How to Improve Student Memory and Learning

Tags

Best Practices, Meta-cognitive Strategies, Self-assessment Activities

Are you looking for ways to boost students learning?  

I encourage you to read this summary How to Use Retrieval Practice to Improve Student Learning by the masters in the field at Washington University: Agarwal, Roediger, McDaniel,and McDermott.  The summary clearly explains what retrieval practice is, how it improves memory and learning, and how to do in your classroom.  It represents a perfect blend of research and best classroom practices!

The WESOL News Report

Tags

Best Practices, Pronunciation

Recently I was in Florida visiting adult education programs. At Westside Tech of Orange County Schools, in Orlando, I met Maria Wells, an outstanding teacher with a bevy of creative ideas. This one was my favorite.

The WESOL News Report

In every class Ms. Wells randomly calls on a student to orally report on a news event of his or her choosing. The student must be able to answer the classic news-report questions (who, what, where, when, why, and how) as well as cite the source. She calls it the WESOL News Report!

This activity gets students to regularly read  informational text, practice their speaking skills, and develop their media literacy. The random assignation keeps them all on alert and reading up on news events every class day.

Smart Practice: Using Repetition to Improve Memory

Tags

Best Practices, Self-directed Learning, Study Skills

We forget 90% of what is taught in class within 30 days.

Over a hundred years ago the German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus (1885) came to this conclusion after painstakingly exposing his human subjects to list of words.   He also discovered that most of this forgetting occurs just hours after being exposed to the new material.   It is called the curve of forgetting.

When we encounter new information, neurons in our brain activate, but the stimulation lasts only up to 90 minutes unless it is reactivated (Squire, Kandel, 1999).  We begin to commit the new learning to memory when we first practice it, but for learning to endure in our memory, we must return to it at intervals and in different ways over weeks, months, and even years.

Quick Learning

A popular model in education is “teaching to mastery”.  We often interpret this to mean that students need to practice a language point intensely until it is burned into memory. Indeed, while students are practicing, they demonstrate an easy fluency with the material.  That is because it is active in their working memory.  Teachers and students alike prefer this intensive kind practice because it produces rapid, if ephemeral, gains. Quickly students gain confidence in their control of the material.  It feels familiar and known.  If tested immediately after intensive repetition and in a way that simulates the rehearsal, students score well.

Quick Forgetting

It turns out, however, that intensive repetitive practice leads to quick learning AND quick forgetting.  (Dunloskey, 2013).  If students are tested on that same material just a day later, their scores drop precipitously. The challenge is to have students put the material aside and then return to it. Inevitably they will have forgetten some of the material, and that is ok.  The effort they make to retrieve and reconstruct the information each time they practice it anew will strengthen their memory.

Interval Learning = Long-Term Learning

Practicing material at intervals over time is more effective than practicing material intensively in a short period of time. (Cepada 2003.) Students who practice at intervals retain their knowledge and skills for a longer period than those who practice it intensely all at once, even when controlled for total time spent practicing the material (Dunloskey 2013). This means one hour of intensive practice is less valuable than four intervals of 15 minutes each.

Intervals can be as short as five minutes, or twenty-five minutes.  This way you can get students retrieving something they practiced a couple of activities prior in the class.  But then ideally the intervals should occur at longer and longer lag times over the ensuing days, weeks, and months.  Between each interval, students begin forgetting the information.  Then, when students make an effort to retrieve that information, they strengthen their memory of their learning.

Lesson Planning         

Repetition and spirals.

Built-in Reviews:  Class Warm-Up

At the beginning of class, ask students what they learned in the last class.

Have students briefly identify the material studied in textbook and notes to update any previously absent students.

Built-in Reviews:  Class Recap

At the end of class, ask students to tell you what they learned in class.  This may be the first time they are returning to a topic.

Student Organization:  Study Calendars

• Hand out weekly calendars or have students use their cell-phone calendars.
• On the first class of the week, ask students to schedule at least four times they will study English outside of class.

Student Organization: Data Speaks

• At the start of each week, ask students to look at their calendar and to count the number of times they studied English outside of class the previous week.
• Then test student retention of the material presented and practiced in the previous week.   To test, you can use a section of your textbook’s unit test, or a simple dictation of questions or prompts to which students write responses.
• At the top of the test, have students write the number of times they studied the previous week. Quickly, students will recognize the relationship between studying at intervals and their retention of knowledge and skills.

Frequent Assessments

Simple and challenging assessments are essential to developing memory of learning.  Make sure you do these regularly and recycle previously learned material.

Dictation:  Site the Setting

• Dictate two lines from a conversation students learned in previous lessons.
• Have students identify who the speakers are and where they are talking.  For example:

A:  May I help you?

