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Malki Feuer

Dr. Malki Feuer has an MA and EdD in Jewish education and administration, having researched factors contributing to teacher satisfaction. While teaching and working in education for over 20 years, she became interested in impactful learning and the role it plays in Judaic studies curriculum development. Following her passion, she transitioned to curriculum development full-time, partnering with schools across the US to help them achieve their curricular vision.

Teaching that Leads to Learning

Why is it that years later we still remember the song listing the 54 parshiot in the Torah, but we can’t remember what we came into the kitchen to get? Why is it that our brains retain and store some information while filtering out others? Is there a way we can intentionally plan and teach so that our students will enduringly retain and store what was taught?

While there is much that science still does not know about brain function, interaction of memory warehouses, and long-term retention, it has successfully identified chemical reactions triggered by sensory input that have the potential to induce long-term potentiation (LTP), the chemical process associated with learning and memory.

 

How Does Learning Happen?

Let’s quickly review how information enters the brain where it is either attended to, filtered out or retained. We will then explore how neuroscience can inform and drive the curriculum-building process.

Not a science person? That’s okay, me neither, we’ll proceed slowly or skip to item 5.

 

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8 sensory systems

How Do Our Brains Learn?

Our brains are wired to learn by interacting with the world around us through our eight sensory systems (see image below). We are therefore going to approach the construct of learning as composite sensory experiences that enter through these systems signaling the brain through chemical reactions and nerve impulses.

 

With all the stimuli around us, we would expect our brains to be in constant overload from all the sensory experiences, so why aren’t they?

Every time we experience a sensory input, a chemical reaction is initiated and a signal is sent. Based on the strength of the frequency of the sensory experience, a corresponding chemical reaction and nerve impulse signal our brains to either filter out unimportant information or attend to important information.

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How does the brain determine what strength level is needed to signal the brain that something is important?

The greater the sensory experience, the greater the levels of glutamate, an excitatory neurotransmitter or chemical messenger, produced by the brain to relay messages. When released in larger quantities, glutamate triggers chemical reactions that depolarize the postsynaptic neuron causing the expulsion of the magnesium ion that is blocking the NMDA channel. With the release of the magnesium ion, new chemical reactions are induced ultimately resulting in LTP that tells the brain to pay attention, retain or store in long-term memory (dictated by the varying strength levels of the sensory signal—see image at right). When lower levels of glutamate are released that are not enough to trigger a chemical reaction that leads to attention or retention, the information is filtered out of the brain.

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What leads to a greater sensory experience? 

Sufficient repetition or high-frequency signal strength.

I like to think of repetition as a person repeatedly jiggling a door that is stuck until it finally gives. By contrast, high-frequency signal is like a single hard strike on a strength tester game, where the one strike must be strong enough to make the bell ring (see images at right).

How can I intentionally teach with higher frequency sensory signals?

What must happen in the classroom that will cause a strong sensory experience, causing the brain to attend, retain, and store the sensory input in the student’s memory, ultimately leading to enduring and impactful learning?

Teaching students in a way that causes them to pause and ask, “Huh, what do I think about that?”

It’s about teaching students in a way that promotes engagement, intrigue, exploration and discovery while providing students with an active and primary role in the process, not just a front-row seat. A classroom that is student-centered and student-driven can arouse a student’s natural curiosity. It’s about propelling students to face challenges and dilemmas, and presenting the material in a way that students start to see their own reflections in the characters’ faces and stories.

As clinical psychologist Dr. Rachel Levine stated, “We either find a way to tap into what is cognitively or emotionally exciting for them, or we lose them.”

What are some examples illustrating what this looks like in the classroom, and how can we intentionally plan for enduring connections using Judaic content?

Below are a few examples demonstrating how to facilitate meaningful (cognitive or emotional) connections within the Judaic studies curriculum.

