A perennial challenge for teachers has been weaving multiple subjects into a coherent whole for students. ELA is ELA, Math is Math, and Science is Science. Right? The standards have been defined explicitly to demarcate expectations and mastery within independent domains. But those demarcations, as most teachers readily recognize, are arbitrary.
Author: Betsy Hill
Leveraging the Power of Cognitive Ability
Neuroscience shows us how to impact the efficiency and effectiveness of the learning process by improving each individual’s underlying mental processing – that is, by changing the experience of learning from the inside out.
Students are Education’s Most Under-Utilized Asset
Students possess a wealth of untapped potential that has been, for the most part, overlooked and underutilized.
Suz Amaro, Mother of Mario (Age 15)
Suz Amaro says, “This is the one that you’re looking for. This is the outstanding one that you want for your kids. 100% recommended.”
What Happens to Learning Weaknesses with Cognitive Training
This webinar will share data on 100 students who had one or more cognitive weaknesses and how they were strengthened with cognitive training.
Webinar on the Science of Learning
How the science of learning is helping boost academic achievement, self-confidence, behavior and even athletic performance.
Cognitive Skills and Math (Dis)Ability: Identifying the Links
Math disabilities, however, are as common as reading disabilities at 5 to 8 percent of the population. Like reading disabilities, math disabilities may have multiple causes and dimensions. Article published on the Learning Counsel.
Grading Your School? How Do It Rate in the Science of Learning?
If the question is whether the A-F system of rating schools were helpful and easy for parents to understand, then you’d have to ask why there are millions of students still attending schools with D and F grades.
No More Letter Grades for Schools?
Some state departments of education and moving to remove the grading systems for schools that they established starting in the No Child Left Behind era.
Science of Learning: The Cognitive Principles
There is often confusion about the difference between cognitive training and brain games. The world is full of games, puzzles, software and other activities that involve mental processes. But most are intended for entertainment rather than meaningful impact on learning capacity. For a cognitive training program to have significant impact, it needs to be designed according to specific neuroscience principles.
Can Technology Make Learners Smarter?
There is one type of technology that has already made a lot of students smarter; and it has the potential to help increase academic outcomes dramatically and close learning gaps for struggling students. This technology is called cognitive training and it incorporates the science of learning with video game software.
She Blinded Me (with Science)
Betsy Hill writes in an article published on Learning Counsel that he science of reading needs to be considered in the broader context of the science of learning.
Learning to Be Smart
Based on what we have been hearing in the last few days from therapists working with individuals in their teens and 20s, there is plenty of plasticity to take advantage of. What they’ve shared with us underscore how pioneering this field is and the amazing plasticity of intelligence.
Building “Muscle Memory” for Learning
There are a lot of things our brains do non-consciously including the mental processes called cognitive skills. Cognitive skills are how we take in, understand, organize, store, retrieve and apply information – in other words, how we learn.
Remediation of Cognitive Processes in Special Education Students
Multiple decades of research and practice have resulted in significant shifts in the way students with learning disabilities are supported in schools in the U.S. and elsewhere.
Can Brain Fitness Be Education’s Moon Shot?
Experts agree that focusing on early childhood development through neuro-supportive, school-based intervention models would maximize an investment in national brain health and fitness.
The Cognitive Age: Building Brains that Learn Better
if we don’t know what the jobs of the future will be, the role of education has to change from preparing students for a knowable future to preparing them for an unknowable future in which they will have to continually learn and adapt.
Is Your Brain Like a Computer?
An article published by Aeon, entitled The Empty Brain by Robert Epstein, has generated a fair amount of controversy. Right beneath the title are these two sentences:
Your brain does not process information, retrieve knowledge or store memories. In short: your brain is not a computer.
The Science of Reading and the Science of Learning
As educators living in a day when neuroscience is increasingly guiding our understanding of how learning happens in our students’ brains, let us embrace the science of reading and let us get busy extending that to the science of learning.
Addressing the Learning Crisis Connected to the Current Mental Health Crisis
When students are depressed, every assignment they’re asked to do can seem overwhelming and with reduced mental cognition, it is even worse.
