Lesson Planning for the Adolescent

Teenagers often have difficulty focusing on material that does not involve them due to the region of the brain that isn't as developed or decreases in development during adolescence. Due to the decreased activity of the medial prefrontal cortex as well as the not fully developed prefrontal cortex, students of the adolescent age are not able to properly reason, make good decisions, plan properly and are also hypersensitive toward reward processing achieved through risk taking behavior. Because of this, I would like to incorporate into my lessons more aspects that involve exciting activities where students are able to take controlled "risks" to gain certain knowledge and skills within the classroom. I would like to create lessons that directly link the new material and content to their every day life so that it may be stored in their long-term memory. By illustrating a purpose of each lesson and how the knowledge and skills to be gained from the lesson relate to the students life demonstrates the importance of the material to the student as well as taking into consideration the decreased activity of the medial prefrontal cortex.When an educator is able to properly demonstrate the purpose of a given activity to the student, the region of the student's brain that is activated will likely store that information for the long-term.