Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Information Processing Blog 2
Sally is a third grade student. She is trying to learn about simple fractions. First, her sensory memory kicks in. She takes in all of her classroom surroundings such as the other students, the chalkboard, what the teacher looks like today, how her pencil fels in her hand, etc. Obviously this is not important for learning fractions and Sally quickly forgets all of this. Then, her working memory kicks in. Sally starts to recognize the patterns being used for the fractions and how the numbers relate to each other. She chunks together the like fractions such as 1/2 and 2/4 because she sees that these are the same and it is an easier way for her to look at things. She rehearses all of this information and links them together on her own as she is learning about them. Finally, she gets a test and her long term memory is activated. Sally remembers using visual examples in class with apples and candy and she also remembers baking with her mom and using the ingredients as fractions. She retrieves this information for her test from her long term memory.
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I like your example of how Sally learned to use fractions in her learning. I think it's important to also include what made her working memory kick in. What was it that the teacher might have done to catch her attention? I like your ideas about chunking and recognition of prior knowledge in helping the student understand the concepts and eventually store them into her long term memory.
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