We're Born to Learn: Using the Brain's Natural Learning Process to Create Today's Curriculum

"Applying the natural human learning process described in the book transformed my students′ ability to learn. No teacher, new or experienced, should enter any classroom without a copy of this book."
―Patricia Jamie Lee, Educational Consultant
Many Kites Press, St. Paul, MN

Teach students to take responsibility for their own success!

This updated edition of the bestselling book on the brain′s natural learning process brings new research results and applications in a power-packed teacher tool kit. Rita Smilkstein shows teachers how to create and deliver curricula that help students become the motivated, successful, and natural learners they were born to be. Updated features include:

• Guidelines for using the six-step Natural Human Learning Process (NHLP) for lesson planning and test preparation
• New information on how technology and Internet research affect student learning
• Practical methods for giving all students the tools they need to achieve

The author translates her unique research on students′ critical and creative thinking into classroom strategies and sample lesson plans that will help to create a successful learning environment. Building on the content that earned the author an Educator′s Award of the Year from the Delta Kappa Gamma International Society, We′re Born to Learn provides teachers with practical methods for giving all students the metacognitive, motivational, and technological tools they need to take responsibility for their own achievement.

Dr. Smilkstein speaks nationally and internationally on brain-compatible education. She has taught in middle school through graduate school including 28 years at North Seattle Community College. Currently Professor Emerita North Seattle Community College and invited faculty in Educational Psychology at Western Washington University′s Woodring College of Education, Everett Campus. Publications include articles and books on brain-based curriculum and pedagogy. Author of We’re Born to Learn: Using the Brain’s Natural Learning Process to Create Curriculum (Corwin Press, 2003), which won the Delta Kappa Gamma International Society’s Educator’s Award of the Year, 2004; the second edition will be published in 2011. She is a co-author of Igniting Student Potential Using the Natural Human Learning Process (Corwin Press, 2007). M.A. (English, Michigan State University), Ph.D. (Educational Psychology, University of Washington). She has received many teaching awards, including the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development’s Excellence Award, 1991, 1995; the College Reading and Learning Association’s highest honor, the Robert Griffin Award, 2005; Induction as a Fellow of the American Council of Developmental Education Associations, 2006, the highest honor in the field of Developmental Education.