Help your students pay attention by:

• Creating eye-catching displays at the beginning of lessons

• Underlining or highlighting written and spoken words

• Calling students by name

• Creating surprise events

• Asking intriguing questions

• Using a variety of teaching methods

• Changing your voice level and pacing during the lesson

•Use signals and give short, clear direction

Strategies for helping students retain that information:

• Elaborative rehearsal: •have them connect the information to something they already know and hold in their memory (have them tell themselves a story)

• Maintenance Rehearsal: •have them repeat the information in their mind

•Chunking:•have them group individual bits of information (works best with numbers)

• Elaboration: •add meaning to new information by connecting it to already existing knowledge

• Organization: •better organized material improves learning

• Context: •aspects of physical and emotional context (places, rooms, moods) influence how we learn

***The more completely information is processed, the better our chances are of remembering it***

Teach:

•Planning:•how much time to give to a task

•Monitoring:•real time awareness of how they are doing during the task

•Evaluating:•making judgments about the processes and outcomes of their task

Use the mnemonic device…DEFENDS

D= decide on the audience, goals, and position

E= estimate main ideas and details

F= figure best order of main ideas and details

E=express your position in the opening

N=note each main idea and supporting points

D=drive home the message in the last sentence

S=search for errors and correct

***Things become meaningful when they are assimilated into existing schemas and are associated with other information in long-term memory***

How to make things meaningful to your students:• Present lessons in vocabulary that makes sense to the student

• Clarify new words through ties with more familiar words and ideas

• Introduce well-organized lessons with clear connections between the different elements of the lesson

• Make natural use of old information to help students understand new information through examples or analogies

• Visual images along with explanations give students multiple ways to understand and interpret information

Mnemonics (systematic procedures for improving memory):

• Loci method: First imagine a familiar place and every time you have a list to remember, place one of your items onto a ‘peg’ in one of these locations…to remember the item, take an imaginary walk through the location

• Acronym: word formed from the first letter of each word or sentence

• Chain mnemonics: methods that connect the first item to be memorized with the second, and so on

•Have them talk about “what they know and what they don’t know” at the beginning of a lesson

•Have them talk about thinking and keep a thinking journal so they are more self-aware

Woolfolk, A. (2007). Educational Psychology (10th ed.) Boston: Pearson Education.