Week 6 Reflections

Week 6 Reflecitions
1. How can I summarize this reading in a few sentences? There may be something to the old saying, “Practice makes perfect.” That seems to be what total time hypothesis is saying, as long as it is done in a deep processing level. Distribution of Practice Effect suggests that the practice will be more efficient if it is spread out over time. A mnemonics is a clever way to help aide memory. The Keyword Method is a mnemonics that uses mental imagery. It aides in remembering foreign language and people’s name by associating the word with an image. The Method of Loci is another visual mnemonic where you visually correlate places with new items to be learned. There are also four mnemonics that use organization to help us remember – chunking (putting small piece of info into larger chunks), hierarchy technique (classifying items – such as an outline, mapping or a story web), first letter technique (My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us Nachos – Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune), and Narrative Technique (using stories). More recent research suggests more comprehensive approaches like Herrmann’s multimodal approach. The physical and psychological well-being of the person is important in this approach. It also suggests using several memory approaches instead of just one. Finally in the memory section they talked about two kinds of memories – retrospective (remembering things that have already been learned or that have already happened) and prospective (things to remember for the future).

2. How does it fit into what I have learned already in this course? I do like the way the text always refers back to previous chapters to help tie things together because my brain is old and I need these constant reminders so that these new concepts will eventually be retained in my long term memory (the more you practice, the more you remember). For instance, right off the bat, the text make three references to chapter 5 – self-reference, encoding specificity and autobiographical memory and to chapter 3 – divided attention.

3. What am I still not clear on? Does absentmindedness occur more often in adults than in children? If so, is it because we have more on our plates or because our brain cells are dying?

4. How would apply this to my own teaching/work? I think that Mr. Martinez has us right these reflections so that we are “pausing from time to time to summarize the material we have just learned.” In doing so, I think he is trying to help us deep process the information. I know I do the same thing in science this year. I have the children write their “personal findings” after each lesson. By putting what they have learned into their own thoughts, I am hoping they are making deeper connections than just listening or reading.

5. What proof does the author offer that makes me believe this is valid? Do I believe it? Why? I hate to be the eternal pessimist but I disagree with the authors comments about personality types and background music. I know several people, myself, my daughters, my best friend, my college roommate, my fellow teachers who need a quiet environment when they are studying and they are definitely not introverts.

6. Why is this important? What does it help improve or explain or predict? One of the things that kind of stuck in my mind that I felt would be important for future lessons is – “both kinds of memory (prospective and retrospective) are less accurate when you have a long delay, filled with irrelevant activities, prior to retrieval”. This made me think of social studies and science units that are taught and then probably not thought of again until the next couple of grades when it is taught again. How can I as a teacher prevent such long periods of time before I ask the kids to retrieve that information again. One thing I do, is play Jeopardy with the categories being the subjects that I teach and then we asked questions from units that have been taught all year long. I tried to do this every month or so. But I still need to think about more ways.



7. When would I actually use this – under what kind of circumstances and for what kind of students? All this memory talk has me concerned about my ADHD kids (which are going in numbers every year). If we cannot get them to focus to begin with, how can we ever ask them to retrieve information that probably wasn’t stored to begin with since their attention is SO divided. That is what I think I would like to concentrate on.

8. Are there other ways to accomplish the same thing that are faster, cheaper, and/or better? I know the text said that recent research wasn’t real hot on mnemonics, but I find that it works for me and it works for many of my kids. So in that case, I think that is a faster way to memorize things than the comprehensive approach.