Chapter 5 Blog

Chapter 5:

“Long Term Memory”

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1. Summarize the reading in a few sentences

This chapter discussed the Long Term Memory. The components of the long term memory include episodic, semantic, and procedural memory. The chapter discusses the levels of processing and how various aspects of our life, such as our emotions, that can enhance our memory or make them more difficult to store and retrieve. The Pollyanna Principle was one that supported the idea of emotions playing a major role in our memory storage. It states that we remember our positive memories easier than negative ones.

2. How does it fit into what I have already learned in this course?

This chapter on long term memory helped to compare and contrast the information that we have learned in the previous chapter on short term memory. It is interesting to compare how the two memories work so differently yet must work together in order to store information, knowledge and memories that are vital to our daily lives.

3. What am I still not clear on?

There is not really a section in this chapte that I am not clear on. Yet, the Pollyanna Principle is one that did raise some questions within our discussion group. The idea behind the Principle itself makes perfect sense to me. But it was addressed with in my groups discussion board a bit because it is also easy to see the other side of this principle and how sometimes some of our worst memories can really stick with us. There is room to have a disagreement with something that the chapter had stated.

4. How would I apply this to my own teaching?

I enjoyed reading about the importance of our encoding processes on our effective retrieval of new information. It will benefit me to understand how to teach new information to my students in a way which will allow them to retrieve it. I also have come to a new understanding on the importance of relating the material to the student’s daily lives. When the students are able to apply their knowledge in their lives, their chances of retaining the information are dramatically increased.

5. What proof does the author offer that makes me believe this is valid? Do I believe it? Why?

I agree with many of the concepts in Chapter 5. All of the ideas and processes behind long term memory make sense to me. I believe the chapter makes some very valid points about the importance of our retrieval of information. The part that compared recall and retrieval and the idea that when we know how we will retrieve information, we process the information differently. I agree with the example the book gave comparing reading a chapter and taking an essay test on it vs. taking a multiple choice test. Whether it is a conscious decision in our mind to read differently or not, we do.

6. Why is this important? What does it help improve or explain or predict?

This is important if we want our students to succeed within our classes. It is important for them to understand how they will use or retrieve the information later on, as well as how they will be tested. If they know this as they learn, they will store the information in a way which can be easily retrieved at a later point in time.

7. When would I actually use this-under what circumstances and for what kind of students?

I will not only utilize the concepts from this chapter to assist in my lessons for my students, but I will also utilize the information I learned from this chapter to understand and enhance my own long term memory as well.

8. Are there other ways to accomplish the same thing that are faster, cheaper, or better?

I think an easy way to utilize some of the most important concepts in this book is to do everything you can as a teacher to make every lesson somehow relate to the students in their daily lives. It may be a stretch at times, but the more we can do that, the better they will retain what we are teaching.