What's Your Prime Time for Learning?

By Doug Buehl,
Madison East High School teacher
Member, Wisconsin State Reading Association

February 2001

Do you consider yourself a morning person, or are you more of a "night owl"? During what stretches of the day do you feel most alert and mentally active? How about those inevitable daily "down-swings," when you had better switch to activities perhaps more kinesthetic or interactive and less intellectual?

We all have learned to respond to our regular rhythms of life, those ongoing cycles that take us through our peaks and valleys as we undertake the tasks that make up our daily routines. We have figured out our personal styles: our best time for thinking, for creative work, for problem solving, and when we should instead schedule a bout of exercise, a leisurely break with a cup of coffee, or a social interaction.

We have learned to organize our lives, within the confines of our obligations, to correspond to our personal "body clocks."

Researchers refer to the these ebbs and flows in our daily existence as circadian rhythms (circadian is Latin for "about a day"). Body functions such as temperature, digestion, and hormone concentration follow these 24-hour cycles. Circadian rhythms, which are triggered by the brain's exposure to sunlight, impact our ability to perform cognitive functions as well.

The Strategy
Our students may be less tuned into these daily fluctuations that affect mental acuity, concentration, and ability to learn and remember. Teachers can employ a number of strategies that help students explore and understand their own personal physical and intellectual cycles.

Step 1: As a starting point, have students outline what a normal school week routine looks like for them. Provide them with 24-hour grids and have them map out a five-day school week. This process will help them clarify exactly how and when they spend their time, both in school and out of school. They should record on their grids when they awaken and get up in the morning (not necessarily the same thing), regular personal routines and meals, leisure activities, chores or jobs, classes, extracurricular activities, interactions with family and friends, and of course, study. Finally, the charts should indicate when they go to bed.

Gridding out a school week can help students analyze how they spend their waking hours and begin to track the portions of the day that remain at their discretion. Ask them to respond to the following issues:

• Do they generally follow a regular sleep schedule, with consistent bedtime and waking points?
• Do they regularly obtain sufficient sleep, 8 to 9 hours, for example, for adolescents?
• How many hours of their day are spent in necessary activities, such as personal grooming, meals, transportation, and so forth?
• How many hours of their day are spent in physical activity, such as sports, physical education, outdoor play, or manual work?
• How many hours of their school day are fixed, determined by others, such as classes?
• How many hours of their school day are flexible, determined by themselves, such as study time or periods before or after school?
• How many hours of their non-school day are fixed, determined by others, such as chores, a job, practicing a musical instrument, or participating in sports?
• How many hours of their non-school day are flexible, determined by themselves, such as leisure time or home study time?

Step 2: As students examine this week of their lives, ask them to focus on those times of the day, both in and out of school, when they feel at their mental best. Some students will comment that they prefer doing homework when they awake in the morning. Others will note that they arise as unsociable zombies and that they are more alert during later times in the day. Ask them to consider, as well, which class times they feel most mentally active for, and when they have the most trouble concentrating.

Very likely, students will discover that some of their more lucid periods, as well as those stretches when they are less "with it," will fall during fixed periods, both in and out of school. They may have no control, for example, when a certain class meets, but it could be important to realize that a particularly demanding class may fall during a period when they are not at their mental best, which means coping strategies are especially important.

Finally, as part of their analysis, students need to designate those typical times of their day that are flexible, especially out of school, which correspond to mental high points. As they examine their schedules, they need to plan how to ensure that they are actually engaged in important cognitive tasks during these potentially productive portions of their day.

Step 3: A final element to helping students best utilize their prime times is to revisit classroom procedures to make sure that students are engaged in the most critical aspects of lessons during periods when they are likely to be more alert and attentive.

Sousa (2001) describes the brain's natural tendency to be most attentive during the beginnings and ends of learning episodes, which is referred to as the primacy and recency effects. In addition, our "working memory," our ability to juggle new material that is not yet stored in long-term memory, overloads quickly. The result is "down-time," a period during class when student brains become fatigued, bored, and as a consequence inattentive.

To help students utilize their prime times during lessons, Sousa recommends learning episodes of no more than 20 minutes, followed by a transition (which could include some physical movement) to the next learning episode. A lesson should begin with an emphasis on key information or skills, when students are most attentive, to be followed by practice or discussion, when they are more likely to be in down-time, and concluded with a student summary of the learning, which is again a period of increased concentration.

Advantages
Encouraging students to explore and refine their daily routines provides teachers with the opportunity to make recent brain research come alive in the classroom. In addition:

• Students begin to realize that they can take control of some of their daily routines in order to personalize their schedules to match their strengths.
• Students are able to see connections between how their bodies (and brains) work and how they approach various learning tasks.
• Students will be aware when they need to make adjustments in their strategies to ensure that they are attentive and able to learn.

Further Resources:
Sousa, D. (2001) How The Brain Learns.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Posted April 19, 2001