Teaching With the Brain in Mind

emotions seem to be most easily recalled (LeDoux
1996), but all emotionally laden experiences are
more easily recalled than neutral experiences. By
working with patients with accidental damage to
particular areas of the brain, it was discovered that
intense experiences like fear, passion, and rage
seem to be processed in the amygdala (Damasio
1994, LeDoux 1996).
Auditory memories are potent emotional triggers.
A favorite song from your school days or the
sounds from an emotionally charged football game
may bring back earlier feelings. Researchers speculate
that this stimulation takes separate pathways,
distinct from the more mundane content-laden
ones. This may be why traumatic events have such
a lasting impact. They have their own “automatic”
retrieval triggers. Students who get a standing ovation
or a harsh rebuke from a teacher, or who
enjoy and celebrate the completion of a project, are
likely to recall that moment for years.
Practical Suggestions
Using the wrong retrieval process for the job usually
leads to a performance deficit: “forgetting.” By
itself, that’s not a disaster. But over time, it contributes
to a lowered self-image and less of an
effort. There are links between memory skills, better
self-esteem, and school achievement. The good
news is that it’s fairly simple to make the changes
necessary to promote these elements.
Explicit Declarative Strategies
The way to retrieve this type of learning is through
strong activation with rhymes, visualization,
mnemonics, peg words, music, and discussion.
Otherwise, reading a chapter becomes an all-too-
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Memory and Recall
forgettable event. Remind students to stop often
every quarter to half page and take notes, discuss
what is read, or reflect. Conduct oral or written
review, both daily and weekly. Students can pair
up or rotate in teams to present daily reviews. You
might repeat key ideas within 10 minutes of the
original learning, then 48 hours later, and then tie
it all in 7 days later. Spaced learning, with pauses
and intervals for reflection, is valuable. Without
the quiet processing time, much learning is never
transferred to long-term memory.
To deal with the limitations of working memory,
keep the chunks to a minimum. When giving
directions and instructions to 6- to 9-year-olds, use
small chunks, 1–3 items at a time. To older students,
ages 10–17, use up to 7 chunks.
Morris and Cook (1978) assert it works to
teach students how to use acrostics (first letter of
each key word forms new word). The planets are:
“My very excellent mother just sells nuts until
Passover” (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars . . .). For
years, we’ve learned the musical notes on the lines
of the G-clef by memorizing “Every Good Boy
Does Fine.” We learn the Great Lakes by making
one word of their first letters: HOMES (Huron,
Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior).
To help students learn definitions, many teachers
ask them to create action pictures that tie the
two words together. To remember the word semantic,
we could picture a “sea man, with ticks on his
face” (se-man-tic) holding up a long list of words
to memorize. That effectively unifies the two concepts
in memory.
Many successful teachers find that mind-maps
or other graphic organizers help students keep
their learning fresh. Some teachers ask students to
work with partners and a piece of flip-chart paper