Uncommon Sense Teaching: Practical Insights in Brain Science to Help Students Learn

I bought this book because I participated in the Learning How to Learn MOOC. This book should be essential reading for all teachers. Easily understandable language and explains complex processes. At the same time very practical as well. Also a very good read, I love it. I can recommend it to all teachers who want to improve their teaching methods.

To better understand the learning process, it’s an excellent book.

Achei todos os capitulos relevantes, uma linguagem fácil e gostosa de ler. Usei muito os conceitos e questionmamentos em treinamentos para professores.

Well written and easy to understand - not a science textbook at all. If you are debating as to whether to buy the book, it’s a pleasure to read, but unnecessary for the course.

This book is a collaboration by three authors; Barb Oakley and Terry Sejnowski, creators of the popular course “Learning how to Learn,” and Beth Rogowsky, a lifelong educator and expert in behavioral neuroscience. The goal of the book is to give teachers new insights into how we learn, by using the latest neuroscience and cognition research.The book is written using basic language, and oversimplified examples, so that it should be fairly easy to understand even if you have no familiarity with the concepts at all. At first I was surprised by these elementary explanations; in fact many concepts are explained with pictures and analogies that I might use if I were explaining these ideas to children. Later I understood why the authors took this approach, because they actually recommend using some of the same images and analogies to explain certain ideas to your students. This seems like a good idea, because you can't teach children something if you don't really understand it yourself; and they have made this information easy to understand.Each chapter starts by introducing concepts, and giving the reader information about an aspect of how we learn and remember. Then there are specific activities and strategies suggested to use with your students. There are also general teaching tips listed, that have something to do with using the information on a daily basis. Each chapter ends with a review list of key ideas in the chapter, to highlight the most important concepts.There are ten main chapters, covering many different topics, including: simple anatomy of neurons, long term memory vs working memory, retrieval practice, active learning, declarative and procedural pathways, procrastination, habits, collaborative learning, online teaching, and lesson plans. Again, teachers should not be intimidated by the names of these concepts, even if they are unfamiliar, because everything is thoroughly explained in simple terms.Overall, I think that this book is a valuable resource for teachers, or anyone that deals with children. Using this information can help you come up with new ways to reach your students, and keep them engaged and learning. I appreciate the authors work in breaking down some advanced neuroscience into simple language and useful activities, so it is easy for teachers to use right away.

I've read a lot of books about learning and this one is just the best for the teacher point of view. It sums up a lot of things I've learned along the years.Make it stick is the next read if you haven't already.