Building Intelligence: Find Your Growth Mindset and Start Building
People with a growth mindset who have teachers or trainers who provide explicit opportunities for them to develop their intelligence and their abilities will become even more effective learners.
Does Your Child Struggle with Reading Comprehension Issues?
Reading puts demands on many cognitive skills and there are some that are especially important for comprehension.
A New Spin on Education: Cognitive Capacity for an Uncertain Future
In an article published on Getting Smart, we explain why the goal is cognitive literacy, that is, learning how to learn.
Cognitive Skills Training: What’s That About?
Cognitive training, like physical training, involves “reps” of varied activities, often on a computer in a video-game format. This kind of brain training can benefit just about everyone, and may be particularly helpful for gifted children and children with learning differences such as ADHD.
Building Brains that Learn Better
“If we don’t know what the jobs of the future will be, the role of education has to change from preparing students for a knowable future to preparing them for an unknowable future in which they will have to continually learn and adapt,” according to an article by Betsy Hill and Roger Stark published on GettingSmart.com.
Karla and Vinson Higginbotham, Parents of Taylor, Age 13
“BrainWare didn’t only work with Taylor. They worked with us as parents to help us use different tactics and ways of educating her so that we could see that she could compete along with her peers.”
Annette Simmons, Mother of Charlie
“My son actually looks great on paper, but he was struggling with anxiety and perfectionism. It was always a battle to get him to do schoolwork. I found BrainWare and the rest is history.”
Increase Learning AND Reduce Stress for Students
Increasing learning and reducing stress may seem diametrically opposed. In this webinar, we explain how they can happen together.
Learners: Happier, Healthier, Here’s How
One often under-appreciated aspect of health outcomes in general and mental health in particular, is the role of cognitive skills.
Letter to the Editor – What Kids Need to Know about Their Working Memory
A Letter to the Editor we wrote has been published by IntrepidEd News. It starts this way: The article What Kids Need to Know About Their Working Memory | Deborah Farmer Kris gives readers some really important information about how working memory functions. However, it misses one key point. As the article points out, working memory is… Continue reading Letter to the Editor – What Kids Need to Know about Their Working Memory
Cognitive Approach to Addressing the Impact of Covid-19 on Students
Schools are using cognitive assessment and cognitive training to address the impact Covid-19 continues to have on students.
Taking and Giving Feedback with a Growth Mindset
Feedback is an essential part of learning and improvement. We can’t get better at what we do without feedback. A growth mindset is about learning and growing and recognizing that feedback is essential.
Cognitive Skills and Your Kid’s Brain
Betsy Hill, president of BrainWare Learning joined Elaine Taylor-Klaus for a Parenting with Impact podcast.
Academic Achievement Can Open So Many Doors
In a new article, Roger Stark and Betsy Hill write, “When comprehensive integrated cognitive training is allowed to open up these lines of success, both students and their families tend to experience a much higher degree of emotional wellbeing which is proven to have a long-lasting effect for meaningful social justice.”
BrainWare SAFARI through the Eyes of a 7th Grader
Trace Slayton is a 7th grader at Urey Middle School in Walkerton, IN. He has been using BrainWare SAFARI cognitive training software for a few weeks and was eager to share his experience.
The New 70/30 Rule: 70% Will Get Us $72 Trillion
The vaue of getting more students to the 70th percentile and learning what they need to without adjustments to the curriculum and instruction: $72 Trillion.
Solving the Teacher Shortage Can’t (by Itself) Solve the Learning Shortage
Until each teacher understands how each of their students learns and can facilitate learning experiences designed to optimize learning, and until students get the appropriate comprehensive integrated cognitive training to build their learning capacity, learning outcomes are unlikely to improve in any meaningful way.
Educational Equity through a Cognitive Lens
Cognitive skills account for more than 50% of the variance in math achievement, says new research with implications for educational equity.
What Are the Top Zombie Ideas in Education?
Zombie ideas are those “undead” ideas that have been discredited by research but that persist in the neuromythology with which many educators grew up.
What Teachers and Students Need to Know about Learner Variability
These days, it may seem as if there is more variability in classrooms than ever when it comes to what students know and can do. However, it is also important to remember that intra-learner variability can be just as great and just as perplexing as inter-learner variability, especially for the learners involved.
