Warm-up

 If there are 3.25 cups of blueberries in one pound, how many cups will you have if you pick 22 pounds of blueberries?

Spaced And Retrieval Practice

 As a teacher, I am always looking for research based instruction so I know I am doing everything I can to help my students learn. Both spaced and retrieval practice help students learn the material while giving them a sense of what they know and what they don't know.  

It is important for students to work with the material, think about it, so they retain the material better.  They shouldn't think about it for the first time during a test or they won't be able to retrieve what they need.

Retrieval practice is exactly what it sounds like.  Students retrieve the information from their memory.  It can retrieved by using a low stakes multiple choice assessment, a group discussion,  or an open ended question or problem.  It can happen at the beginning of class, as a transitional activity, or a way to end class.  

Students can use retrieval practice to determine what they know or don't know.  If they can answer questions, they know it but if they can't, it means they need to go back, review and practice the material. This helps them determine the holes in their learning and they don't realize their areas of weakness on the day of the test. 

For retrieval practice, they should try to use their brains to answer the questions.  If they rely on their notes, textbooks, or peer to provide the answer, then they don't really know the material and they are not practicing retrieving the material from their memory.  

Combine this with spaced practice which is the opposite of cramming. Spaced practice is spreading the practicing out over days and weeks or months.  They will learn better if they spend 15 minutes a day on the material for three days, rather than trying to do the same in a 45 minute period for one day. 

One way to help students do this is to create a chart.  The chart might be vocabulary, the steps needed to solve problem, or information that confuses students.  For the first step, students fill in the chart with as much information as they can pull from their memories. When they are done, ask them to highlight the answers in yellow.  Next, ask students to pull out their notes and use the notes to check and fill in more material.  Highlight these answers in orange. 

Finally, have them talk to each other and fill out any remaining information and then highlight this in blue.  A few days later, pass out the same chart to students and follow the same process as before.  Then about a week later, ask students to fill out the chart again. What most students find with this is that each time they do the activity, the amount of yellow increases and there is less orange and blue.  The increased amount of yellow shows students that they are remembering more information and having to rely less on their notes and peers.

There are other strategies one can use for retrieval and spaced practice but these are ones you can use in class quite easily.  I'll be providing addition strategies at another time.  Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great weekend.

How Does Memory Work?

 

How many times have we as teachers wondered why our students couldn't remember how to do something even though we just covered it or they seemed to know then, why not now? I don't think, I've ever had any professional development on this topic and I certainly never had any classes on it. So today I am discussing how the memory works in today's column simply because it is important to us so we can improve our teaching and their retention.

When we know how memory works, we can adjust our teaching methods to incorporate the knowledge so our students learn the material better. 

The first step to remembering is sensation. They have to sense the material which means they have to see it and hear it in the classroom but this doesn't always work because students and people in general only pay attention to what is going on about 50 percent of the time.  In addition, this step is quite fleeting.  Teachers need to create an atmosphere where they can sense the information such was having all the students face forward so they are facing the material.

The second step is for students to pay attention when the material is presented. If they don't pay attention, they won't get the information.  We refer to paying attention as being engaged. It is important to keep the classroom as free of distractions as possible and this includes having cell phones out of site.  The brain does not learn as well when it is trying to follow the presentation while trying to catch up on the latest twitter videos.

When students pay attention to the material being presented, the information is more likely to be encoded into the working memory but the working memory is not the long term memory. Working memory is more like a short term memory because how long the information remains, and how its processed is quire short. Your working memory is like a funnel because only so much information can make its way in without being lost.  If the design of the lesson is too complex or not explicit enough, students may not have enough space in the working memory to process it because they are focused on the wrong information.

The important step is to transfer the information from the working memory to the long term memory because the long term memory has fewer limits on the amount of information it contains and the length of time it retains the information.  Our goal as teachers is to help students shift the information into their long term memories. Unfortunately it does not automatically happen, certain things must happen for that to occur.  

