ARTICLES
The Meta Lesson Plan (continued)
participate in classroom ongoings, be they lesson or otherwise
oriented. Central to this natural desire is the brain’s desire to
predict the direction of classroom events and make contributions
that build on or change the direction of future events so that
they represent the interests of the student. Bar (2007) describes
this predictive activity as being a non-attention requiring event
that calls upon long term memory as a means to explore future
events relative to their perceived current state. Eichenbaum &
Fortin (2009) thus describe such predictive activity of the brain
as ‘memory for the future’. That is, students are perpetually
constructing future events in their attempt to give voice to their
individual cognitive differences and then socially exploring these
futurist constructions to refine and affirm their self-concept.
of whiteboard text. This facilitates generally the networking of
working memory processes as knowledge is constructed.
Proposition 4: Textbooks are used sparingly as a teaching tool.
This draws upon executive functions of working memory by
promoting self-directed refocusing of attention onto classroom
learning and sustained student engagement with classroom
ongoings. That is, students are not sent off into the solitary world
of text within which they may not have adequate reading skills to
construct their knowledge.
Proposition 5: Disruptive behaviour, i.e. social interaction
independent of the learning of the topic-at-hand, is accepted
as a normal aspect of teenagers and downplayed. This draws
upon student desire to maintain a socially and talk-rich learning
environment in which students exercise attentional control over
the course of their learning.
Emerging from this conception of the student mind is a meta
lesson plan in which the teacher’s attentional focus is on oneself.
Specifically, the teacher’s use of dialogue as the mechanism to
focus teenage socialness, dialogue and