Information Processing Blog Post 2

In class students are practicing their spelling words.  Today we’re learning how to spell the word receive.  I write the word on the board for students to see.  (Input). The word is now in there sensory memory for only a second.  The spelling of the word would easily be lost in the sensory memory until I have the students copy the word down into their notebooks.  Now they have written and seen the word (attention) so it is now a part of their working memory.  The word would be forgotten unless we practice a way to remember the word.  I teach students the chant “I before e except after c” a chain mnemonic device.  If students remember the simple chant after we rehearse it a few times, they can start to encode the spelling of the word into their long-term memory.  I have the students write down the word receive in a sentence so that it shows relevance to something they may think about on a daily basis and the students understand how they’ll use this word in real life (not just for spelling tests).  Next we chunk the word into a list of other words that also have the similar concept of “I before e except after c.” Now the students can see the group of words that all have a similar spelling and encode it into their memory.  When the spelling test comes around and students have to retrieve the word from their long term memory they’ll hopefully think of the chant and the chunking of other similar words to correctly spell receive.