What Is Going on in the Adolescent Brain?
Adolsecence is associated with risk-taking and moodiness as well as being a remarkable opportunity for learning. Join us as we explore the latest research on the adolescent brain.
Cognitive Skills Account for More than 50% of Math Performance in New Study
In a study conducted by Mindprint Learning and CAST, Inc., cognitive skills accounted for over 50% of math achievement outcomes for the middle school students who were part of the research.
The 30/70 Rule or the 70/30 Rule
About 30 percent of students perform at grade level, the same percentage as perform at the 70th percentile plus on cognitive tests.
How to Stay Calm During Standardized Testing
In this webinar, we talk about some simple things everyone can do to calm the jitters and get through the testing season calmly and in one piece.
EdCircuit: Are We Workforce Ready?
In the second of a two-part article published on EdCircuit, Betsy Hill and Roger Stark discuss the evidence that those entering the workforce lack many of the skills they will need to succeed in today’s workplace. We then turn to the role of cognitive skills training in helping develop workplace-ready workers.
What You Should Know about Executive Functions
Executive Functions are how our brains organize the interplay of all myriad mental processes toward goal-directed, purposeful behavior. This article published by the Learning Counsel was written by Betsy Hill and Roger Stark.
A Bit of Brainy Humor
Here are some brain and neuroscience-related jokes and riddles, with explanations of the terms and the word play involved. Enjoy!
The Role of Cognitive Skills in Academic Performance
The negative impact of COVID-19-related disruptions on student learning has fallen disproportionately on students living in economically disadvantaged communities, students with learning disabilities and students who are English Language Learners. In this fifth article in our series on neuroscience and education equity, we explain why it’s time to help all students develop the cognitive skills that will foster greater equity in learning and true social justice.
Closing the COVID Learning Gap
Most schools have never had to help students catch up from learning losses, at least at the current scale. Filling in the gaps and getting students back on track will require a new approach that capitalizes on what we understand from research about the science of learning.
True Gamification in Learning
When we truly gamify, we create the explore-lose-fail-retry-learn feedback loop that users want to engage in. BrainWare Learning. Article by Roger Stark and Betsy Hill in CIO Review.
EdCircuit: Blueprint for Building a 21st Century Worker
Whatever the specific skills workers need to acquire, each employee’s cognitive capacity to take in and process information, store, retrieve, and problem-solve with it, and continue learning determines his or her effectiveness.
Peter Kline on Education in the Cognitive Age
In this brief article, published posthumously, Peter Kline explains the importance of the Cognitive Age and how to prepare for it.
edCircuit: Building Individual Learning Capacity
This article, authored by Betsy Hill and Roger Stark and published on edCircuit, identifies three keys to developing an individual’s capacity to learn.
Remembering 2020
There’s a lot that happened in 2020. What will you remember? You can use this form to capture some of your memories. Share with friends and family to collect their memories as well. Put them away for a few years and pull them out sometime in the future.
Equity, Neuroscience and Cognitive Capacity
Most educators do not, according to multiple research studies and our own experience, have a solid understanding of the organ that actually learns – the brain.
Cognitive Skills Development in Special Education
In this arcticle published on edCircuit, Betsy Hill and Roger Stark discuss how techniques and tools designed to build up weaker cogntiive skills help special ed students rapidly narrow the achievement gap.
Comprehensive Integrated Cognitive Training: Sculpting Cognitive Processes
In the third article in this series on Education Equity, published on the Learning Counsel, we examine the role of cognitive training.
Making Schools More Brain-Friendly
We can change the outcomes of the learning experience by taking what we learn from neuroscience to make schools more brain-friendly. Article published on EdCircuit.
Adult Learning: Brutal or Breezy?
While learning is harder as an adult (in general, and particularly for new languages), it is misleading to say that the adult brain is not wired for learning. Even with language, some aspects of learning are pretty tough but others are much easier.
Achieving Equity: Understanding Each Child’s Cognitive Strengths and Weaknesses
The second article in the series on Achieving Equity discusses the importance of and how we can understand each student’s cognitive strengths and weaknesses.