  1. When learning the first two mishnayot in Brachot, lead the students to explore the life-altering reframing of the mitzvah to recite the Shema in the early morning and again at night. Guide the students to uncover that their day’s direction and regulation can be easily influenced and shaped by simply taking the time in the morning and at night to remember what is truly important and primary.
  2. Many teachers and students alike find the first chapter of Bamidbar to be dry and technical. What personal relevance and meaning can be found in counting Bnei Yisrael, naming the tribal heads, solidifying the tribes, identifying the army soldiers, delineating the role of the Levites, assigning camping locations and assuring that Bnei Yisrael did as God commanded?
    An intriguing perspective can be uncovered through the lens of adolescent maturation.  The chapter presents Bnei Yisrael in a transitive stage from infancy, having no control over their own choices in Egypt, to adolescents in the desert who are now responsible for their own decisions. In this chapter, God reassures Bnei Yisrael that they have all the necessary tools (Torah), guidance (Moshe, Aharon and the tribal heads), and infrastructure (tribes, camping and army preparations) to succeed during this new transitional stage while experiencing unconditional love (counting, especially of names and not just numbers). This unpacking culminates in the students’ recognition and self-reflection of their own adolescent transition and current struggle.
  3. When referencing Tannaim or Amoraim, instead of focusing on when and where they lived, share an interesting and unforgettable story that differentiates them from all the other names and people they are learning about. How striking and memorable are the stories of when Rabbi Yochanan and Reish Lakish first met, and again towards the end of their lives?
  4. When teaching Hebrew’s past tense, set it to an upbeat and fun song that the kids love singing repeatedly while allowing for the students to add a dance with hand motions.
  5. When teaching Gemara function words, throw them into your conversational speech and make it fun and funny for the students. Nothing like a good mimah nafshakh retort!

The important thing is to ask yourself, will this lesson or activity yield a strong or weak signal? Will the brain retain or filter the input out? These specific examples are not important. What’s important is that you are intentionally planning opportunities for intrigue, humor, exploration, rumination and reflection; giving your students a reason to care and connect.

Zooming out and thinking about the broader curriculum, how can a school design a scope and sequence (or unit plans) that will increase stronger signals and opportunities for impactful learning while decreasing weaker signals and avoiding learning that will be filtered out of the brain?

In other words, how can we intentionally design a curriculum that will optimize our students’ learning experience resulting in the retention and reflection of what is being taught?

I suggest ensuring that you are first working with a healthy, robust, aligned and spiraled curriculum that teaches and reinforces a skill from introduction through mastery (and maintenance). I would then check that the curriculum includes the why: Why are we choosing to expend our valuable and scarce time teaching this unit while skipping others?

The curriculum should then be inspected for items that generate weaker signals relaying to the brain that the information is unimportant or irrelevant information and should therefore be filtered out. Rethink and replace these items with high frequency or repetitive sensory experience that will make a lasting impression on the brain.

Lastly, look at your school’s scope and sequence (or unit plans). Ask yourself, does it:

  • Explicitly identify and sequentially track each individual content standard from introduction to mastery?
  • Streamline the learning outcomes, ensuring smooth and attainable jumps from component skills to their composite skill?
  • Introduce a reasonable number of new skills and content standards, avoiding cognitive overload?
  • Contain standards that are developmentally appropriate and attainable for the students?
  • Review and spiral prior skills?
  • Lead or connect to a skill, standard or understanding that will be meaningful to the students?
  • Address the essential question: “Why am I teaching this? To what end?"

When designing a whole school curriculum, it is imperative that large gaps or jumps, cognitive overload, developmentally-inappropriate goals or misalignment are identified and removed. If not, these types of big learning jumps or gaps often present in the classroom as boredom, pushback, confusion, frustration, disengagement, overwhelm or shutdown.

As learning shifts and focuses more on the 21st century learning (i.e. critical thinking, collaboration, creativity), can these skills be intentionally planned for and taught as well?

Yes! If we want these skills to be intentionally taught, then they too must be identified, charted, spiraled, and explicitly communicated. Remember, all learning expectations should be planned, intentional and communicated. (See images below)

For example, are students in your school expected to learn to think critically? To develop and rethink foundational cornerstone understandings and beliefs? To form constructive student skills and habits? To learn differently depending on their learning profile? If these items are not identified and explicitly communicated, how are teachers supposed to know to teach them, exactly what to teach them, when to teach them and to what degree of mastery to expect from them?. The more content standards left to an individual’s discretion, the more likely they will not be learned and retained.

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Section from the Talmud Logical Reasoning Alignment Chart Grades 5-8
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How Important is it that Students are Taught in a Way that Leads to Learning and Retention?

“A life full of unconnected events, of errors that do not lead to any lessons and of emotions without the ability to remember them, is no life at all. Memory is precisely the capacity that allows us to connect experiences, learn and make sense of our lives.” (Eduardo Camina and Francisco Güell, "The Neuroanatomical, Neurophysiological and Psychological Basis of Memory: Current Models and Their Origins.")