1.

0 Orchestrated Immersion At the heart of orchestrated immersion are the key principles that: students must experience learning in a variety of forms the learning needs to go beyond mere surface level information learners are encouraged to make connections with prior learning new information should be acquired in manageable chunks which are built up into meaningful wholes students experience a sense of discovery when learning, rather than be passive recipients of knowledge handed down by the teacher The orchestrated bit of the phrase implies that the teacher needs to stage manage the whole event, setting up activities, providing materials and resources, and often providing a kind of road map through the learning to be acquired. But it is the students themselves who must take the lead and do the work to uncover the information, process it, elaborate it and incorporate it into their existing knowledge or create new knowledge structures for themselves. A key feature of successful orchestrated immersion is that students have the opportunity to work cooperatively with other students with whom they can discuss, hypothesize, agree, disagree and so on. The idea is that the process of finding their own way through the learning, with the help of others and using the brains natural capacities, drives and desire to find meaning will result in students making stronger connections in their learning, which in turn will lead to a greater chance of this learning being transferred to the long term memory. A major ingredient of successful orchestrated immersion is enjoyment. So the more ways teachers can wrap up the learning experiences in enjoyable activities the more chance there is of success. Thats not to say everything has to degenerate into mindless games or messing about. The challenge for us teachers is to take our students on a journey of serious fun whose aim is to help students see real meaning in what they learn.

Real Life example: As the term orchestrated immersion implies, the teacher becomes the orchestrator, or the architect, designing experiences that will lead students to make

meaningful connections. A second grade teachers successful efforts to teach punctuation, specifically commas, periods, and exclamation points, serves as a good example of how a teacher may use what students already know to teach what is abstract and unfamiliar. After giving her students verbal explanations of what each of these punctuation marks means (the comma, slow down; the period, stop; and the exclamation mark, emphasis), the teacher had her students read out loud. But the verbal explanations she had given them did not affect the way they read. Finally, exasperated, she had them put on their coats and follow her outside. She told them, I am going to read to you and I want you to walk around in a circle. When I say comma I want you to slooow down, whenever I say period I want you to stop dea d in your tracks, and when I say exclamation mark I want you to jump up and down. She tried this for five minutes with perfect success. When they went back inside and read, all of them slowed down at the commas, paused at periods, and used emphasis at exclamations points.

2.0 Relaxed alertness is the brain's optimal state for learning and remembering important concepts. Relaxed alertness means a child feels comfortable enough to learn, yet challenged enough to achieve goals. This brain state is usually first achieved by a child experiencing a small success. Upon garnering more success, it becomes a way of thinking and learning that seems natural for the student. When relaxed alertness becomes a way of life for a student, it's actually easier for them to learn new things. All learning is not about the grade, but about teaching students how to enjoy the exploration of new material. The classroom is the best place to teach students how to explore, and examine new topics. Students who experience relaxed alertness believe in themselves and always want to challenge themselves to be better than the day before. They also bounce back easily from failures; possibly because of their confidence based on previous successes. Finally, they take charge of their learning by setting goals for themselves and using strategies they've learned to help them be good problem solvers. A key principle of brain based learning is that the brain performs best when it is free from undue threat and danger. Some positive stress in the classroom, such as the excitement of learning something new or doing something novel, is good because it has a positive motivational power. But if we want students to feel relaxed and alert we need to make them feel: thats its ok to make mistakes in fact they should make some mistakes in order to learn

we are actively encouraging them to take responsibility for their own learning learning is something to be enjoyed rather than endured we believe in their ability to make continued progress, whatever their perceived level of ability is at any given time

they are equal partners with us in the learning process

How To?

1
Create a safe environment for learning by being positive in your classroom. Avoid harsh criticism and instead focus on what the students are doing correctly, while gently redirecting wrong behaviors or answers. Help the students to learn how to do things by example, not by telling them what they are doing wrong.

2
Perform a relaxation exercise at the beginning and end of each day. This could be progressive muscle relaxation, such as the tightening and release of various muscle groups; guided imagery, reading from a relaxing script while your students visualize the scenario; or listening to relaxing music. The relaxation exercise will help the students to get into a positive frame of mind, making them ready to learn and take in the maximum amount of information.

3
Assist your students in developing attainable goals for the week, month and year in the classroom. Use graphs or charts to help students see their progress, which will motivate them to continue working hard toward the end result.

4
Praise children frequently and be specific in your words. Instead of simply saying, "Good job!" tell a child, "You did an excellent job writing your

letters today. Keep up the good work!" Specific praise lets a child know what she does well and how she should continue to behave.

3.0 Active Processing All learning involves some kind of active processing because the brain process everything we see, hear, do and feel. In brain based teaching, active processing means that students are given the opportunity to: find information for themselves [often from resources carefully produced in advance by the teacher] use trial and error to arrive at the right conclusion use patterns and routines to make sense of their new knowledge become confused as a first step to understanding new information: this means they have to be allowed to get things wrong sometimes choose different ways of making sense of the learning, using different kinds of intelligences