Tips for Student Engagement in Remote Learning
One of the top questions we’ve been getting from teachers lately is how to increase student engagement while learning is remote. This webinar will provide several practical ways to use the science of motivation to get students more involved and interacting during online class meetings.
The Power of Neuroplasticity
While there has been strong scientific consensus for some time about neuroplasticity, the extent to which our brains can change, at any stage of life, is only starting to become clear.
3 Keys to Building Individual Learning Capacity
What is the difference between learning ability and learning capacity? While everyone has the ability to learn, capacity is developed.
Achieving Equity: Knowing the Right Questions to Ask
Just how much students regressed due to COVID remains a matter of some debate. But perhaps that isn’t the right question. Instead of asking, “How far have we fallen,” we should be asking, “Where were we before the fall?”
Does Brain Size Matter?
To our knowledge, the difference in brain size within a species is not correlated with intelligence, but it is suggested that the number and strength of connections among neurons is related to cognitive function.
What Do You Mean by “Cognitive Capacity?”
We started to make the distinction between “cognitive ability” and “cognitive capacity” a few years ago. The distinction is important. Every individual is born with the ability to develop their cognitive skills. Cognitive capacity is different; it refers to how well those cognitive skills have actually been developed.
Déjà Vu May Be a Mental “Hiccup”
Recent research suggests that “Déjà Vu” is like a hiccup in the processes of memory formation and consolidation.
Learning in the Time of COVID
In this webinar, we explore the predictions for COVID learning gaps, and how learning can be accelerated through cognitive assessment and capacity-building.
Dinner-Table Conversation Starters
Here are some ways to get different kinds of conversations going … around the dinner table, or anywhere you choose, or, if you prefer, “food for thought.”
Homeschool Counselor Interview with Roger Stark
In this episode of the Homeschool Counselor Podcast, Scott Whitaker and Dan Shirley interview Roger Stark, CEO of BrainWare Learning Company on helping students develop cognitive literacy. (25 minutes) Listen
How Brains Balance Accuracy and Simplicity
Our brains are not optimal learning machines. Making mistakes and learning from them is an essential part of how our brains operate.
Social and Emotional Learning for the New (NOT) Normal
In this webinar, we will focus on how Social and Emotional Learning can help build resilience and our ability to deal with the New (NOT) Normal.
Learning to Be Smart
These are remarkable stories of individuals improving their cognitive skills and intelligence when they are in their teens and twenties.
A Baby Shower in this Strange New World
An online baby shower was a reminder that social distancing, while necessary, doesn’t have to get in the way of expressing our care and love for each other.
The COVID-19 Slide: Bigger than a Summer Slide?
For many students, the current COVID-19 situation promises a much longer “summer,” with more than the usual amount of forgetting – a greater slide or slowdown that usual.
Meta-Analysis Concludes Intelligence Is a Whole Brain Phenomenon
Intelligence is not about discrete parts of the brain, but how the brain as a whole is connected according to a meta-analysis conducted at NUI Galway.
What Is Cognitive Literacy?
Cognitive literacy means that students can learn and have the skills in attention, memory, perceptual processing, core and higher-order executive functions that prepare them for careers we can’t yet envision.
Learning Difficulties Are Related to Overall Brain Connectivity Rather than Specific Brain Regions
Learning difficulties relate to overall brain connectivity rather than specific brain regions. They are better addressed by understanding the cognitive skills involved, rather than a label like ADHD or ASD.
Cognitive Skills 102
In Cognitive Skills 102, we explore inhibitory control, visualization and processing speed and the role in of these cognitive skills in reading, math and social and emotional learning.
How Novelty Boosts Learning
Recent research shows that novelty gets the brain’s dopamine system working which accelerates learning. Let’s all get our students learning faster by giving them something new today!
A New Formula for Helping Students and Schools “Level Up”
Tom Hughes, principal, and Trudy Blue, instructional coach, Maple Crest Middle School, Kokomo Indiana, tell discuss their search for solutions for students who are behind grade level in reading.
Drawing Aids Visualization
When we draw something, our brains use the same neural networks as when we recognize and name that object.
