Let's take the example of a student learning to write in cursive for the first time.
First, the student would absorb a huge amount of information into his sensory memory - what the teacher is wearing, which posters are on the walls, what color shirts his classmates are wearing, how many desks are in the classroom, etc. This is all in the student's sensory memory because he is not conciously thinking about all of it, but it is still part of his environment. Most of this sensory information will be lost because it is not significant to the student at that particular time.
The teacher would start class by describing what cursive is, why it's important, when it is used, etc. The student will bring this information into his working memory because he is paying attention to what the teacher is saying and is conciously thinking about it.
The teacher then begins to show the class how to make a cursive lowecase a. She first draws it on the chalkboard so the students can visually see the letter, and then points out to the class that a cursive a looks similar to a regular a, only with a slight curve at the end. The teacher did this because she wanted her students to make a connection to something they already knew - the letter a, not in cursive. By explaining that the cursive a is similar to the regular a, students made a connection to previous knowledge, making it much easier to recall this information at a later time.
The teacher has her students practice tracing and writing the cursive a many times. She does this every day for a week, until the students have repeated the excercise several times. The students are encoding this information though rehearsal. Finally this information works its way from the working memory to the long-term memory. The more the students repeat the excercise, the most likely they will be to retrieve that information later. For example, if the teacher next moves on to the letter e in cursive, the students will practice that many times, and still return to the a. Because of the connections to previous knowledge (non-cursive a) and rehearsal (practice writing the letter repeatedly) the students will be able to retrieve their knowledge of the letter a in cursive.
I like this example a lot! I think it is something we can all relate to. I like that you brought up connecting learning cursive to the alphabet that the students already know well. Those similarities make learning cursive so much less intimidating. Without connections to previous knowledge, it would be like learning an alphabet in a whole new language.
ReplyDeleteI really like your last section of this post. It actually brings me back to when I was learning cursive. My teacher would have us trace the pattern of each letter over and over again and then eventually she would have us write it by ourselves. I think this is a perfect way to teach something that people kids haven't done. Even though I don't use cursive anymore I can still write the alphabet in cursive still today
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