Chunking In A Digital Age

 With the way children's brains have been changing due to the use of digital devices, I wondered if chunking was still recommended or if it's been replaced by something else.

Chunking is one of the ways to organize information.  In reading, it is putting together letters and sounds to create meaning while in math it is organizing the information into smaller, more understandable pieces.

According to research, the human brain can only handle seven pieces of information in short-term memory at any one time.  Chunking the information helps the brain avoid traffic jams in short term memory.  Chunking also helps the brain remember more information because they have combined pieces together.

Chunking is also a way of identifying the most important information out of a section or chapter.  This is done so students know what they need to focus on and learn.  Furthermore, when chunked properly, it is well organized and logical and increases student information on what is going on.  It helps them see the bigger picture while remembering the information more effectively.

Furthermore, there is another theory, the cognitive loading theory, that states the more the brain has to remember in a shorter period of time, the more difficult it is to learn because the brain is overloaded.  This supports the use of chunking because chunking does not overload the brain. The chunking also allows them to build on previous chunks thus providing the repetition the brain needs to retain information.

It is known the brain seeks patterns to make sense of material because the brain stores information as patterns.  Furthermore, the information must make sense to the brain otherwise it will not be stored.  This includes new information that is not yet familiar so when we introduce new concepts, our brain does not always store it so we cannot expect our students to remember it after one example.  So it becomes necessary for teachers to help students identify the new patterns while associating them with older patterns in order to formulate new ones. Patterns have been described as the roadways for memories to travel.

In addition to looking for patterns, the brain searches for personal meaning so it is important to help students find a way to relate to the new patterns because that helps students learn the material better and easier.  If the brain cannot find personal meaning, it will lose it and we see it as students who don't "get it."  This often manifests as the "I don't care" attitude which students see as better than a "I don't understand" confession.

Since most of our students are used to working through quite a lot of data, we need to know how to organize multimedia materials into usable chunks.  It is recommended one group related information into each chunk.  This includes buttons, images, graphics, etc as related information.

There are some ways to help students find personal meaning.  One is to ask students to relate to the information in a personal way by writing it down on a KWL chart.  Another is to ask students to share a story with other students about something that happened to them that uses the concept you are teaching.  For instance, they might talk about when they ran out of gas because they didn't check the amount of gas in the tank before heading out.  This story might relate to a compound inequality about filling the tank with gas.

So with chunking and personal meaning, students can learn the material better and for longer periods of time.  let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great day.