| SEARCH OnWEAC |
|---|
By Doug Buehl
Scribblings on a notepad next to the telephone. Lists stuck to the refrigerator door beneath colorful kitchen magnets. Appointments jotted onto the monthly calendar or entered into a digital planner. Sticky notes affixed to a document or article. Stray scraps of paper, harboring snippets of information – addresses, phone numbers, errands to be accomplished, items to be purchased. In a variety of ways, we have all developed routines, from the mundane to the latest technology, to remind ourselves.
We all know how flickering a thought, an idea, a recollection, an insight can be. We are driving along a busy street, we are in the midst of teaching a lesson, we are drifting off to sleep, and something we need to remember suddenly darts into our consciousness. And then, of course, we invariably lose it – unless we have a system for tracking these fleeting but important mental “flashes.” For most of us, this means writing things down.
Reminders – much of our learning is predicated on our ability to remind ourselves of new ideas and recently encountered information so that we can return to it, again and again, to think it through, to continue to develop our understanding, to gradually integrate it into our accumulated wisdom of how the world works. Otherwise, much of what we encounter during reading, during listening, during interacting, is quickly forgotten. We need reminders to eventually build memories.
Yet in our classrooms, students generally rely on us, the teachers, to be their reminders. Strategies that prompt students to experiment with their own systems of reminders – reminders to themselves – need to be integrated daily into classroom activities. Students need to develop the habit of writing memos about their learning to themselves.
The strategy
Memos, of course, can assume a variety of forms, from highly detailed documents of several pages to brief snatches of words on a phone message pad. Helping students personalize creating memos for themselves as learning tools will mean that students become increasingly comfortable with a range of methods that can serve as reminders of what they need to remember.
Step 1: Initiate discussions with students about how their memories work. David Sousa (2001), in his synthesis of brain research, recommends the term “working memory” for understanding how the brain operates in learning contexts. Sousa relates that the model of memory that consists of only short-term and long-term retention is missing a middle category – working memory. (See Model of Memory below.)
Sousa refers to short-term retention as immediate memory. This is what we pay attention to as we read and listen, and this memory overloads quickly. Research confirms that we can hold at any one point about seven items, give or take a couple. Then as new information comes in, these items began to drop out. Most thoughts remain in immediate memory for a few seconds or perhaps a minute or two. As a result, we remember only a smattering of things from a reading or listening experience.
Long-term memory contains what we retain over months and years. This memory represents our background knowledge, referred to by researchers as schema. Learning that is stored in long-term memory is accessible long after classroom instruction, and an individual can return to it time and again to add to it, revise it, and continue to think about it.
Sousa’s in-between category is termed working memory. Working memory contains items that are wired into a unit of study, for example, but they tend to leak away once the instruction is over. These ideas and information are not remembered months or years later; they are forgotten once instruction has proceeded on to new topics.
Discuss with students the implications of this brain research:
Sousa argues that much (perhaps most) of our curriculum never gets beyond working memory. Students do not learn new material so much as “warehouse” it for a period of time, but then lose it as new material takes center stage.
Step 2: Establish with students that reminders are key to holding ideas and information in working memory. A reminder brings back items that a learner paid attention to while reading or listening. Students should be aware that there are two types of reminders: classroom redundancy and self-reminders.
Classroom redundancy are reminders that surround students during instruction; they are reminders provided to students by others. Teachers are a primary source of classroom redundancy. Teachers state ideas and information multiple times during learning episodes. When teachers review key ideas, they are presenting reminders. Textbooks and other reading materials also contribute to classroom redundancy; ideas and information surface again and again in materials over a unit. Instructional activities and assignments also serve as reminders, as do classmates and class discussions. Videos, classroom displays, items written on the chalkboard – all remind students of the important content. As students read and hear ideas and information that are repeated over several days, they think: “I remember that.” But their memories – working memory – are prompted each time by someone else, a teacher, an author, a classmate.
In contrast, self-reminders are created by learners themselves. Students rely on themselves to remember key ideas and information. Self-reminders are more powerful because students are processing the learning themselves, and they are taking responsibility for tracking their own thinking. Self-reminders are more likely to transition ideas and information into long-term memory.
Step 3: Introduce the concept of learner memos as an array of methods for students to remind themselves of material they are learning. Learner memos are notes students make to themselves, to help them keep new material in working memory so they can return to it, over time, to practice, use, and refine their understandings. Examples of learner memos include:
Advantages
Provide daily experiences for students to create variations of learner memos as reminders of ideas and information that need to be revisited to be learned.
Further Resources:
Sousa, D. (2001). How the brain learns (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Doug Buehl, teacher, Madison East High School
Wisconsin State Reading Association.
Posted December 5, 2005