Making memory memorable in the classroom

Recalling information is an essential aspect of the learning process. For teachers, it is a real challenge to help students remember information. Luckily, there have been a lot of discoveries about the brain that put some light on how to boost memory.
Human beings are very good at these types of memories:

• Location: we remember where to find essential things.
• Proceedures: we remember how to do things.
• Emotional experiences: we remember these events that caused an emotional impact on us.
• Conditioned responses: we respond to a certain pattern of behaviour in response to a specific stimuli.

Unfortunately, we are not good at recalling facts, figures, words and equations. This type of memory is called Semantic Memory and it is the one we most use to recall information taught at school. The question is...why is it so difficult to recall this type of memory? The answer is just because our survival does not depend on remebering this type of information. 

Semantic memory has also limitations in capacity and time. It is said that an item in working memory usually lasts from 5 to 30 seconds before disappearing or being reactivated.
As a result, here there are some suggestions to make our students memory memorable ...

• If students are reading a story or novel, make them prepare a summary or take down notes after reading one or two pages, otherwise they will forget most of what they've read.
• If they are listening to a lecture, taking down notes it is also important.
• Mind maps are a wonderful summary to highlight the keypoints of what students have just learnt
• Compare and contrast material or regroup material into different categories
• Group discussion
• Turn the learning into a non linguistic representation like a drawing 

 Another type of memory is called Episodic Memory which represents our memory of experiences. One thing is to learn a language and another thing is to experience the language. One thing is to read about China and another one is to actually go to China. The location and the fact of being there trigger the content. This type of memory is much easier to recall, it is used effortless and has unlimited capacity.

The problem with episodic memory is that we tend to  have too many events asociated with the same place. Some practical suggestions  when it comes to learning in the classroom would be:

• Changing classrooms
• Re arranging the furniture
• Going to the playground and do some reading
• Using learning stations inside the classroom