B:  Yes, I’d like a coffee and a sandwich.

Who:  An employee and a customer.

Where:  A restaurant.

Dictation:  Quick Quiz

Dictate questions that ask students to recall previous learning.  For example:

What are three kinds of over the counter medicine?  

How many colors do you see in the classroom?  

What are the four seasons of the year?

What occupations are in restaurant work?

Dictation:  Word Works

• Keeping a running list of words students are studying.
• Dictate recently learned words to test spelling.  Every time add a few words from previous units.

Correct the Errors

• Write common errors into sentences on cards- one per card.
• Distribute the cards. In pairs student find the error and write the sentence correctly on a piece of paper.
• Check their work.  If correct provide the pair with a new error on a card.

A Thousand Words

• Project an image that contains items students have learned in previous classes.
• Give pairs of student 3 minutes to generate as many words as they can.
• Review the lists together.

Brain-based Research: Strengthening Learning and Memory

Tags

Best Practices, Meta-cognitive Strategies

         “If you’re just engaging in mechanical repetition,

 it’s true, you quickly hit the limit of what you can retain. 

However, if you practice elaboration,

 there’s no known limit to how much you can learn.”

~ Brown, Roediger, McDaniel (2014)

Elaboration is essential for you to commit new learning to memory.  Elaboration is when you explain new information in your own words.  Once you begin to add examples and details, or make connections to other experiences and knowledge, you are enriching the new learning and making it more memorable and more transferrable to new contexts. 
laboration involves the thinking strategies of paraphrasing, summarizing, creating analogies, answering questions, and describing connections.  Elaboration activates the frontal lobe of your brain and brings your new learning to a higher level of awareness and articulation.

Let’s learn something new, and then practice elaboration.

1.  New Information:  

• The Spanish word sobremesa has no equivalent in English.
• Sobremesa literally translated means on the table.
• Definition of sobremesa: the time spent after a meal when people linger at the table to talk.  In Spain the sobremesa phase of a holiday meal can last for hours.
• Example sentence:  The most important part of the day for my family is the sobremesa because we just slow down for a bit and talk about what is going on in our lives.  

2.  Elaboration:

• Retell:  In your own words what does sobremesa mean? Where and when does sobremesa happen?
• Connect to your life:  Do you have a sobremesa after meals in your home?  If so, how long does the sobremesa last? If not, do you think you would like the tradition of the sobremesa in your home?  Why?  Why not?
• Connect to other knowledge:  Why do you think sobremesa is a Spanish word and not an English word?  What does it tell you about Spanish culture?

Elaboration is a low prep and very effective way for teachers to get students to practice and enhance their learning.  It can take many forms:  It can be done individually, in pairs, or in groups. Simple ESOL elaboration activities are: explaining material to a recently absent classmate; relating new material to situations in one’s own life; writing an outline or summary of the new learning; organizing the new learning in a graphic organizer; or applying the material to a new context in a role play.

The key to elaboration is that the student does the work.  The student must make the effort to make meaning and add layers of experience and thought to new information for the new knowledge to be long lasting and transferable.   To achieve elaboration, you must restrain yourself from too much teacher-talk.

 

Brain-based Classroom Activities:  Elaboration

End of Class Reflection:  What did you learn in class today?

• At the end of each class, have students put away their notes and books and for five minutes write on a separate piece everything they learned in class.
• After five minutes of writing, have students look at their class notes.  What did they remember?  What did they forget?  Have students write the material they forgot in a different color on their papers.
• Then ask, What is most important to you?  Why?  When will you use it?

Retell and Reconstruct

• After reading a text or listening to a conversation, have students retell the information in pairs.
• Then have them work individually to reconstruct the text/conversation in writing.
• Have students read the text or listen to the conversation one more time (with their pencils down).
• Have them write any corrections or new details into the text in a different colored ink.

Mark the Margins

Have students review their class notes at the end of class and mark  their notes with the following symbols:

✔I understand.

? I don’t understand.

+ I want to practice more.

Before leaving class, have students write on a paper and hand in to you:

• Something they learned.
• One question they have.
• One thing they want to practice more.

Brain Based Research: Teaching with Many Modalities

Tags

Best Practices, Meta-cognitive Strategies, Multi-sensory Teaching

“Our senses are designed to work together, so when they are combined . . . the brain pays more attention and encodes the memory more robustly.”