The Learning Brain Crossword Puzzle
This crossword puzzle which challenge your knowledge of the brain and learning.
Please Take My Crutches
A 17-year-old high-school student recently walked into a high-stakes test without the accommodations that he had received for years. This was not an arbitrary administrative decision; it was his choice.
Closing the Achievement Gap by Closing the Cognitive Gap – Webinar
This webinar addresses cognitive development as barrier to closing the achievement gap and the need for development of cognitive skills as a matter of equity.
Closing the Achievement Gap by Closing the Cognitive Gap – Edcircuit
This article from Edcicuit explains the connection between students’ cognitive development and the longstanding achievement gaps in education, and how the connection relates to equity.
Learn to Ask for Help
One very important thing a student can learn is how to ask for help. Those who know how to do this effectively usually rise to the top of the class.
How Many Words Can You Build?
Word Mania helps build literacy and spelling while kids have fun. While the 2019 competition has ended, students can play Word Mania all year long in LiteracyPlanet.
Some Ways to Be More Intelligent
A recent article published in Medium, busts myths about intelligence right and left. It discussed the idea of a talent stack which, in this collaboratively cross-disciplinary world where the boundaries of expertise shift and mesh, makes more sense than ever.
Some Thoughts on Learner Variability
Uneven learning skills can make learning experiences unpredictable and very stressful for students. This blog explores how to empower students with an understanding of their own learning strengths and weaknesses so tht learning situations become less unpredictable.
Grit, Growth Mindset and the Backlash against Both – Edcircuit
EdCircuit has reprinted a popular article originally published by the Learning Counsel on grit and growth mindset. As Betsy Hill, president of BrainWare Learning and author of the article explains, the valence of the terms is different and both have been extolled by some educators and then criticized by others.
Supporting Diverse Learners in Literacy
Helping students develop literacy skills is challenging when they bring a diversity of cognitive capacity to the classroom. This webinar addresses several underlying causes of literacy struggles.
Ten Ways to Make Learning More Efficient and Effective
This webinar, hosted by the Homeschool Buyers Co-op, looks at the science of learning and some of the best ways to help our children be the most efficient and effective learners they can be.
Five Skills That Would Make Teaching Easier (and More Effective)
Teaching isn’t getting any easier. In this webinar, we explore five gaps in the knowledge and skill base of most teachers and how those impact their effectiveness and student learning.
BrainWare Learning-Mindprint Test Prep Workshop
This workshop explains the Mindprint Test Prep Profile, aprofile that can be generated from a student’s cognitive assessment results, to help prepare students for college admissions testing.
Stop Running Against the Wind
Most of us make learning harder than it needs to be. Why? Because we don’t really understand what it takes to learn something. This webinar focuses on how students at any age can become more efficient and effective learners by understanding how to learn in harmony with their brain.
The Cognitive Impact of Poverty: Implications for Teaching
In this webinar, we discuss both the research on the impact of poverty on cognitive development and the implications for educational practice to help level the learning field.
Why Teachers and Students Need to Learn about Their Brains in the Digital Age
For good and bad, technology changes our brains. But then again, so does every experience we have. So what are our brains doing and becoming in the digital age?
Engage Students in a Literacy Adventure
LiteracyPlanet brings together curriculum-aligned literacy education and the latest digital technology. Whether for early reading skills or advanced grammar, LiteracyPlanet provides students with a learning adventure to help them develop excellent English literacy skills.
You Don’t Have to Be Dyslexic to Have Trouble Learning to Read English
In this webinar, we explore the contributions of cognitive skills in learning to read and then address the “special challenges” of the English language and some promising approaches that can be implemented by classroom teachers.
It’s Not a Quiz! It’s Retrieval Practice!
Few words stimulate greater anxiety in students than “We’re going to have a quiz today.” Most of us can remember that feeling of being unprepared when a pop quiz was announced. What most of us don’t realize, including many teachers, is how important a role quizzes can play in the learning process.
