Helping Our Students to Remember

Jennifer Partrick
May 26, 2008

How a person feels about a new learning situation will determine how well the new information is learned. It is impossible to recall information that the brain has not retained. Daily, teachers teach only to have students have no recollection of the information they taught. Why does this occur? Teachers must think about the complete environment as they think about learning. The most important process of the brain is survival and data affecting survival will always surpass any new information. Thus, if students are afraid, sick, or uncomfortable, this data will be processed and take precedence over anything the teacher says. Students must feel physically and emotionally safe before any new learning will take place.

The brain can only process so much information at any one time. Sousa (2006) suggests that students younger than 5 can process an average of two items at any given time, students between five and fourteen, the average is five items, and students over fourteen years the average is seven items. How does this information impact teaching? If a teacher expects their fourth grade students to remember the eight rules for using the comma in one lesson, they are in trouble. The high school teacher who expects their students to remember the names and locations of the ten most important rivers and their locations in one lesson is also in trouble. In order to help our student process large bodies of information, we must teach them how to chunk the information. Talking facilitates chunking. As students learn a body of information they talk about it, consolidate it, taking that information and breaking down into one chunk. Graphic organizers are another tool that helps students to chunk information. As students talk about the new information using their own words, the information can then be placed on a graphic organizer for later use. When the information is broken into smaller chunks, the brain is then free to process and manipulate more information.

Information must make sense and have meaning for students if the information is to be processed and eventually stored for later use. If students do not understand what they are learning they cannot store it. When students say that they do not understand what is being taught they are in essence saying that it does not make sense. Students must also believe that what they are learning has meaning to them. Meaning is a personal thing and different things have different meanings for different people. Things that carry meaning are influenced by personal experience. If students do not see the relevance of the information being taught as meaningful to their lives then the likelihood of the information being stored in negligible. Of sense and meaning, meaning is the most powerful.

For students to be actively engaged in their learning they must feel physically and emotionally safe and classrooms must be conducive to learning. Lessons should be broken into chunks that best suit how their brains work. Giving students opportunities to talk and use graphic organizers supports how our brains work. Lessons must make sense and students must see them as having meaning for their academic and personal lives if the information is to be stored.

Reference:
Sousa, D. (2006). How the brain learns. (3rd. ed.).Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications Company.