R 9

R 9

James was right when he explained that in order to be an effective teacher; one of the characteristics you must have is creativeness.  After reading about the various techniques that teachers can use to promote memory, I realized how much teaching is indeed an art.  In order to combat those streams of consciousness that interfere with learning and memory, and obtain the focus of the students, classroom instructions should be meaningful and interesting to them. 

King-Friedrich (2001) explained that one of the main concepts of helping the memory of the students is making connections.  She says, “New learning must be connected to what the students already know” (p. 76).  Upon reading the article, I was even able to make several connections with the reading and William James’ views on memory.  It is interesting that over a century ago, the importance of making connections for memory in the process of learning was introduced to teachers.  James (1899/2001) said, “It is mainly that of building up useful systems of association in the pupil’s mind” (p. 42).  Also, while reading this article, I thought about Piaget’s theory on schemas.  It is a natural tendency for everyone to connect information to existing knowledge.  We often put all the information we come across in our environment into categories in order to organize our thoughts for memory, and make our learning process easier.

The author also mentions how crucial it is for teachers to assess their students with various procedures (King-Friedrich, 2001).  She states, “Clearly, however, the great variety of the lesson’s activities allows students to use their preferred styles of learning to make better sense of these new concepts” (p. 78).  It only makes sense that if students are assessed only one way that would not have a significant impact on their memory, in which learning would be difficult to achieve.  James said, “My practical reason for mentioning this law is this, . . . in working associations into your pupils’ minds, you must not rely on single cues, but multiply the cues as much as possible” (James, 1899/2001, p. 44).

We all know that gaining the interests of students helps with memory.  However, it is often not an easy task for teachers to gain the attention and interests of all their students.  Particularly, the higher a student’s grade level is, the more serious the presentation of the material.  Therefore, how can fun activities be implemented in the instruction to endorse students’ memory in secondary education?