Professional summary for educators of the article “15 Tips to Align Your Teaching With Brain Science” by Youki Terada (October 24, 2025).

In her article, Youki Terada presents a highly practical, research-informed guide for educators: 15 evidence-based tips to align instruction with how student brains actually learn. She begins by acknowledging the aspirational ideal—“in an ideal world, all lessons would be flawless, your delivery would be impeccable, and all students would master the content every day”—but points out that in real classrooms learning is messy, intermittent, and impacted by attention, emotion, prior knowledge, and environmental factors.  The thrust of the piece: to help teachers design and deliver lessons that respect cognitive load, memory processes, regulatory systems, and executive functioning, thereby improving student attention, retention, and engagement.

One of the opening tips describes the importance of the lesson opener. The first few minutes are critical because students’ brains are shifting gears—from social hallway talk to academic focus. Abrupt transitions or undefined expectations can tax regulatory systems and distract learners, whereas a consistent, brief, high-engagement opener helps reduce wasted minutes and cognitive bleed-over. For example, greeting students at the door resulted in large gains in engagement and reductions in disruptions in one 2018 study. This insight invites educators to create routines in those first minutes—warm-ups, partner share, quick review—that establish focus and set the tone.

Another tip emphasizes real-time feedback collection. Terada argues that many teachers assume their explanation and students’ understanding are aligned—but far too often they are not. Diagnostic feedback tools (anonymous short surveys, quick check-ins) reveal where directions were unclear, where cognitive load was too high, or where students are lost. This allows timely instructional adjustment rather than discovery only at summative assessment time. 

Executive function is addressed via tip #3—practice planning with students. Many students struggle not because they don’t understand content, but because they don’t plan, focus, switch tasks, estimate time, or monitor progress. Research shows that explicitly teaching students how to plan, set goals, monitor progress, and reflect improves their performance (for example, raising grade-equivalent outcomes). Meanwhile Terada reminds teachers that some commonly accepted classroom “strategies” (like highlighting) often lack efficacy unless paired with deeper processes. Tip #4, “ReTeach Highlighting,” explains that students who highlight passively are simply marking text; but if we model how to identify main ideas, summarize them, convert them into self-quizzing tools, retention improves. 

Material clarity is spotlighted by Tip #5: Audit for clarity of your materials. Poor design — overloaded slides, unclear instructions, distracting visuals — burdens students’ working memory and hinders their ability to learn. Studies cited show that simple formatting and scaffolding (bold subheadings, arrowed visuals) can double retention rates. 

Retrieval practice and frequent low‐stakes quizzing feature in multiple tips (#6 and #7). Terada explains that retrieval (asking students to recall, not just reread) is one of the strongest effects in cognitive science: one session of retrieval can generate improvements that persist for months, and repeated retrieval can last years.  For implementation: short ungraded quizzes, brain-dumps after learning, surprise “past‐unit” checks—these support durable learning. Breaking up lectures (#8) also aligns with attention limits: cognitive capacity is finite, and sustained lecture beyond that threshold diminishes efficacy. Frequent pauses, partner talk, mini-activities, and even short brain breaks can help reset attention. 

The article also highlights the value of drawing to learn (#9), multimodal instruction (#10), brain breaks (#11), scaffolding note-taking (#12), metacognitive prompting (#13), connecting learning to students’ passion and purpose (#14), and strong closers (#15). Each tip is grounded in empirical research and presented with classroom applications. For example, drawing activates visual, motor, and semantic systems, boosting recall. Brain breaks allow consolidation and reduce overload. Metacognition helps students monitor their own learning and identify gaps. When lessons connect to student passion and purpose, attentional networks align with meaning networks, strengthening encoding.

For educator leadership, professional development, and instructional design, Terada’s framework offers a coherent structure: consider brain-based principles when planning every part of a lesson—from the opener and transition to practice, retrieval, and closer. The overarching message is: effective teaching isn’t just about what we teach but how we teach—mindfully respecting cognitive systems, attention boundaries, memory processes, executive control, and emotional engagement.

In implementing these tips, school leaders might provide tool-kits, lesson-planning templates, peer-observation frameworks aligned to brain science, and PLCs focused on instructional conditions aligned with neuroscience. Teachers, in turn, can audit their routines, materials, and assessments through a brain-science lens: How clear is my opener? Where might cognitive load be unnecessary? How am I supporting retrieval and metacognition? How often do I pause? How are student note-taking and executive function supported?

In summary, the article is a rich, actionable guide for aligning instruction with how student brains learn—and is worth placing at the heart of professional learning agendas. As educators pursue deeper learning, better student retention, and more equitable outcomes, these 15 tips provide a strong bridge between cognitive science and classroom practice.

Original Article

“15 Tips to Align Your Teaching With Brain Science” by Youki Terada (October 24, 2025). Edutopia

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Prepared with the assistance of AI software

OpenAI. (2025). ChatGPT (4) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com