One Head, Two Brains

Another great podcast from Hidden Brain. One which dispels the common misconceptions (and adds new clarity and scientific knowledge) about the 'left brain v right brain' debate.

Fine detail v Big picture

It was interesting for me to discover that the left and right hand side of the brain perform similar operations; however, the way in which they do is completely different.

The left hand side looking at the immediate, the here and now and fine detail, whereas the right hand side of the brain processes the big picture, concepts and abstract thinking.

Examples.

Imagine a bird collecting food- the left hand side will be focused on getting the worm from the ground. The right hand side will be focused on ensuring the bird doesn't become lunch for potential prey.

In Basketball the left hand side will be focused on throwing the ball into the basket. The right will be focused on other players, the fans, the timings, the passage of play, the importance of the game etc.

How does this relate to teaching?

Although it has been part of my everyday practice for nearly a decade*, admittedly, over the past 18 months, due to a) the fluidity and uncertainty of covid-19, and b) moving to a new school in a new country with established ways of working, it is been difficult to share the bigger picture every lesson with students.

*I normally do this with red bubbles that get updated to green as we progress through a module.

The bigger picture is something vitally important to allow the left hand brain to see what it is doing ion the here and now- but also for the right brain to see how things fit into the bigger picture.

Hopefully this is something that we can can discuss at the upcoming department development day, as part of how we want the D&T provision to look, in terms of consistency across different teachers and non-negotiable's that we want to see in every lesson.