This is why she has been so successful in the livestock industry because she is able to put herself in the cattle’s shoes and adapt their areas with her brain to create a more are comfortable resulting in more humane treatment of cattle. In the article she also compared the way she thinks to virtual reality where she is in another world and has the ability to adapt and change any picture that she see’s in her mind. This learning was very significant for me because many of the clients I have worked with I have noticed how one object or word can cause them to go down a track of associations that don’t always make sense to me, and often they have a hard time stopping their train of thought. Later in her article she goes on to say that sometimes those pictures are connected to memories or other events and when she thinks of one thing then that relates to another, and another and she begins to associate and can get lost in her own mind. Her first example is, when someone says church steeple most people see a general picture in their mind, but for her she see’s a specific steeple and then various other specific pictures after that like Google images. The first point that she makes is that she has a very visual memory and she sees every object as a specific picture in her mind. Her article and Ted Talk shares many of the same ideas so I will be pulling what I have learned from both to quickly summarize her thoughts that I have found very helpful in my work. She has taught so many about how the autism brain works and her article Thinking In Picturesor her Ted Talk The World Needs all Kinds of Mindsare two great resources for anyone who works with individuals with autism.

In 2017 she was also inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. By showing students multiple ways to represent concepts and solve problems, you make mathematics more accessible and equitable.Temple Grandin is an American professor of animal science at Colorado State University, consultant to the livestock industry on animal behavior, and a spokesperson for the Autism community. Many students adopt a false idea that there is only one acceptable way to solve a math problem when, in fact, there's always several different ways to find a correct solution. So, how can you give your kids opportunities to think about math visually? Here are 5 resources suggested by Jo Boaler to get you started: 1.) Multiple Representations When your students aren't thinking about math in a visual context, they are missing out on developing a deep understanding of the material. The researchers found that mathematics learning and performance was optimized when the two areas of the brain were communicating.īoaler goes on to say that ' Mathematics is a subject that allows for precise thinking, but when that precise thinking is combined with creativity, openness, visualization, and flexibility, the mathematics comes alive.' When students work with symbols, such as numbers, they are using a different area of the brain than when they work with visual and spatial information, such as an array of dots. In a ground breaking new study Joonkoo Park & Elizabeth Brannon (2013), found that the most powerful learning occurs when we use different areas of the brain. In the YouCubed study Visual Math Improves Math Performance, Boaler shares:

Ted talk music math