Uncommon Sense Teaching: Practical Insights in Brain Science to Help Students Learn

I love that this book talks about some high level neuroscience, but in a way that is easy to understand. I have adopted this book and its lessons into my teaching strategies and have seen great improvements. It even helped me better adapt the teaching methodologies that I train other educators on.

The book is promising. However I would like my books to not be torn/ripped. Dr. Oakley is amazing and this is not to belittle the book's contents - I just dont like how someone would be ok with packaging a NEW (not even used) book in this condition.

This book is a collaboration by three authors; Barb Oakley and Terry Sejnowski, creators of the popular course “Learning how to Learn,” and Beth Rogowsky, a lifelong educator and expert in behavioral neuroscience. The goal of the book is to give teachers new insights into how we learn, by using the latest neuroscience and cognition research. The book is written using basic language, and oversimplified examples, so that it should be fairly easy to understand even if you have no familiarity with the concepts at all. At first I was surprised by these elementary explanations; in fact many concepts are explained with pictures and analogies that I might use if I were explaining these ideas to children. Later I understood why the authors took this approach, because they actually recommend using some of the same images and analogies to explain certain ideas to your students. This seems like a good idea, because you can't teach children something if you don't really understand it yourself; and they have made this information easy to understand. Each chapter starts by introducing concepts, and giving the reader information about an aspect of how we learn and remember. Then there are specific activities and strategies suggested to use with your students. There are also general teaching tips listed, that have something to do with using the information on a daily basis. Each chapter ends with a review list of key ideas in the chapter, to highlight the most important concepts. There are ten main chapters, covering many different topics, including: simple anatomy of neurons, long term memory vs working memory, retrieval practice, active learning, declarative and procedural pathways, procrastination, habits, collaborative learning, online teaching, and lesson plans. Again, teachers should not be intimidated by the names of these concepts, even if they are unfamiliar, because everything is thoroughly explained in simple terms. Overall, I think that this book is a valuable resource for teachers, or anyone that deals with children. Using this information can help you come up with new ways to reach your students, and keep them engaged and learning. I appreciate the authors work in breaking down some advanced neuroscience into simple language and useful activities, so it is easy for teachers to use right away.

I’ve been teaching 17 years and have learned most of this either back in college, PDs, or figured it out myself over the years. The brain research aspect in the beginning was very interesting though. While reading, I was constantly thinking of how I could apply the information in new ways. There were some great application examples of techniques I used in the past, but had forgotten about.

The book gives practical tips to the teachers, which is really helpful.

I bought this as a gift for my grandmother and she loved it!

Was great. Very informative

So far this is the best book on learning and teaching that I have found. It goes into great detail on the hows and whys of teaching and learning. I am currently using this book to develop a learning workshop at the school that I teach at.

Fantastic book with new perspective about learning and it's applications in teaching.worth the money.rereading the book will help a lot!

Achei todos os capitulos relevantes, uma linguagem fácil e gostosa de ler. Usei muito os conceitos e questionmamentos em treinamentos para professores.

This book provides background knowledge and actionable advices that represent a good tradeoff for better understanding the whole learning and teaching process from different perspectives.

This is a great book for new and experienced teachers and even for students and parents. It clearly and simply explains how people learn linking the neuroscience (with easy to understand terms and metaphors) to teaching and learning techniques. I highly recommend it to people from all walks of like as it will help everyone better understand their own and others' learning.

I've read a lot of books about learning and this one is just the best for the teacher point of view. It sums up a lot of things I've learned along the years. Make it stick is the next read if you haven't already.