Making Choices Builds Brain Power
As working adults, we know that when our employer allows us to make choices within reasonable parameters, we feel more positive about our job, our boss, and our own capabilities and value. We have more enthusiasm, energy and creativity on the job as a result.
We aren’t the only ones affected in this way, children are too. When students are allowed some personal choice in their learning activities at school, they feel good about their work which sets off the release of endorphins which in turn enhance the function of the brain’s connections. The resulting lower anxiety level they will feel about their work will actually enhance the student’s ability to learn. When student have high anxiety levels about their school work, hormones are released which affect learning in a negative way.
Choices build brain power
In our desire to build our student’s brain power by allowing them to make some choices; we must remember that allowing them to choose between many alternatives can be too overwhelming for them. It is suggested that you give them no more than say three acceptable choices, and that you frame them as options or possibilities rather than as orders. You could say for example “Bobby, you might prefer this activity since it is more challenging”, rather than “Bobby, that is too easy for you, I want you to put that back and do thus and such.”
Consequences are learning tools
Part and parcel of getting to make choices is the understanding that a choice may have a less than acceptable consequence in the child’s view. When a student or your own child makes a choice without much thought, allow him to experience the consequence of the choice. don’t just let him choose something else, life isn’t usually a “do-over”. The training you are giving him will be helping to prepare the child for future choices that may be harder and have more serious effects. Don’t treat the consequence as a punishment from you, the teacher or parent, but rather as a learning experience that will enable the child to make better choices in the future.
Encouraging child to choose
As a teacher you may encounter the child who simply cannot make his or her own choices, but looks to peers or the teacher to tell him what he should do. Be patient, but insistent that he is capable of making a choice. Often these children have perfectionist or controlling adults at home who do not allow them to choose. This might be an appropriate discussion at a parent/teacher conference as you explain that their child’s brain power is built up when children have the opportunity of making some choices from a group of options that the parents can live with. I’ve never met a parent who would prefer their child have lesser brain power, have you?
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