Read your classmates responses. Reflect and substantively comment on two peers; one who chose your prompt and one that chose the other prompt. Pay particular attention to what they discovered in their reading and how the information may be used in their teaching or in a context of learning where they applied their ideas. Support your statements with evidence from the required studies, other research, and experiences. You are required to respond to comments or questions about your posts.
I also found the Forget to Learn theory very interesting. The idea that storage strength can increase but it never decreases(Carey, 2014,p.36) makes sense when we think about it in terms of longevity. The amount of memories we have over time will increase and so will our capacity because of the length of that time. Bjork and Bjorks theory says If I stored it, its there for good(Carey, 2014, p.37) What if any impact do you think this theory will have on your teaching?
The most surprising fact I discovered in the reading was that forgetting is a friend to learning (Carey, 2014, p. 24). The Forget to Learn theory states, forgetting is critical to learning new skills and to the preservation and reacquisition to old ones (Carey, 2014, p. 40). What resonated with me about chapter two was how the Forget to Learn theory takes away the negative connotation most people have when they hear or use the term, forgetting. In chapter one we learn about the complexity of how our brain works. Most importantly about the three areas that are essential to learning, the entorhinal cortex, the hippocampus, and neocortex. These areas of the brain take in and store information, then depending of the frequency in which the information is used, it becomes easily accessible to retrieve. Compared to storage, retrieval strength is fickle. It can build quickly but also weaken quickly (Carey, 2014, p. 37).
In my classroom I like to have anchor charts to keep exposing my students to concepts we have covered in class. Recently we were reviewing how to convert mix numbers to improper fractions. Since it was a concept we had recently covered, most of my students recalled the steps and had no problem completing the assignment. The few that forgot the steps looked for the anchor chart to help them retrieve the information they needed to complete the assignment. This behavior helped me understand the Bjorks theory, which states that storage strength can increase but it never decreases. Retrieval strength, on the other hand, is a measure of how easily a nugget of information comes to mind. It, too, increases with studying and with use (Carey, 2014, p.36). The terms used were not new to my students; they were stored in their brains. The visual cue, and examples on the anchor chart help them retrieve, recall the steps they needed to complete the assignment.
Carey, B. (2014). How we learn: The surprising Truth About When, Where, and Why it Happens. New York: Random House.
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fter reading chapters one and two in the text, the most surprising fact I discovered was the split brain study that was conducted by Dr. Gazzaniga (Carey, 2014). I have worked with many students who have a variety of seizure disorders and one student who was born with a partial brain. However, I had never heard of this study and its implications on learning and how we store and connect information. When I was learning about the brain and the hemispheres we were vaguely taught that the right brain was creativity and the left brain was logic. There was some discussion of the hemispheres controlling different systems but nothing about this specific connection and disconnect that was shown in Dr. Gazzanigas picture study (Carey, 2014).
Many children with seizure disorders have inconsistent skills, sometimes they demonstrate specific knowledge or behaviors and sometimes they genuinely cannot demonstrate them. This reading helped me to understand that the inconsistency can, in part, be attributed to the effect of the seizures on how the hemispheres communicate. I was fascinated to learn that the patients could not communicate why they picked the shovel as they genuinely could not process with their left hemisphere what the right had seen (Carey, 2014). In the case of my students, when the hemispheres can communicate the skills are demonstrated, when seizure activity affects one hemisphere and it cannot communicate with the other, the skill is unreachable and therefore not demonstrated. Going forward, I intend to conduct further research into studies involving seizures and the brain to learn more about my students and better ways to support their learning, storage, retrieval, and fluency (Carey, 2014).
References
Carey, B. (2014). How we learn: The surprising truth about when, where, and why it happens. New York, NY: Random House.
