Are you or your students worried or getting stressed about exams?
Turns out that mindfulness and meditation can actually change parts of your brain. A study carried out by Massachusetts general hospital showed that after 8 weeks the part of the brain (amygdalae) that processes anxiety and stress has reduced in density. This study only had 16 participants meditating (didn't state how many were in the control group) so it's not a truly sound study but interesting first step to see that meditation actually does something to your brain. Original study.
Need to boost your memory, concentration or increase creativity?
When I first started teaching there was something called brain gym it had no scientific background but we were still taught it during our PGCE. However there are now proven exercises that actually will help yours and students attention and memory.
To improve your working memory go surfing! Or actually anything that involves moving and balancing, something that involves spacial reasoning as well as exercise. For children running along a beam, climbing a tree or running barefoot would be an ideal activity. As you are learning a new skill or knowledge test yourself in a well ordered way for more information see the study here.
If you find your mind wandering embrace it if you are going to have to recall the information in a distracted or loud environment it's best to learn it in the same way. Inconsistent distraction is the problem so checking your phone every 5 minutes is not going to be good for memory retention (study).
Something which every teacher knows is that if you think you are going to have to teach a subject you will suddenly remember a lot more about the subject and the panic or worry of standing in front of people and not knowing yourself is a powerful way to make you work. Weirdly I accidentally found another article from the same author about students procrastination stating that a task will typically take 50% longer than estimated . I wonder if the pressure of having to teach someone else about a subject means peoples estimates of how long a task will take increases or whether the fact you will be watched has an impact on your learning and behaviour. I heard a radio programme recently that said people do better in clinical trials as they are watched maybe this is the same effect.
If you really want to learn something over a long period of time then wait ages to test yourself, the longer you wait the better it becomes embedded in your long term memory. Which is great as for the past few years this is what I have been doing with my seniors and it seemed to have worked but I didn't know why. Even if you get it wrong it still seems to aid memory retention.
To improve concentration running around for 20 minutes and then trying to concentrate on a task may work, however they don't know how long these effects will last for (study here). However if you know you really need to concentrate go for walk beforehand it might help and getting exercise is never going to harm.
To increase creativity - Go for a walk or a dance (study here)
The main thing about learning is if you think you can do it you can Wilson, Dweck and Yeager all seem to come up with similar ideas that back each other up.
