ARE YOU TEACHING YOUR STUDENTS HOW TO STORE IMPORTANT INFORMATION IN THEIR LONG-TERM MEMORY AND RECALL IT DURING A HIGH-STAKES TEST?
If you are not teaching your students this important literacy skill you should be because this is how students get good marks on tests. Students feel better about themselves and school when they know how to get good test scores and good test scores result in higher course grades and Grade Point Averages (GPA) which lead to better colleges and rewarding careers. It’s like a row of dominoes but it begins with the ability to store and recall important information in their long-term memory. I call this literacy skill ‘WHOLE BRAIN’ memory techniques which was discovered during the 1970’s at CalTech by Dr. Roger Sperry who received a Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1981 for his work with the functionality of the mammalian brain. According to Sperry, the left side of the brain processes words, sentences and written information while the right side processes pictures, images and visual information. Both sides are connected by a thick layer of nervous tissue called the Corpus Callosum that acts as a two-way super-highway of electrical impulses transmitting information back-and-forth through the whole brain. According to the theory, if you associate a visual with a written statement about an important topic, you are using both the left and right hemispheres of the brain, (or whole brain) and therefore storing that information in your long-term memory ready for recall. Neurologists tell us it takes between 3-5 seconds to move information from our primary memory to our long-term memory for storage and recall. That’s why clear and concise note-taking skills are critically important when studying and preparing for tests. If you consider the average high school student takes approximately 300 tests during grades 9-12, it highlights the critical need to teach students these skills. Proper implementation of these learning techniques and skills in your program of studies will improve the academic performance for all students, especially those that are struggling and at-risk. Click on this link to learn more about this topic and schedule Professional Development training for your staff: http://www.21stcenturystudyskills.com/workshops.html