Gamification in Education: Growth Mindset Games
Gamification in Education: Fostering a Growth Mindset When the term “gamification” comes up in the context of education, it is usually introduced as a way to improve student engagement and motivation. Given the dismal state of student engagement in schoolwork, maybe that by itself would be enough. But research has documented a variety of other… Continue reading Gamification in Education: Growth Mindset Games
Every Day is Election Day – Even in Your Classroom
Every day, the people around us decide whether to listen to us, to follow us, to imitate us, or to ignore us. They decide whether to step up and join us in championing what we want to accomplish, or they join the opposition, or they just decide to”sit this one out.” Does this apply in a classroom? Are students voters? You bet!
Cognitive Skills Development as a Supplement to Vision Therapy
I am a graduate of vision therapy myself. And I will never forget the moment when my vision, which had been blurry my entire life, suddenly became clear, following many months of hard work with a vision therapist. At the time, I thought it was a miracle.
Five Tips for a Better Brain
Just about every adult I meet wants to know how to strengthen their perception, thinking, and acuity. I believe in practicing what I preach, so here five things I practice on a daily basis. Our brains become what brains do …
Are These Children from Lake Wobegon?
Are These Children from Lake Wobegon? A little over a week ago, I was in Canada – Sault Ste Marie, Ontario. to be exact. It was excruciatingly cold, of course, but that’s not why I was thinking of Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon. The reason I was thinking of Lake Wobegon is that I was remembering… Continue reading Are These Children from Lake Wobegon?
Reality Show Test Anxiety
Reality Show Test Anxiety I was watching one of my favorite shows Restaurant Impossible when I saw a textbook case reminder of one of the consequences of high-stakes testing. First, let me say that I very much admire Robert Irvine, the star of the show and a very accomplished chef and restaurateur. In the shows,… Continue reading Reality Show Test Anxiety
Are You Left-Brained or Right-Brained? It’s the Wrong Question
Are You Left-Brained or Right-Brained? You’re Asking the Wrong Question! I came across a posting on a Linked-In Group I belong to that caught my attention, as the nerdy brain-fascinated person that I am. It contained an explanation of the ways that our brains apportion the work we ask them to do between the right… Continue reading Are You Left-Brained or Right-Brained? It’s the Wrong Question
That Was Easy!
That Was Easy! On Super Bowl Sunday, my 8-year-old nephew graciously tolerated the adults in our house (most of whom are still 8 years old at heart, if truth be told). He held his own in a game of guessing what the next commercial would be on television (cars? beer? fast food? insurance?), as well… Continue reading That Was Easy!
A Glimmer of Understanding: New Concept Formation
A Glimmer of Understanding When I was in college, I was fascinated with how humans learn and use language. I took every course I could find related to language The Philosophy of Language, The Psychology of Language, and Linguistics, in addition to double-majoring in French and Russian. The explanations suggested by the different disciplines were… Continue reading A Glimmer of Understanding: New Concept Formation
New Research on Multitasking
New Research on Multitasking Holidays seem to be times when multi-tasking is the order of the day preparing holiday meals while keeping a mental list of what I need to get at the store later, trying to listen to my daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law-to-be’s conversation and track my son’s exchanges on the meaning of life in… Continue reading New Research on Multitasking
When Charter School Students Don’t Succeed
When Charter School Students Don’t Succeed According to a report on NPR (WBEZ) two days ago, the reason that test scores in many Chicago charter schools are higher than their traditional CPS (Chicago Public School) counterparts is that they systematically push low-performing students out. The euphoria of being admitted to one of the city’s sought-after… Continue reading When Charter School Students Don’t Succeed
Your Child Has an IEP, but Is the Gap Closing?
Your Child has an IEP, but is the Gap Closing? Statistics and charts are standard fare at an IEP (Individualized Education Plan) meeting. The teachers and professionals are likely to show you where your child is performing relative to the standard for his/her grade and relative to where he/she used to be. Parents are usually… Continue reading Your Child Has an IEP, but Is the Gap Closing?
Sign Up for Monthly Brainy Updates
Sign Up for Monthly Brainy UpdatesBrainWare
BrainWare Learning Company offers programs and tools that further the application of sound neuroscience research to learning and teaching.
Useful Links
Our Social
New In Knowledge Center
© BrainWare Learning Company | All Rights Reserved.