Much of what we do in teaching is done with the expectation that students will need to remember what we teach them.  In fact, learning and memory are synonymous in many ways–the latter being the ability to recall the former.  They are inextricably intertwined.  Let us look at some common teaching and learning strategies from a memory perspective.

A common resource in elementary literacy education is Adrienne Gear’s Reading Power series (2006, 2008).  In it, she elaborates on the ideas of connecting, questioning, visualizing, inferring, and transforming.

Connecting:
Connecting with prior knowledge is fundamental to both Cognitive Information Processing and Assimilation Learning.  Both of these theories postulate that learning builds on prior knowledge, if it exists, and the more cross-linkages that can be formed, the easier recall will be.

Classroom Application: Pre-learning strategies (advanced organizers) are invaluable for deepening learning and giving learning an anchor.

Questioning:

Student questioning serves many purposes in Cognitive Learning Theory.  It is a form of elaborative rehearsal that strengthens propositional networks, improves activation spreading and facilitates recall, it can also be both progressive differentiation and integrative reconciliation.  These processes build meaning in the cognitive structure that improves recall.

Classroom Application:  Building a community of critical thinkers who regularly stop to think to themselves and each other, “What does this mean to me?” and, “Does this make sense?” also builds meaning and improves spreading activation.

Visualizing:

Cognitive Information Processing Theory has shown us that LTM is stored in two forms: verbal and visual.  Elaborating the verbal with the visual builds the propositional networks and improves chances at recall.

Classroom Application:  Encourage students to take a moment to visualize what they have heard or read.  Additionally, when students are making notes, they should be encouraged to create diagrams and doodles that make sense to them.

Inferring:

Inferring is a process that answers the question, “What’s not being said?”  These answers can only come from connecting what is being said with prior knowledge.  This techniques is an example of  integrative reconciliation.

Classroom Application: Challenging students to answer the, “What’s not being said?” question encourages cross-linkages  and improvements to cognitive structure.  Furthermore it can help students ascertain the truth of a matter, which is particularly important because declarative memory is generally assumed to be true when it is recalled.

Transforming:

Transforming is a meaning-making metacognitive process and in both CIP and Assimilation Theory, metacognition facilitates working memory; thus improving the encoding processes that lead to long term memory and, later, recall.

Classroom Application:  The process of transforming learning requires that students analyze what they already know and what they are learning then synthesize it into a larger understanding.  This not only improves recall, but transfer.

Dear Readers:

This is clearly not an exhaustive list of strategies based in building memory recall.  If you have more that you’d like to share please add your comments below and we will endeavor to add them to the page.

References:

Gear, A. (2006). Reading power: Teaching students to think while they read. Markham, ON: Pembroke Publishers.

Gear, A. (2008). Reading power: Teaching students to think while they read all kinds of information. Markham, ON: Pembroke Publishers.