Allen Centre ACES - learning through the power of thinking and the brain!

In the Allen Centre this term we are exploring the art of 'thinking'!
We will ponder together such questions as:
What makes us tick?
Does finding out about our individual styles of learning REALLY help us at school?
How does our brain work?
How can we look after our brain so that we make sure it works at its best for us?
Scientists v's Theorists - is the hype really true?
How can we trick the brain - some very cool experiments to fool your brain into thinking quite the opposite to what you see!
Brainy bendy puzzles - how to encourage your brain to think HARD!

Below you will find some great pictures of us deeply engaged in figuring out the answer to our questions.


Here the children are making super brains!  These were made in response to thinking about how does our brain work?  Each part of our brain has a special part to do.

The brain is made up of billions of individual nerve cells.  These cells are called neurons.  We have around 100 billion neurons in our brain!  The nervous system is the bodies control station.  It controls the function of every other system in our body.  The brain sends messages to tell our bodies what to do through all of these billions of neurons!

Check out below our neuron making!!

A visit from the MEGA Brain was an absolute highlight,  We were very lucky to have Irene from the Otago University Brain Research Department come for the day and teach us all about what can go wrong with brains and how to help keep ours in tiptop shape! 

BENDY BRAIN PUZZLES!!! 

Puzzles and brain benders are a fun way to help keep our brain exercising and active.

How clever are you?

The tangram is an ancient Chinese puzzle consisting of seven flat shapes, called tans, which are put together to form shapes. The objective of the puzzle is to form a specific shape (given only an outline or silhouette) using all seven pieces, which may not overlap.  It is one of the most popular dissection puzzles in the world. 

A Chinese psychologist has termed the tangram "the earliest psychological test in the world"

The children traced around the tangram shapes, cut them out, then tried to see how many different puzzling shapes they could make.

Balancing Kiwis! Over a hundred different ways to balance them!

How it works!

For balancing animals to work,a combination of a number of factors are required.  These include gravity, friction,  leverage, good design, patience, and perseverance! From a Physics point of view balancing kiwis requires the player to use gravity.

Gravity which is produced by the earth's mass, causes the kiwis to want to topple or fall.  When you balance them, you are trying to find the 'centre of gravity', which is the point when the mass of the piece being balanced is equal on all sides of an imaginary centre line.  When you balance several pieces together you are trying to find the centre of gravity for all of the pieces combined.

However, when you introduce the force of friction caused by two edges of the kiwis rubbing together, you counteract some of the force of gravity.  You can actually used the gravity to your  advantage as the downward pressure caused by gravity increases the friction or grip of the pieces on each other.

When you use fulcrums or leverage, once again you use the power of gravity to your advantage.  With a fulcrum you multiply the leverage of a piece by moving the pivot point towards the piece being lifted.  In this way, a heavy piece can by lifted by a lighter piece.

To find the balance point requires the force exerted by each piece to be equal.

The children have loved finding the different ways these kiwis can sit.  It certainly has taken skill, perseverance, and a steady hand.  

This fun activity has led to the children trying out their own experiment involving gravity and friction - balancing birds.

More brainy brain puzzles happening in the Allen Centre.  Who will be the master of the Puzzle?

Check out the kids taking on the Soma Cube challenge!

A good memory really helps you with your learning.  What parts of our brain are used for memory?  How can we help maximise our ability to memorise?

Through out our lives our memories are constantly being formulated and filtered by our brain.  The outer layer of the brain is the cortex, which means bark.  The deep folds of the cortex contain 70% of a person's one hundred billion brain cells.  These cells are responsible for the highest level of cognition which includes all thought and memory.

The following website http://www.exploratorium.edu/memory/index.html gives you a great run down of the fun activities we explored.  

Once we had had a go at the memory maximising games and theories, we decided to dissect a brain to see if we could see the parts responsible for our memory.

It was amazing - as well as pretty icky!!  A big thank you to William for supplying us with the brain.

Putting the learning theories to the test.
Over the term, the senior and middle school put many learning theories to the test.  Is there really such a thing as right and left brain dominance?  Will knowing my learning style really help me in the classroom?
What 'smarts' am I?

Each theory we tested, and then took back to the classroom for the children to try out.  Most children who were accurately able to reflect on how they learnt thought there was some merit in being aware of learning styles and behaviours.  
Some comments were:

"It certainly makes you think before you complete a test".
"I really felt it was exactly like me." 
"I was surprised I was so right brained".  "I really had hoped to look more organised!"
"Most of the theories showed how I best like to learn something new, and how to make it stick in my brain!

However, the most current research suggests that while learning styles and preferences are useful for children to be aware of, teachers do not need to cater to each different individual 'smart' within the classroom for most daily learning to be successful.  We certainly had a lot of fun finding these things out!