1. Retention and Retrieval - Storage is not the problem
How can we best help learning occur?
How can we help students retain and recall learning?
What if they just don’t get it?
Why can’t they remember?
We just went over this!!
Moving past working memory into long-term storage
These are the questions we’ll be exploring

2. How can I help them learn? Connect to what they know
Vary your instruction:
Experiential learning, experimentation, exploration, movement, and the arts = multiple entry points for students with diverse learning styles.
Make content personally relevant to the students
Teach to their strengths
Vary your instruction – Provide content in lots of ways so it has plenty of ways to make it into the brain. This will also lead to increased storage locations for future access.
This leads to positive emotional responses, which will open the neuro-pathways to the processing centers of the brain.
Personal relevance to the students, enables connects to their relational memories, and better access to the information later.
By teaching to their strengths, we can help information reach the frontal lobes, where the highest level of cognitive processing takes place, and where learned information becomes wisdom. (Willis, Brain Friendly Strategies, 2007, p 60)

3. How do I know what they know? Ask them
Interest inventories
Connect personally
Allow time for teambuilding and community building up front
Start the process by sharing with them
Find out what they’re into with questionnaires on quick “show of hands”
Find out about their lives, and let them in on yours. The more we know about people, the more connected we feel to them
Give them time to get to know each other, use teambuilding to let them find out all the things they have in common with each other and the teacher.

4. Retention and Recollection: They’re not getting it! Try another way
Patient - It hurts when I do this
Dr. – Don’t do that
All students have learning strengths
Allow for variety in demonstrating mastery
Build on strengths, and bolster others
If we give students a choice for how they want to learn, and show what they’ve learned, they will naturally migrate toward their learning strength. Once teachers are more aware of what strengths are present in their classrooms, the can begin to better tailor instruction to meet the needs of the learners.
Having brain friendly classrooms is key for long-term memory storage and retrieval, but preparing them for survival in what can be a “brain unfriendly” world is essential. While it is important for us to give the variety of students in our classrooms the content in the way they learn best, it is also our responsibility to strengthen and broaden the learning styles they are less proficient in. (Wood, MWBLI, 2007)

5. How do I lock in learning? Move past working memory
Introduce content when students are most engaged
Practice and check to be sure memories are accurate
Use multi-sensory input
Use students’ interests to provide motivation
Have students use information to make personal connections and discoveries
Pose real world questions that requires application of the new content. (Willis, Ignite, 2007, p30-31)
We remember what happens first and last in lesson – put your crucial content up front. The brain can only pay attention to one thing at a time, if you don’t have their attention – get it.
Give them lots of reharsal and practice in a variety of ways. Each time you touch on the content check to be sure it’s still on target
The more ways we get learning into the brain, the more places it gets stored, and the more connections are made. Retrieval has more opportunity to occur
Get them engaged by connecting to what they care about
Applying new learning to their lives helps make the content real.

6. Why can’t they remember? Memories change
The original creation of memories is distributed in multiple neuronal pathways throughout the brain, depending on what stimuli are used to create it.
Memories are malleable. Address misconceptions when memories are reactivated.
Memory retrieval may be dependant on time, setting, and emotional state of initial learning. (Jensen, Teaching with the Brain in Mind, 2005)
Getting the memories past working memory initially is challenging enough, but recalling and applying the memory faces many obstacles. We only have 3 chances to help kids get it right: 1 - the original encoding, 2 – the maintenance of that memory, and 3 – the retrieval of that learning. The original creation of memories is distributed in multiple neuronal pathways throughout the brain, depending on what stimuli are used to create it. Memories are malleable. Activating memories, and correcting any “mistakes” in memory as we do so, can strengthen existing memories. The ability to retrieve memories is based in part on where we were, and what our emotional state was when we first created the memory. (Jensen, Teaching with the Brain in Mind, 2005, p )

7. Points to remember Connect to what they know
Use multiple pathways and vary instruction
Teach to their strengths, and build others
Memories change – maintain them