Brain Dump Strategy For Deeper Thinking

“Just hold all these complex ideas in your head. Then add in some new vocabulary. And form some questions. And don’t forget to make predictions!”

What are we asking students to do when we ask them to read a complex text or a novel? When you begin to break it all down, it’s easy to see that learner are being asked to recall or process several things at the same time. And that is, of course, an incredibly important skill to have. But how can we scaffold this to ensure that every student in the class has success with the more complex task? Enter . . . the brain dump!

Defining brain dump

A brain dump alows you to store information you know, somewhere else other than your brain (ie: on a piece of paper).Needless to say this frees up your brainpower so it can process information instead of remembering information.?It kinda acts as a security blanket for the brain.?

Why use a brain dump for retrieval practice

It is said that a brain dump is a method of retrieval practice, which you can learn more about .?Retrieval practice is getting the information OUT of the student’s brain (thus, “retrieval”) as opposed to puting information INTO a student’s brain.

Beaware that when it comes to helping students feel prepared for state testing (or any other test, for that matter),?a brain dump is a strategy that can be used throughout their life.?Almost every student come into a test with worry written all over him. We have all seen those faces walk into our classroom. A simple and effective technique is to boost their confidence in that they have learned much throughout the year, and that they will be able to retrieve what they have learned.??

Some of the advantages of using a brain dump in your classroom include:

• Builds student confidence.
• Reduces stress.
• Organizes their learning.
• It is an individual and personal approach to learning.
• Frees up their brain to think instead of remembering.

Brain dump a nice tool for learning

No matter how the idea of a brain dump as a lesson starter or review at the end of class is nothing new. But, what I’m starting to do is grow a brain dump for/with my students…one question at a time. This easily and fairly becomes a nice tool for students to use when approaching a summative assessment at the end of unit of material.

Using a Brain Dump when exploring a text

Reading is interactive and as I pointed out, reading a text involves a lot of different actions, particularly if the text is longer or is complex. Essential parts are that there’s characters to remember, settings to put into place, plots to follow. There’s the basic act of decoding, then there’s understanding the vocabulary - either by using context clues, remembering words or by using word roots. As a young reader the students then need to make predictions of what might happen next or why they think a particular character acted the way they did or why the author might have chosen to use that particular word. The act of reading is a complex one!

At the outset by creating a brain dump, students can get everything they’re thinking about the text out of their head and onto the page. They’re able to see what they do and don’t know and use their brain dump to create new connections.?

Teaching Brain Dumps for Reading

A good beginning maybe to start with a short piece of text - a poem or a picture book - which is familiar to the students.It may sound nice that on the first read through, students should simply listen to the text. On the second read through, you present the brain dump. As you read through it again, model writing down everything which comes into your head - from observations on the characters’ names (“Oh, that dog is called Trevor. I went to school with a Trevor. Just like the Trevor from Fireman Sam . . .“) to questions (“I wonder why Pig never seems to learn his lesson. Or does he learn his lesson and just constantly make new mistakes?”) to random thoughts which are unconnected to the text but came into your brain anyway (“I wonder if it’ll be wet at lunch?”)

Hey guys once you’ve modelled your brain dump you can use the same text or another familiar text for the students to have a try.The thing is that you should remind them that it doesn’t need to be perfect - it’s not being used for assessment - it’s just a way of helping them better understand the texts they are reading. One way is to give students plenty of opportunities to practice - remembering that they can be used with texts students use in history or civics, science or technology as well.

Brain Dump a Small Strategy With Big Impact

1. Here’s a strategy that we suggest sprinkle the brain dump into your bell work routine a minimum of 2 times per week, with an ungraded “quiz”?at the end of the week where you will give them 5 minutes to complete one quadrant.
2. Research has shown that the very act of being quizzed helps a student recall the material better.?You can read more about that here. ?These quizzes are more effectual when they are done in small increments over a long period of time.?In addition, when feedback is included, the benefits are even greater. We like to inform students of the upcoming Friday “quiz” early in the week, so they can prepare. We usually post this sweet note on the board and leave it there all week as a reminder.
3. Give a time limit.It happens that in the beginning, as you are learning the brain dump one quadrant at a time, give students around 5 minutes to reproduce the quadrant or section. The end goal is to have students making and reproducing the ENTIRE brain dump in 15 minutes or less.
4. This works wonderfully that after each ungraded “quiz”, have students fill in parts of the brain dump they are missing with a marker.?Remember when we talked earlier about how feedback gives an even greater return on retention? This is the ”feedback” portion, and you don’t have to do a thing.?No matter how by students filling in their own gaps on the brain dump, you are allowing them to make this strategy a personal and individual one.?This will show them the concepts in which they need to concentrate their efforts.
5. Helpful Hint: The teacher usually have a stack of brain-dumps copied onto bright yellow card stock and easily assessable to students.?They can use these to study from, or to grade their own brain dumps after a “quiz”.

And Finally…

A teacher on test day, we give each student a blank “scratch” paper.?We set the timer (just do this on your phone or watch, as a timer is an anxiety inducer for some folks) for 15 minutes.?No matter how during those 15 minutes, students will reproduce the brain dump as they have been taught.?At the end of the 15 minutes, you can then start the end-of-the-year test.?Once collected, teacher put them all in a sealed folder.?On the next testing day, she pass out the papers.