6.1 Lower Order: Identify and describe the differences between rote and meaningful learning (found on pages 191-193 in the text).
6.2 Higher Order: What are two of the factors identified in the text that affect retrieval and how can you as a teacher effectively promote these factors in the classroom to improve student's memory retrieval?
6.1: Rote learning is learning the material without making meaningful connections to other material in your stored memory. The most common form of rote learning is reherasl, which the text defines as a repetition of information within a short timeframe. Rote learning is typically a slow, ineffective and boring task. Many times the information is not even committed to long-term memory and is often forgotten after it is needed, if not before.
ReplyDeleteMeaningful learning on the other hand, requires the learner to making meaninful connections between the learned material and material they already know. Meaningful learning can be made entertaining, and is much more effective than rote learning.
6.2: Teachers can make retrieval easier for students by having their lessons make mulitiple connections with existing knowledge and also create emotional overtones. By drawing on students past experiences in other classes, within the same class, or in their personal lives makes the information being taught more easily recalled. The text mentions finding the similiarities to and differences from a generic family feud that all students may have knowledge of, and that of what takes place in Romeo and Juliet. You can also make the lesson emotionally charged. Discussion hot button issues such as slavery, disease, or other such traumatic events will cause increased retrieval ability.