Teens and the Brain: Love and Logic Day 3: Morning Session

So much great stuff that Jen got today out of the Love and Logic course from the session she did this morning called Teaching and Learning in a Brain Friendly Classroom, by Larry Miller.

Larry said a lot of great stuff but one thing in particulair was this:

Kids retain the first 10 minutes of class and the last 5 minutes. All the rest is a blur.

So...knowing that...how does that effect our Sunday Morning times as well as small groups?

A couple thoughts:

1. Put a lot of time, effort, intention, and fun, in the first 10 minutes. It is going to set the precedence for what a kid remembers.

2. Put a lot more work into what I leave kids with, a challenge, and a reminder of God's wild love for us.

3. One of the ways of recapturing the "middle ground" is to divide up your class into "acts" like a play. Use creative disturbances to keep the attention span (about 12-13 minutes for middle schoolers) and they'll remember the first 3 minutes of each "act" and the last 2.

We do a lot of this anyway with middle schoolers, but I appreciated the reminder to mix things up. I probably fail at this more than I admit.


Here are a couple other freebies from the class that Jen passed on to me:

~our brians are actually light pink, not gray. They are seen as gray after death because all the blood has left it.

~Our brains dehydrate first.

~Blueberries are the absolute best brain food. Lots of antioxidents (sp)