Helping student remember what they have learned.

I recently viewed a video where Dr. Michael Orey talks about cognitive learning theory.  He specifically talked about how one of every teacher’s main goals is to get students to remember what we teach them.  In addition, he goes on to discuss the actual learning process and how connections are made between short-term and long-term memory.  One of the more interesting facts to me as a high school teacher that Dr. Orey presented, was that on average students can only remember or take in five to nine pieces of information at a time.  At the high school level, students are often bombarded with facts, especially at my high school because we are on the trimester schedule.  One of the major consequences of the trimester schedule is the small number of days I have with my students, and I am often teaching a new section everyday in order to fit the entire curriculum in the allotted amount of time.  This fact, combined with the though that students can only retain five to nine pieces of information in short term memory is a major concern for me.  Dr. Orey goes on to discuss three different types of long-term memory, which are: declarative, procedural, and episodic.  Where declarative deals with the memorization of facts and information, procedural deals with remember how to carry out processes or do things, and episodic has to do with remember certain experiences the learner has encountered.  As a high school math teacher I am constantly providing declarative and procedural cognitive experiences to my students, because they are a major part of learning math.  In order to be successful in math, you have to learn a large amount of rules, and also have to know how to carry out many processes to solve problems.  One thing I try to incorporate in my teaching to help make the learning experience more memorable for my students is to make it more fun.  I have incorporated songs, have played math games, and also have students work in groups in order to help make their learning experience more memorable.  Dr. Orey also talks about ‘forgetting’, and how the process of forgetting works in the brain.  It is not necessarily that students forget something, but rather that they forget what a given piece of information is linked to in their brain.  He extends on this by talking about how when something is learned it first gets stored in short term memory, then we link it to something to help us remember it.  This process of networking allows us to store information more efficiently, because we can recall something that is simpler in our mind to remember that is something more complex and has less meaning to us. 

Extending the conversation on cognitive learning, I also read a few chapters in the book ‘Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works’ that give some recommendations on to question students to generate their thinking, how advance organizers work, and how to help students become better at summarizing and note taking.  In math, students are constantly taking notes, and trying to simplify the information into an easy way to make connections and remember things.   I always encourage my students to read their math textbooks, because they need to be familiar with the vocabulary, but reading math text can be very difficult for teenage students.  In addition to reading a math textbook, students also need to know how do sift though the text and determine what is important to them and what is not.  To help with this I almost always give my students prepared notes, or what I call ‘guided notes’.  This takes a lot of the ambiguity out of the note taking experience, and highlights the main points I want my students to take away from the lesson.  The guided notes include important vocabulary terms, formulas, and examples that we go over together in class.  I also encourage students to take their own notes in the margins, which also helps them think about what important pieces of information they want to add to their notes to help them remember the material.  The book also talks a lot about questioning students and using advance graphic organizers.  In order to help students generate their thinking before a lesson I often ask questions about some of the prior knowledge that is going to be necessary to the new material.  I think this makes the new material a little less intimidating, because they know it is going to involve something they have done before.  The book also talks a lot about the use of advance graphic organizers.  One example of an advance graphic organizer is a concept map.  A concept map is what I like to call a brainstorming/webbing tool, where you connect a series of nodes/bubbles with lines.  The central node/bubble is in the middle, and you then branch out to more minor points that link back to the central point.  I have not used these too much in my math classes, simply because I never really liked them as a student.  They seemed rather simple to me, and I saw them as simply stating the obvious that I always assumed.  However, my math students have not been through as many math classes that I have been through, and have not been able to see the connections in math that I have seen.  I think concept maps would help a lot of my students out because it shows how different things relate, and it is easy to read.  Also, in addition to the central node/bubble design, you can also use flow charts as concepts maps that show progression.  Flow charts are something that I have used many times in my class, however I never really considered them concept maps.  What is nice about flow charts is that they can show rules via a hierarchy that is quickly picked up on by students.  It effectively shows boundaries, and in math with so many formulas, a flow chart could be useful for students when trying to pick out which formula they need to use for a given problem.

References:

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2011). Program five: Cognitive learning theory [Video webcast]. Bridging learning theory, instruction and technology. Retrieved from http://laureate.ecollege.com/ec/crs/default.learn?CourseID=5700267&CPURL=laureate.ecollege.com&Survey=1&47=2594577&ClientNodeID=984650&coursenav=0&bhcp=1

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with

       classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.