5: memory and instruction

How might your knowledge of the memory processes guide your instructional decisions?

Our book say that in most circumstances, meaningful learning is more effective than rote learning.
     -Rote: learning primarily through repetition and practice, little or no attempt to make sense of what's being learned
     -Meaningful: making connections between new information and prior knowledge

I will apply this knowledge when instructional decisions as a teacher. This concept meshes nicely with my personal goals. I want my classroom to be engaging and interesting. I want kids to be able to explore and be participants of their learning experience. Meaningful learning requires deeper thinking and consideration about the topic, while rote learning consists of drilling facts into their tiny heads with rehearsal and repetition. Which sounds better to you?

The three most common forms of meaningful learning are elaboration, organization, and visual imagery. Each of these involve combining separate pieces of information into one "meaningful whole"

Elaboration: using prior knowledge to embellish on a new ideA. To encourage elaboration in my classroom I would ask questions that require students to think deeper to provide expanded answers. I could also give my students opportunities to connect topics we are learning with a personal experience.

Organization: making connections among various pieces of new information. I could encourage this type of thinking by having students sort words into related groups. Another example provided in the book is to teach students the relationships between parts of a whole. The example given was about learning the interrelation between velocity, mass, acceleration, and force. Instead of just teaching those as individual concepts, the book suggests to show how each of the concepts are connected and interact.

Visual imagery: mental pictures that are formed of objects or ideas. I would promote my students to use visual imagery by providing images to help clarify and illustrate more abstract ideas. I could also have my students take the imagery into their own hands and ask them to draw a picture of what we are learning about.

The book suggests that the effects of meaningful learning are best when the forms are used together. An example of this could be to have students organize information into categories, then make a visual representation showing the relationships and connections between them. This could be through a venn diagram, a flow chart, or a picture with descriptions.

This is a link to a great article about teaching for meaningful learning!
http://www.edutopia.org/pdfs/edutopia-teaching-for-meaningful-learning.pdf