~ Medina 2014

Multimodal Learning

Study after study show that memory improves when more than one sense is stimulated at the same time.  The early pioneer in multimodal learning, Edgar Dale found that people learn better from pictures and words than from words alone.  In more recent years, Richard Mayer has established that learners who receive input in a variety of senses have better recall than learners who receive input that is only visual or auditory. Hear a piece of information, and three days later you’ll remember 10% of it. Add a picture and you’ll remember 65%.  (Medina 2014)  Furthermore, people who receive information via multiple modalities are more creative in their problem solving by 50% to 75%  (Newell, Bulthoff, Ernst 2003).

The ultimate expression of simultaneous and multimodal learning is learning by doing.  When we learn by seeing and hearing, we remember 50% fourteen days later.  But we remember 90% if we actually experience it.  (Dale 1969)   This means that simulations, such as role plays, are very effective in helping students remember the new language they learned.

All the Senses and All the Brain

Language, the subject of our teaching, is quite a brain-stimulating subject.  Language activates many parts of the brain. In fact, different lobes of your brain specialize in processing different aspects of language. (Zadina 2014).  You process sound in a different location than you process visual information or motor information, so hearing the word cat, seeing the word cat, seeing a photograph of a cat, and saying the word cat all stimulate different parts of your brain.  If you engage all these different senses you are more likely to remember the meaning of cat because you have an enriched experience of the concept of cat and you have more pathways to that concept.

Using Expressive Pathways

“Very simply, saying a word aloud leads to better memory than does reading a word silently. “  

~ Colin MacLeod (2012)

Within the four language skills of reading, writing, listening, and speaking, there is also a hierarchy of impact on memory.  Reading and listening are receptive pathways.  Speaking and writing are expressive pathways.  When we reread material aloud (using an expressive pathway) our memory of that information is stronger than if we read it silently (using our receptive pathway).  This is called the “production effect”  (MacLeod 2013).  While we cannot always prompt learning experiences that integrate all the senses, we should remember to give our students many opportunities to use their expressway pathways in class.  Invite them to speak, enunciate, discuss, print, write, type, and draw as much as possible.

 

Using Multiple Senses to Stay Stimulated 

 

“Our sensory receptors become aroused when a new stimulus begins, but if the new stimulus continues without variation in quality or quantity, our sensory receptors shut down from their aroused state.”

                                                          ~Pierce J. Howard  (2000)

In his popular book, The Owner’s Manual for the Brain Howard points out that our brains need variety.  We need to add novelty and variation for our neurons to fire until they wire.

Using multiple modalities is a way to add stimulation to student learning.  For example: if you have introduced words in print on the board, introduce them again in typeface on a computer screen, or have students practice “skywriting” the words with their fingers in the air, or have students type the words and “dress” them with the computer tools of font, color, and WordArt to express the word in graphic text.  Have students listen carefully for the beginning or end sound of each word.  Use gesture to demonstrate stress and rhythm. Introduce the words again with pictures from Google images or have students draw their own illustrations, or have students use their cell phones to photograph an example of the word.

Classroom Applications

Multisensory Checklist

Complete a checklist at random intervals to evaluate how much of the visual medium you use in class.   If you haven’t check an item off in a while, figure a way to integrate into your next class.   (See The Multisensory Checklist for Teaching Language:  https://teachertwoteacher.wordpress.com/2012/03/08/the-multisensory-checklist-for-teaching-language/ )

Dramatic Dialogues

• Make sure your students get multiple exposures to a dialogue from a variety of media: audio print, video.
• Give students multiple opportunities to practice the dialogues in a variety of dispositions:  sitting, standing, with propos, whispering, shouting, with gestures.
• Make sure students use the new language they learned in a role play.  You can add layers to their sensory learning by videotaping their role plays and sending them to the students to watch and transcribe short sections.

Multisensory Spelling Practice

• Sound: Students repeat a word and consider its number of syllables and syllable stress.
• Print: Students look at the printed word and consider how the letters and the sounds correspond.  Are there letters that are silent?  Are there sounds that have no corresponding letters?
• Movement: Students “write” the word on their desktops with their index finger.

Silent Read and Repeat 

This silent step allows students to focus on the mechanical aspects of pronunciation: the movements of lips, jaw, cheeks, and tongue.

• Read a line aloud to the class.
• Have students read it by mouthing the words (saying them with no voice).
• Have students then read the line aloud.

[Thanks to Marc Helgesen for this great idea! http://helgesenhandouts.weebly.com/diy-neuro-elt.html ]

Additional links to multi-sensory teaching ideas:

https://teachertwoteacher.wordpress.com/2012/03/06/lets-get-physical-teaching-pronunciation/

https://teachertwoteacher.wordpress.com/2012/05/08/eight-great-reading-fluency-activities/

Informing Practice with Research: Brain Science and Learning

Tags

Best Practices, Multi-sensory Teaching

We have recently learned a lot about how memory works. These research findings can inform our teaching in many wonderful ways.

