Best practices are teaching strategies that are progressive, developmentally appropriate, research-based, and teachable. They include teaching a balanced curriculum through an enriched environment that promotes active learning and brain development, teaching an integrated curriculum where students make connections across disciplines and take ownership of their learning, and differentiating instruction to accommodate individual student needs, strengths, and learning styles. While some research shows that certain instructional techniques like Whole Brain Teaching have led to improved test scores, barriers remain to fully implementing practices that identify and reward the most effective teachers.

1. What are Best Practices?
• Best practices are teaching strategies that are
progressive, developmentally appropriate, research
based and eminently teachable. – Zemelman, et al., Best
Practice: Today’s Standards for Teaching and Learning
in America’s Schools, 3rd
ed. (2005), Heinemann.
• Best practices are based on what research has shown
us about brain-based learning.
• Best practices include:
– teaching a balanced curriculum
– teaching an integrated curriculum
– differentiating instruction
– providing active learning opportunities

2. Teaching a Balanced Curriculum
What Does It Look Like in the Classroom?
• Allow students to use the whole brain. (Zull)
• Promote brain growth and development through an
enriched environment. (Diamond & Hopson)
• Create active participants rather than passive observers.
(Diamond & Hopson)
We use the Responsive Classroom morning meeting.
Students conduct greeting, sharing and they choose the
group activity.
Please watch this!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH3vTEKiSTs
Morning Meeting in Action!

3. Teaching an Integrated Curriculum
What Does It Look Like in the Classroom?
• Supports brain-based research.
• Focuses on both ideas and content.
• Students take ownership of their learning.
• Students see the connection among disciplines.
• Students are engaged in active learning.
• Students learn to work collaboratively with others.
The science work station is equipped with paper and
pencils, rulers, a calendar and other tools for writing and
calculating. Math and language arts are used for
recording findings and duration of time. The block work
station includes journals and cameras. Students sketch
out what they want to build or what they have built. They
take photographs of their creations before putting blocks
away.

4. Differentiating Instruction
What Does It Look Like in the Classroom?
• Provide opportunities for individual acceleration and
remediation.
• Increase motivation by exploring individual interests.
• Learn about and build on students’ strengths, learning
styles, and background knowledge.
• Set individual learning goals.
Three preschool students are “writing the room,” another
is working with playdough to strength fine motor skills.
The math manipulatives range from threading colored
beads on string in a pattern to playing a counting board
game with a small group. Students have choices.

5. Providing Active Learning Opportunities
What Does It Look Like in the Classroom?
• Use cooperative learning groups.
• Use variety of technology tools.
• Provide hands-on, meaningful activities and projects.
Small groups of four students are engaged in learning
about plant growth. They use the computer to glean
information. They are planting green bean seeds in
potting soil in peat pots, water them, record their actions
in their science journals. The make hypotheses, record
findings, measure growth, and take their plants home to
plant in their yards. They are learning to grow their own
food.

6. Are Teachers Using Best Practices
in their Classrooms Today?
• In a survey of over 2,000 K-12 educators in California, Arizona, Texas, Montana,
Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Florida, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Tennessee and
Alabama, 98% of educators believe that Whole Brain Teaching’s instructional
techniques are superior to every other teaching system. Math test scores rose 28% in
poverty-stricken San Jacinto, CA. Jesame Torres Palasigue from Detroit, MI reports,
“Overall, there was a 50% decrease in student negative behaviors from the pre-
observation to the post-observation.”
-- Research, Chris Biffle (www.wholebrainteaching.com), nd.
• However, too many of the nation’s largest school districts have made little progress in
adopting practices that foster teacher effectiveness. High barriers to managing
teacher’s careers for best performance remain: Principals do not have full power over
which teachers work in their buildings; teacher evaluation does not identify the best
teachers nor does it weed out the weakest ones; tenure continues to protect teacher
jobs without helping to raise the bar on teacher quality; the official work day for
teachers is too short; pay systems give outsized rewards for experience and
advanced degrees while not doing enough to get and keep the best teachers.
– Best Practices for Teacher Effectiveness, NCTQ, November 2009.
• “Brain-compatible learning is here to stay.” – Eric Jensen