering them with lots of problems? I would start by asking some questions:
Example: A high school student is learning about Ancient history
Get in the Right Mood
When you a re angry, frustrated, sad etc studies have shown that your brain resorts to using your 'lizard brain' to function - it effectively shuts down parts of your brain and uses a specific part of the brain to deal with the stress you are under. This is not a good state of mind to be in for effective learning.
There is a great deal of chemistry going on in a brain that is affected by your mood. Seratonin, Dopamine and Acetylcholine are all directly linked to your ability and receptiveness to learning. It is beyond the scope of what you need to know to detail the effect of these, other than to understand that it super important to be relaxed and in a stress free mood when applying some focused study.
So how to we get in the right mood to study? This will of course be something that is particular to the individual but here are some great examples that will lift your mood before a learning session:
Imprinting something in memory forever
To truly remember something we need to focus our attention on something, which gets it into our 'working memory', then allow the brain to commit it to long term memory. Note: This section is not a deep-dive about memory - we will cover that topic with more specific details in another hack. Here I want to outline the most important aspects with respect to learning.
So how do we commit something to Long term memory?
Reviewing information.
Teach the information to someone else.
If you can apply the following to your review you will quickly become a master of the information
Summary
When learning something
- Ensure you are in the right mood - happy and content. Don't be an angry learner.
- Ask questions before you study. Write down the questions as part of your notes.
- Review the information regularly, including a review of all the questions
- Teach the information to someone else.
Some great online study tools:
A great resource to further your knowledge on studying: http://studygs.net/
An awesome tool to take and organise notes and materials: http://evernote.com/
Friends and family giving all sorts of random advice?
Kids not enthusiastic about learning and studying?
Aims of the hack
- Intelligence mindset - it is not set - it can be improved
- Learn how to learn
- Make learning fun and intuitive and easy
Anatomy of the Hack
- Adopt the mindset that you can improve your intelligence
- You cannot remember something unless you pay attention to it
- Get in the right mood
- Imprint in memory forever
The Details
Mindset
A child is more likely to learn if they accept and adopt the mindset that their intelligence is not static, that they can improve. This is a phenomena that has been extensively studied by psychology professor Carol Dweck. A child is able to learn and achieve more if they have the mindset that they are able to master any topic as long as they can keep practicing it. If their mindset is wrong, and they think that they were born 'dumb' then they are much more likely to give in to failures and not attempt to bridge the gap of understanding.
Their Brainology program helps students understand that intelligence and learning is a trained skill that can be excercised, and shifts the mindset of the student to one that is resilient and able to overcome failures on the learning journey.
Paying Attention
Unless your child actually pays attention to something, it will only engage their brain in a fleeting non lasting way. So how do we hack their brain so it is in a receptive state, and is ready to take on information?
Think about when you ask them to perform a chore for you or do a task, and they are busy playing a game. They will acknowledge your request, and possibly even intend to actually do what you have asked, However 15 seconds later, the thought is completely gone and they will continue to do what they were doing before, blissfully ignorant of your interaction. They did not pay proper attention, they did not engage with the intent of .
A key to this is asking questions. If you start with a question, the brain engages a few facilities to try and work out the answer - memory, reasoning, intuition, estimation, context. It looks for all the information that it knows, or can deduce about what it is being asked about. The last two sentences are very important, and there is an enormous volume of work that has been done to understand how the brain reasons and learns. but for our purposes, you have just engaged a very very powerful learning mechanism - curiosity. It kills cats - but also enormously supercharges learning.. The first part of that sentence was a joke of course. I love cats.
Kids are naturally curious - their brain is hungry for knowledge and experience and making connections about and between things. So we just need to get the brain primed for new knowledge by asking some questions.
Example: If you are teaching a young child about fractions, do you start by hammering them with lots of problems? I would start by asking some questions:
- How do we share this apple between us
- How do we share these 10 lollies evenly between 5 children.
Example: A high school student is learning about Ancient history
- Ask yourself what is interesting about this, what am I curious about
- Compile a list of questions from textbooks
- Compile a list of questions from previous exams/tests
Get in the Right Mood
- DO NOT STUDY WHEN YOU ARE IN A BAD MOOD (Sad, Angry, Frusutrated)
When you a re angry, frustrated, sad etc studies have shown that your brain resorts to using your 'lizard brain' to function - it effectively shuts down parts of your brain and uses a specific part of the brain to deal with the stress you are under. This is not a good state of mind to be in for effective learning.
There is a great deal of chemistry going on in a brain that is affected by your mood. Seratonin, Dopamine and Acetylcholine are all directly linked to your ability and receptiveness to learning. It is beyond the scope of what you need to know to detail the effect of these, other than to understand that it super important to be relaxed and in a stress free mood when applying some focused study.
So how to we get in the right mood to study? This will of course be something that is particular to the individual but here are some great examples that will lift your mood before a learning session:
- Listen to beautiful music
- Play some music if you know a musical instrument
- Listen to or watch some comedy
- Surround yourself with happy people
- Do some light exercise
- Play with a pet
Imprinting something in memory forever
To truly remember something we need to focus our attention on something, which gets it into our 'working memory', then allow the brain to commit it to long term memory. Note: This section is not a deep-dive about memory - we will cover that topic with more specific details in another hack. Here I want to outline the most important aspects with respect to learning.
So how do we commit something to Long term memory?
- You ask questions, which primes the Brain to receive information. We already covered this.
- You review information to reinforce and lock it in
- Teach the information to someone else
Reviewing information.
- When you are learning something you want to review the information (including all your questions) very regularly within the first 4 days (definitely daily).
- After that review the information weekly, and then monthly.
- Review information in different environments. In a quiet library, in your study group, around a noisy kitchen table. This will help condition your brain to be receptive even if there are distractions.
- Have someone else ask you questions about the information
- Review the information in different ways: verbally with someone (using just your memory, with minimum reference to your written material), on paper, by drawing just pictures, by closing your eyes and visualizing the information.
Teach the information to someone else.
- This will engage your brain in a way that reinforces the knowledge - verbalizing the information, drawing pictures, asking questions
- It forces you to not skip little details
- opens up your knowledge on a subject to someone else's point of view - parents, siblings, peers, teachers etc
If you can apply the following to your review you will quickly become a master of the information
- Break down everything into small logical parts
- Connect the parts in a logical order of need-to-know
- Completely understand each part
Summary
When learning something
- Ensure you are in the right mood - happy and content. Don't be an angry learner.
- Ask questions before you study. Write down the questions as part of your notes.
- Review the information regularly, including a review of all the questions
- Teach the information to someone else.
Some great online study tools:
- http://www.studystack.com/
- http://memorize.com/
- https://quizlet.com/
- https://www.examtime.com/online-study/
A great resource to further your knowledge on studying: http://studygs.net/
An awesome tool to take and organise notes and materials: http://evernote.com/