 

The research says :	In your classroom:
When we begin by asking questions, we are more likely to remember the answers.	ü  Ask questions throughout a lesson, not just at the end. ü  Make sure you are not the only one asking questions. Students need practice asking questions.
When we connect new information to what we already know, we remember it better.	ü  Ask students what they know about a topic and what they want to learn about the topic before you present the new lesson. ü  At the end of the lesson, have students pause briefly to summarize what they learned.
It takes several encounters with new information to commit it to long term memory.	ü  Recycle, recycle, and recycle again.  ü  Make sure students get between 5 and 10 opportunities to work with new information before you expect mastery.   ü  Pause often so student can review material and identify the salient points.
The more modalities we use in learning, the more reliable our memory is.  Fire those neurons until they wire.	ü  Use all modalities as you recycle material: Make sure students attend to the new language aurally, orally, in print, in different contexts, in controlled practice and in self-expression.
The more we think about something, the more likely we are to remember it.	ü  Give your students time to process new information.  ü  Have students reconstruct what they learned by retelling or writing what they remember.

 

Checklists for Teaching Writing in Low-Level ESOL Classes

Tags

Best Practices, Low-level ESOL

Teacher’s Checklist                  

PRE-WRITE                                                                                                          ü
a.  Have students practiced the language necessary to complete the writing task?
b.  Have students thought/talked about what they are going to write?
WRITE                                                                                                                   ü
c.  Is there a model of the format?  (letter, paragraph, sentences)
d.  Is there model language students can refer while writing?
REVISE and EDIT                                                                                                 ü
e.  Do students review their writing by reading it aloud – alone or together?
f.   Do students use a checklist to review their writing?
g.  Does the teacher check if the writing task is complete?
h.  Does the teacher give feedback on content?
i.   Does the teacher give feedback on language?
j.   Do students correct their writing?

Key to Teacher’s Checklist                  

PRE-WRITE

a.  Students need practice with the target vocabulary and grammar before they can control it in writing.  The easiest way to ensure this is to do writing as the culminating activity for any language learning lesson (i.e. grammar, vocabulary, listening/speaking).

b.  Low-level students need time to develop their responses before they write.  Talk things out first as a class or in pairs.

WRITE

c.   Present a model. Check student comprehension of the model.  Ask students to identify features in the format (i.e. title, indentation, double spaces,).  Ask comprehension questions to confirm student comprehension of content too.

 d.  To become independent writers, students need to know how to use reference material (in this case, the model language).  If they are using newvocabulary, have them locate their vocabulary list.  If they are using a particular grammar structure, have them locate the corresponding grammar chart. 

REVISE and EDIT

e.   Revising is essential to the writing process.  Make sure students have a review routine such as reading their writing aloud to themselves and then a partner. 

f.    Focus the editing process.  You can supply an editing checklist, or students can keep a running checklist of the types of errors they make.  See the example below. 

      Show students how to use an editing checklist. Present an incorrect model and go through the checklist to find the errors. 

g.   Writers can always say more.   Read student writing and orally ask (or write questions) to get them to flesh out their writing.  With training, students can also do this questions-asking as they read their writing aloud to one another in pairs (see e above).

h.   Writing is meaningful.  Write a personal comment or orally give a personal response (i.e. That sounds like a fun!  or You have a big family!).

i.    Give focused feedback but don’t do all the work.  Circle the errors and let students figure them out.  If you indicate the number of each type of error in the editing checklist, students can understand the nature of their errors  (see example below). 

      I do not code errors on the page (i.e. indicate sp. for spelling error and wc for word choice) because low-level students get so easily overwhelmed by too many markings and too much print on a page.

j.    Correcting writing is a step in the writing process.  Have students work individually or in pairs to correct their writing and then hand in their final draft.

 

Student’s Checklist 

     

Check for:	Student	Teacher
Periods	ü	ü
Capital letters	ü	3*
Spelling	ü	2*
1 subject + 1 verb	ü	ü

*  You can indicate the number of each type of error in the students writing, so they can understand where they need to focus their efforts. 

 

Activating that Meta-Muscle: Activities for Noticing Errors

Tags

Best Practices, Self-directed Learning, Study Skills

 

I recently received this query: 

 

“I know self-monitoring by students is important for [confronting fossilized errors], but–aside from “Correct the Errors” activities, I can’t find any tips on how to promote self-monitoring. “  – J. Weiss

 

Indeed, recent research in Adult ESOL Literacy confirms what many of us have suspected.  Literacy seems to enhance students’ meta-cognitive ability and, conversely, lack of literacy seems to reduce self-monitoring cognition.  This means that people with little education are less likely to attend to the form and accuracy of their expression, despite our exhortations to produce the language correctly. Our feedback on language form is not on their cognitive map. 

