"Again emotions add the adrenaline that will mark that will mark these memories as important and worth saving" (King-Friedrichs, p. 78).
With the buzz in education on differentiating instruction, can we say that educators have recognized the need to connect with students in areas that are nativeor have an emotional connection to? Also can this differentiation lead to improvement of long-term memory functioning?
The thing that makes me wonder about long-term memory and retrieval, is whether it all leads to learning. In King-Friedrichs' (2001) article the teacher was able to use what the students experienced in their travels to make connections in the lesson. She got the students to visualize the longitudinal line and latitudinal lines in relation to the trips that they had taken.This article emphasized that the students would be more likely to store the geographic information in their long-term memorey as a result of the connection. To this end, I wonder if the students would be able to apply the information or just remember the definition of the terms. It would be important to remember the definition of the terms for testing but it is unclear to me if the storage of the information can ensure application at a later date. James (2001) in his chapter on memory stated that " .........the art of remembering is the art of thinking; .................. The connecting is the thinking; and, if we attend clearly to the connection, the connected thing will certainly be likely to remain within recall" (p. 70). Even though James emphasized that something is remembered when it is connected to prior experiences and stored until it is needed, does the need manifest itself in regurgitation or application?
The movie Race To Nowhere outlined that students in AP programs are remembering lots of information but they are only remembering it for testing and then they no longer remember the information. It also outlined that even though these students in high school have passed the AP tests they are still less prepared for college level subject matter. I guess with these individuals the information is short-term memory and not long-term memory storage. This was so clear in the Foer (2011) article when the reporter was able to come up with connections to remember the order of the decks of cards. This was clearly just regurgitation. These kinds of skills are wonderful for factual information but would not it translate to its use for solving problems.
I taught resource classes of high school students with mild intellectual disabilities. One of the classes was split by a lunch period and halfway through the class my students would go to lunch and come back to the second half of the class. I would always have to reteach the information from the beginning of the class because by the time these individuals returned they would often lose most of the information. For this population their are problems with some short-term and almost all long-term memory storage. When I taught them I would use connections to their interests but the problem still existed. When it comes to long-term memory for this population it is very difficult to retain information and repetition is key. Even with the repetition it's still a problem because it is a manifestation of their disability. What would King-Friedrichs, Foer and James suggest to address improving the learning of this population understanding their difference?
Foer, J. (2011, February). Secrets of a mind-gamer: How I trained my brain and became a world-class memory athlete. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/02/20/magazine/mind-secrets.html?hp.
James, W. (1899/2001). Talks to teachers on psychology and to students on some of life's ideals. Mineola, NY: Dover. ISBN: 0486-41964-9.
King-Friedrichs, J. (2001). Brain-friendly techniques for improving memory. Educational Leadership, 59(3), 76-69.
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