Brain Based LearningMemory, Retention, and Learning

Take a moment to think about what you know about the brain’s ability to remember and retain new information. How does this affect your classroom instruction? What strategies do you use to make sure students retain information?

What is memory?

Gives us a past

Gives us a record of who we are

Essential for human individuality

Without it, life would be a series of meaningless encounters that have no link to the past and no use for the future.

Allow individuals to remember experiences and use them to respond to future events.

Two Types of Long Term Memory

Nondeclarative

• Sometimes called implicit memory.

• Previous experiences aid in the performance of a task without conscious

awareness of these previous experiences

Declarative• Also called conscious or

explicit memory

• Remembering names, facts, music, and objects.

• Conscious, intentional recollection of previous

experiences and information

3 Types of Nondeclarative Memory

1. Procedural- remembering how to do something

(Think of something you did this morning that required procedural memory.)

2. Motor Skill Memory- performance of daily skills we do without even realizing we learned them or are using memory to do it.

(Think of something you did this morning that required motor skill memory)

3. Emotional Memory- unconscious response can turn them toward or away from similar learning experiences

Flashbulb memory is called by such as powerful emotional experience that we can instantly store it in our long term memory.

2 Types of Declarative Memory

Episodic Memory

• Memory of events in one’s own

history

• Helps a person identify time and place an event

happened

Semantic Memory

• Knowledge of facts and dates not related to any

event.

Why is this important for educators?

How a learner processes new information presented in school has a great impact on the quality of what is learned and is a major factor in retaining information.

Understanding memory and how it is formed can help teachers select strategies to improve retention and retrieval of information.

Learning and Retention

Learning

Involves brain, nervous system, and environment.

Can learn something for a few minutes and then lose it

Retention

Process by which long term memory preserves a learning so that it can locate, identify and retrieve it in the future.

The Retention Puzzle

Did You Know? The idea of “Practice makes Perfect” is rarely true.

If a learner practices a skill incorrectly, unlearning and relearning the skills is very difficult.

Cramming for an exam is called massed practice. This is not an effective strategy for retention. Distributed practice over time is the key to retention.

By forgetting something trivial, we allow room for more important and meaningful experiences.

We remember best what comes first, second best what comes last, and least of what is in the middle.

It is important to teach new information first!

Kids are so used to quick change and novelty in their environment so it is important to keep learning segments shorter.

Teachers that go off task between learning segments keep the kids more focused during learning segments.

Kids will retain 5% of information taught in lecture but 90% if they teach others or use the information immediately. Kids will retain 75% of the information if they practice by doing.