Skip to main content

Memory is the residue of thought - do babies think?

 Memory is the residue of thought

I have read this so often and always completely agreed (can't remember who said it- Willingham maybe? David or Daniel? Was it even D?) 

Memorable learning events are a hook into the residue of thought though. I have read a lot that has said swiss rolls for fractions aren't any good, puppets for Romeo and Juliet aren't any good - and I agree that these events may not lead to learning - but they can be a trigger. 

These days, we're all up with triggers (remembering or re-experiencing something similar which loops our brains back to that time). Maybe this is the same for learning? Hindsight is a wonderful thing; looking back can help us to understand the present. So a memorable learning event could help learning in the present. 

We read our first proper knowledge organiser this week and I asked children to highlight everything they already knew. I worried that they might highlight everything (feature detective highlighting in English requires teaching of how to highlight). I thought they might even highlight as we read, and then highlight everything. But I was wrong, some children highlighted a word - no one highlighted a factual explanation or diagram - even though this included learning about plants from Year 3. In the 'learning recycling box' I'd written a vague question 'Do you remember growing a bean plant in Year 3?', and thought at the time that they all would. Who wouldn't remember such a fun thing? Only one person did, and they thought this had probably been Year 2. (And the everyone agreed it was Year 2).

Fortunately, my school had at one point good quality science books, and although most children in Year 5 have moved on to new books, we still had some old ones available to look back on. I picked up one of these books and flicked back to the beautiful booklet of observations the child had written - oh yeah! From a few more, but still not all. This means that for some the booklet triggered a memory. I should have spent more time on milking the memory but we cracked on with reading and children still thought it was all new information. Fair enough, there was some distraction with 'sexual reproduction' and 'asexual reproduction'. Fair enough, when you're 9/10, being 7/8 is actually a very long time ago. 

I wonder how much learning research in memory has focused on young children? Secondary age, yes, adults, yes - but for children their lives are full of new events, full of learning and everything is in relation to how long they have been conscious of themselves as a human. 

Early childhood memories are vague but ingrained in our psyche - in a way that other memories aren't. Can we say that memory for children is different to memory for adolescents and adults? That to remember is harder when we are children - think of cognitive load (I can put my own clothes on vs I know the digraph 'oi' - I really hate peanut butter vs decimals are made of tenths). Maybe taking children back to a moment of possible learning via an event is actually very important for their learning in the present. Maybe, as we learn more about plants this term it will trigger memories which they will restructure in their schema. Schema - schemata - this is something I used to read about and don't see any more. Is learning restructuring a schemata rather than remembering a perfect schemata? I guess, for a schemata to exist there needs to have been thought - but this is not true for a baby. Do babies think or do they experience? 

Hmmm. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Learning recycling

Over Easter I've spent a bit more time tweaking the knowledge organisers. I've now added a box names 'Learning Recycling' (using the green recycling symbol) which makes a link to prior learning. This could be to the last part of the same unit, for example referring back to learning within the same year groups - spring term's science lessons on canines and molars and making the link to the new learning on food chains -  or referring back to a different year group's learning, eg. food chains now that we're learning about life cycles in Year 5.  The examples I've made so far link to individual topics or themes, but you could include reviewing light on a Year 5 KO even though this topic doesn't come up in Year 5. Maybe there could be a pit stop for all the science that is taught in Year 4 and 6, but not specified in year 5? A mini review in between when it is explicitly taught so that it isn't forgotten. Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve shows that r...
Post a Comment
Read more

Curriculum tracking and addressing gaps

 I have now started to put together a document which identifies potential gaps in learning from lockdowns (1 and 2) for my current year group. I am really lucky that I was a Year 4 teacher during the first lockdown, as I know what we should have taught and what remote learning we provided. I also know what the uptake on the remote learning was for my class. I realise now that this is all quite late in the game, we should have done this in September - but who has been through this before? Who felt confident about going back to school? What needed to be done? And how? It's in hindsight, and a nudge from Ofsted, that we need to properly address gaps - not just be aware of the gaps.  In my meeting with Ofsted I kept repeating how much I knew about this cohort's missed learning because I had been in that year group - I know, I tell my Year 5 colleagues, we have a good picture. But, quite rightly, Ofsted asked how anyone else knew this about their year group. Especially those teache...
Post a Comment
Read more