 

So how do we teachers of Adult ESOL low-literacy learners get students to strengthen their language skills?  I suggest two approaches:

·         Strengthen that meta-cognition muscle by explicitly instructing students in self-monitoring routines.

·         Give meaningful feedback.   

 

Current Posts on Self-monitoring Activities:  (more will come)

           

Brain Research and Effective Learning — Activities for Improving Memory.

https://teachertwoteacher.wordpress.com/2012/03/24/learning-and-the-brain-how-basic-research-can-improve-your-teaching-and-their-learning/

 

Pause and Reflect:  A Simple Way in Increase Student Learning

https://teachertwoteacher.wordpress.com/2012/02/11/pause-and-reflect-a-simple-way-to-increase-student-learning/

 

Goal Setting:  Purposeful Learning

https://teachertwoteacher.wordpress.com/2010/02/13/goal-setting-puposeful-learning/

 

 

Giving Meaningful Feedback

·         Explicitly teach words that are necessary for correction.  (For example: consonant-vowel, subject-verb-complement, punctuation-period-question mark, syllables-letters-words etc.) 

      Use these words to characterize student errors.  For example:  Where is the vowel in this word?  What is the subject? Do you need a period or a question mark?

·         Provide writing surfaces on which it is easy to erase (black boards or erasable boards), so students can correct their work multiple times and still have a nice looking product.

·         Have students point to words as they read their writing aloud to a partner so they notice any omissions or repetitions in their writing.

 

·         Get students to attend to the error by comparing their error to your model.  For example:

Student:  I no work on Sunday.

Teacher:  You say:  I no work on Sunday.   (Using fingers to identify each word)  I say:  I don’t work on Sunday.  (Using fingers to identify each word)  Which word is different?

 

Student:  (writes the word) Wenesday

Teacher:  (Writes the word Wednesday)  What’s different? How many letters are there?  Which letter is silent?

 

·         Use physical and visual feedback for pronunciation errors.

See examples on my blog post:  Let’s Get Physical:  Teaching Pronunciation:

https://teachertwoteacher.wordpress.com/2012/03/06/lets-get-physical-teaching-pronunciation/

 

·         Accept that some errors will not change, because everyone understands what the student means despite its inaccurate form. 

Building Better Learners: The Teacher’s Worksheet

Tags

Best Practices, Goal Setting, Low-level ESOL, Self-directed Learning, Study Skills

These are questions to consider as you plan your class for the next academic year. Any of these questions would serve as an interesting staff development conversation.

Setting Goals

·          What are my students’ goals in coming to English class?

·          How do I find out about their goals?

·          How do I model goal setting in class?

 

Charting Progress

·          How do my students know they are making progress?  What feedback do I give them?  (notes, tests, stars?)

·          What opportunities do I give students to assess their own learning? (checklists, logs, brief reflections on what been studied, self-testing, self-recording?)

 

Developing Organization Skills

·          How do I help my students develop better organizational skills?  Do I check their notebooks?  Do I talk about where papers should be stored?  Do we decide which papers are most important and where to place them?

·          Do I have class systems for when students papers? (folders, bins, labels)

·          Do I have a class system for returning papers to students?   

 

Developing Strong Study Habits

·          · Do I model in class how to do homework assignments?

·           What systems do my students use to record homework assignments?

·           What materials do my students use to study outside of class?

·          What do I know about my students’ study time outside of class?  How often do they study? Where? With whom? 

 

Developing Study Skills

·          Which learning and memorizing strategies do I teach in class? 

·          How often does the class review material?   What review routines do I model in class?  (recalling material, using flashcards, writing questions?)

·          Do my students understand they best learn? Do they undertsnad the different ways people can learn? ( visual, kinesthetic, auditory, and/or aural learning)

 

Self-correction Routines

·          Do I model in class how to use an answer key responsibly?

·          In class do students practice reading their written work aloud in order to hear for small errors or missing words?

·          Do students know how to record and playback their voices on their phones?  Do they use this device to practice pronunciation?

 

Independent Study Resources

·          Do my students know about public libraries? Do they all have library cards?

·          Do my students have access to the Internet (computers or smart phones)? Do they have email accounts? Do they study English materials online?

·          Do I talk to students about parts of their textbook they can study on their own?

·   Do I talk to students about independent learning resources at our school (a lending library? a computer lab?) Do students understand which materials are best for independent study?