Two of the best research based methods to help this happen are retrieval practice and spaced practice. Both methods require students to access the memories, use and apply the material. When students retrieve memories, they are moving them from long term memory to the working memory where they are used and then they return to the long term memory.  The more times students recognize and recall memories, the stronger and better the memories become. Furthermore, the more students use the memories, the longer they will retain the information.  When they don't use the material, the material fades away.  

On Friday, we'll look at retrieval practice and spaced practice since these are both part of brain based learning.   Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great day.

Happy July 4th

 

Warm-up

 

If there are 3420 coffee beans in a pound of coffee and you need 70 ground up beans to make one cup of coffee, how many cups of coffee will you get from a pound of coffee?

Warm-up

 If a pound of coffee beans weighs about 454 grams and 3426 beans make up a pound, how much does each coffee bean weigh?

Brain Based Learning - First Step

Teachers are always looking for better ways to present material to students so they learn faster and more efficiently.  Learning new material is the same as building new memories.  Humans create build and create new memories through information encoding, storing information, and stimulating the pathways by accessing and using the new material/memory.

Brain based learning is based on the way the brain changes, remaps, and reorganizes itself as it learns new information. The brain physically changes as it learns new material.  

It has been found that if teachers reduce stress, utilize more efficient ways of instruction, include a certain amount of physical activity, and providing opportunities to practice can help students learn.  In fact, it appears that if teachers take a bit of time to explain how the brain works, even for elementary students and for students who believe they aren't smart and that can't be changed.  Once they know how the brain processes and filters information, they discover, they can learn.

In brain based learning,  the brain becomes better at processing the information when it gets the chance to practice math in the same manner that they become good at playing basketball, tennis, or swimming.  In brain based learning, practice is not just doing the work, there are other techniques students can do to help them learn the material better.

In fact, the brain adds new connections as it acquires new material.  In addition, it is necessary to strengthen the new connections by remembering, practicing, visualizing, or using the new information.  This means students need to be exposed to the material multiple times.  According to Dr Judy Willis who had been a neurosurgeon before she became a math teacher, it is worth taking time to talk to students about the brain and how it works.  She feels that when students understand how the brain works and grows, they are more likely to lose the idea that they can't learn.

She discovered that when she took time to show how the brain works while providing ideas to help them study more effectively, they became more confident and changed their habits to improve their studying.  She also said that once students learned more about the way the brain worked, the more likely to change from "I can't learn because I wasn't born smart, or with math brains" to the idea they could learn.

The brain has filters that control what information reaches the prefrontal cortex or what Dr Willis calls the thinking brain.  The filtering system is made up of three parts, the reticular activating system, the limbic system, and dopamine.  In addition, the state of their health, emotions, and focus or attention can effect their ability to receive the information.  If they aren't feeling well, or are emotionally down, the information will not get through. 

They need to learn techniques to help them learn to achieve a good mood so they increase their ability to learn.  One way is to teach students to intentionally picturing a time or place when they felt safe, happy, and calm.  The more they practice remembering this place or time, the easier it is for them to recall it because it has become a memory and when they return to that place or time, they make it easier for new information to make it to the brain.  In addition, when they learn to use visualization with history, vocabulary, or math, they retain the material better. Furthermore, when students are taught to take relaxing breaths before a test or starting a challenging lesson, they will be more focused and ready to learn. 

One way to show students the brain grows is to discuss how the brain grows new connections called dendrites between neurons as it learns new things by showing them brain scans and then letting them make diagrams or clay models showing the new connections out of clay.  It is important to stress that more dendrites are formed as a student learns new things but they need adequate sleep.  If you look up the website Neuroscience for Kids, you'll find some great photos there.

We know that the more a student practices, the better they learn the material but we need to share why it is important to take scheduled breaks or connecting the material with something pleasurable helps brains retain the information.  Take this a step further by having students hypothesis what taking too many short breaks, or interrupting their studying with texts  versus how creating a study schedule or turning off the television or streaming can help or hinder their learning.

Lessons on how the brain works do not have to be done all at once.  You could schedule several short sections over the first few weeks of school.  If you'd like more information on how to teach students more about the brain, check this site out. Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great day.