Chapter 5 - -Long-

1. Chapter 5 focuses on long-term memory, or memory that you have gathered throughout your lifetime. It talks about the subdivisions of long-term memory: episodic memory, semantic memory, and procedural memory. One thing that I was really interested in was the levels of processing approach which states that meaningful information leads to permanent retention. The Pollyanna principle was another new term I learned and it states that pleasant items are usually recalled rather than the unpleasant memories.
2. Well I think it fits well with what we learned in the previous chapter – working memory. In the previous chapter it focused on the concepts of short-term memory. In this chapter it talks about long-term memory and how the two work together.
3. After reading the chapter and doing research, there is nothing that I am still unclear on. Since this is going to be my workshop topic, I read the chapter over twice and have done a lot of research on the chapter already. A lot of times I do not get something the first time around that I read it, so if I reread it, I get a better understanding.
4. I feel that long-term memory is related to a lot of things that we do, especially as a teacher because we want our students to store everything that they learn into their long-term memory. One activity that I do with my students has to do with learning the formulas for area of polygons. One day I will teach the formulas and do problems with them on the board so that they are able to use the formulas. The next day they come in I call each one out into the hallway and ask them the formula for each. For example, I would ask them the formula for the area of a parallelogram, triangle, trapezoid, and circle. This way I am able to see which student is storing these formulas into their long-term memory. I feel that these formulas you will need to know from here on out. This was something new that I did this year and I found that it worked well! I actually got the idea from JJ because he does something similar in his social studies class!
5. I think in the book when it talks about the deep levels of processing that it relates to this. For example, the deep level’s of processing is an effective way of enhancing recall for both verbal and visual material.
6. I think that this well help the students do better on their test and also in the years to come up. The more they are repeating or recalling the formulas, the more likely they are going to remember them. When they take their test over the chapter, they will also have to write the formulas out so I will be able to see if they are really storing this into their long-term memory.
7. I actually use this when I am teaching formulas and order of operations. I do the same thing and assess them the same way so that hopefully they will store the information into long-term memory and will be able to use it as they go on in life.
8. This question always gets me. I do not know if there is a better way for kids to remember formulas. I know I still struggle with getting 100% of my students to remember them. After all of the recalling and repetition you would think they would be able to store it in their long-term memory, but it just doesn’t work that way for everyone. I think that many of my students do take home their notes and study and that also helps, but if you don’t you are going to have a harder time remembering all of the formulas.

I must say I do look forward to JJ’s roundup also.. However, I get to teach right next to him, so I get enough of him at school. I must say he can always turn a bad day into a good day with that personality!