Deliberate Memorization 1
CPD: The Teaching Online Handbook (by Courtney Ostaff), topic 1.1.2
Deliberate Memorization
Deliberate memorization helps students by chunking information in long-term memory to help compensate for limited working memory
Chunking
- We can “chunk” little pieces of information together to make it easier to remember.
- For example, when Courtney was a little girl, her family's answering machine code was 1397, the four corners of the phone touch pad. -Rather than remember the four numbers, she simply remembered to use the corners.
Working memory
- Working memory → the part of the brain where people temporarily store information and work with it.
- Scientists know that working memory is limited and brief.
- How limited? Between four and seven items at a time.
- How brief? About thirty seconds.
Working memory
- Gifted students can often hold more in short-term memory and think longer.
- Students with attention and memory problems tend to have less holding capacity and less time on task.
Long-term memory
How many bits of information can our brains store in long-term memory?
Humans have not reached the limit of long-term memory.
Functionally, our long-term memory is unlimited
Expanding long-term memory
- Memorizing things expands students’ long-term memories and expands their schemas, making better use of their limited short-term memory.
- Students on the lower end of working memory scale can't afford to figure a problem out as they go.
- So, for these students, memorizing vast swathes of knowledge is critical for problem solving.
Test yourself on Deliberate Memorization 1
What is a consequence of chunking?