Park Tudor Blogs

 

 

Over the summer I was one of eight teachers who traveled to St. Andrew’s Episcopal School for the CTTL Conference. The session that has most transformed my teaching was “Memory” with Pooja Agarwal. My “A-Ha!” moment during the presentation was when I learned about the “Four Power Tools” of memory and how I could make small but meaningful changes in my teaching to improve my student’s retention. Easy implementation resulting in big memory gain for my students was a no brainer for me. I had to try these power tools out in my classroom.

 

Below, are the “Four Power Tools” of memory and examples of what they look like in action in the 4th grade classroom.

 

 

Retrieving information from memory over and over again makes recalling that same information in the future much easier. Effortful retrieval makes for stronger learning and retention. In 4th grade, this could be as simple as watching a video and having students do a “brain dump.” Write down all the information they remember from the video. At first, students may write down one or two pieces of information and stop. However, the work is not done. I challenge them to dig deeper into their brains and retrieve more information. This “stretching” of the brain is the kind of effortful retrieval we want our students to engage in.

 

 

If you want to take your retrieval practice to the next level, including appropriate spacing is a must. Forgetting is actually a good thing for your memory, so asking students to space out their retrieval of the information helps them learn it more effectively. I use spacing in my classroom in the form of a retrieval grid. Retrieval grids are simply a piece of paper with prompts for retrieval practice. I give my students retrieval grids throughout the week that include different prompts based upon when we learned certain material. The “one and done” method of learning is not how you make the information stick. Continuing to use spaced retrieval will strengthen the pathways in our brain to make it easier to retrieve the information that we want in the future.

 

 

Interleaving is the mixing of multiple topics when retrieving to improve learning. Giving my students prompts relating to different lessons ensures that the students have to figure out what strategies need to be used in order to solve the problem. For example, in math I have used prompts related to multiplication, division, place value, factors, and multiples on the same retrieval grid. I could just ask my students to do all multiplication but interleaving encourages them to analyze the question and to decide how to solve it.

 

 

Giving feedback to my students on what they are retrieving is vital. Having them continually retrieve the wrong information is not building a stronger brain. Whether the feedback is immediate or delayed, it is important that students are given the opportunity to correct errors and learn from the retrieval practice.  

 

These tools can be used both in and outside of the classroom. Whether you use one or all of the tools, try them out for yourself and watch you or your child’s brain grow stronger!