Humans are amazing creatures because we adapt to various challenges with versatility. The reason why we survived and dinosaurs did not is simply because of our cognitive strategies, skills, and capabilities. The human brain is just as amazing as the Earth we live on.
Imagine it handles all your memories, learned lessons, and everything your life has been to. And, no matter how awesome technology is now, there is no way to replace our brain functions and cognitive strategies completely. It’s truly astonishing how the human body parts are all interrelated to your brain and so, keeping it sharp is an important way of living.
Students sometimes question education and the way our system does it. But, it’s definitely acceptable. Why? Because not all students are equal when it comes to learning- not because the 10 are smart it doesn’t mean the other five are not smart. This variation in how fast students adapt or learn is not solely due to their intellectual capacity and cognitive strategies. Sometimes, we are not just focusing enough on the proper way to teach things.
Cognitive skills as a foundation for cognitive strategies
Cognitive skills are core skills our brain utilizes to read, think, analyze, learn, remember, focus, and reason. These skills are used to get and retain information. People learn either by reading, imagery, application, listening, watching, or observing. There will always be dominant cognitive strategies and skills within our brain and these may be either of the said learning ways.
What are cognitive strategies?
Cognitive strategies are a type of learning strategy that is proven to enhance the learning skills of humans. There are several activities included in cognitive strategies like summarizing meanings, imagery for memorization, organizing a new language, and repetition. Cognitive strategies can be a great help to students if they want to learn fast.
Fast learners have the best cognitive strategies
Fast learners are people who easily learn topics, lessons, or concepts. Usually, they have a keen intellectual judgment with strong practical and logical sense. They have advanced vocabulary at a young age, excellent reasoning skills, and have quick recall and mastery of factual information compared to their peers.
Cognitive strategies to help students learn fast
There are students who think they cannot handle Math until they met a teacher who does it in a whole new way. Right then, students realized they can actually learn Math with the help of a certain teaching style. Students can always choose cognitive strategies they want to utilize that will fit their own cognitive strategies and skills.
There are top cognitive strategies that may be utilized to keep students attracted and upbeat with learning while helping them grasp information faster and retain it with high accuracy. As teachers, learning shouldn’t always be done in one single way as people do not share the same cognitive strategies and skills. Here are the best cognitive learning strategies mentors and trainers may use to help their students learn fast with a great percentage of knowledge retention:
1. Summarizing/Paraphrasing to develop cognitive strategies.
This strategy not just exercises your brain but teaches you how to manage massive information into one simple and short summary. It also promotes creativity by positioning details either by order of terms, major factors, or by series of events. This is a common activity in schools and is often done to check how a student understood or remembers a certain lesson, story, or topic.
2. Memorization and Imagery to develop cognitive strategies.
If you are a millennial, too bad for you as you did not experience the game in the old Nokia 3310 phone unit which is called “Memory”. It’s a game that enhances your reaction to images and develops your brain’s retention skills. All you have to do is flip one image and find its pair within the set which was very exciting to play. This type of imagery style is highly effective for students even very young children. Remember when we learned the ABC by identifying that A is for apple, B is for a boy, and C is for a cat? Memorization using imagery is effective and can even create interaction among students while studying.
Students are attracted to what they see rather than what they actually hear. They learn fast when they have visuals that can satisfy their imagination. Having your students memorize a lesson using visuals, images, or charts will help you in registering the lesson with them. When having exams, they might see a vision of the imagery and finally realize what it stands for. Pretty convenient and artistic at the same time, right?
3. Reflection to develop cognitive strategies.
Almost the same as summarizing, reflection means that students will jot down what they have learned, what they did not comprehend during the lesson, and ways to solve such confusion. This reflection activity in a paper is a great brain training that can be done on a weekly basis. You can have an actual reflection of how effective the teaching styles have been for the past week. This will also give you an overview of how the majority of your students adapt and grasp knowledge and how others are comprehending.
How brain training can help develop cognitive strategies
Brain development is crucial at a young age. Brain training, especially cognitive skills training - training memory, attention, visuo-spatial skills, among others - are important so that children can adopt the right cognitive strategies that work for their learning.
Neeuro helps with its cognitive training solutions that are designed by neuroscientists. NeeuroFIT for Children, which is powered by Neeuro's Memorie application, improves your child’s ability to focus, remember, decide, understand space, and have mental flexibility. It works best with Neeuro's EEG device, SenzeBand, which provides real-time feedback on their training progress.
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