The Bleak Terrain of Memorization

Rote memorization comprises approximately 70% of a student's study time. Each year, as more information is added to every subject, the volume of material that needs to be memorized increases. Test-taking should be an opportunity for children to demonstrate what they know and understand, but the No Child Left Behind system of evaluating the success of a school is by the cumulative test result averages of all students. These are usually multiple-choice tests that are more an assessment of rote memory than an evaluation of what a child actually learned and will retain as knowledge.

Because standardized tests are likely to be the basis of federal funding of schools for the foreseeable future, and because teachers are under enormous pressure to raise test scores, the pressure of test performance can be stressful even to children as young as second graders. Sometime in early elementary school children start taking spelling and arithmetic tests. If these first test experiences are positive, they are at an advantage because they are more likely to approach future tests with confidence and stress will not block memory storage and retrieval.

But, as for many children, these first experiences are negative and your child stresses out in formal test situations, or has difficulty memorizing facts, he'll need support from you to build his confidence and discover which strategies are best suited for his success. You can guide your child to develop the study skills most suited for the way his brain learns and remembers best. The results will be evident on his test scores, and more importantly in his power as a lifelong learner.

The Brain Seeks Patterns so Help Your Children Activate Prior Knowledge

Understanding how the brain makes and stores short-term (working) memories and converts them into durable long-term memories will help you guide your children through strategies that will empower them to extend their memory capacity, decrease frustration, and promote test taking skills and success.

The brain is a pattern-seeking organ. Only when the brain recognizes relationships between new and prior knowledge can it hold on to new information. When new input enters the working memory construction zone (the hippocampus, deep in the emotional brain), it sets off a search throughout the brain's memory storage areas for stored memory with related patterns. When there is a match, a link to the related pattern goes down to the hippocampus to hold on to that new input. If pattern matching is successful, the new input is physically encoded into a brain cell network with the related memory.

Activating related memory patterns before the new learning supports the brain's pattern seeking and makes it more likely that the new information will stick. This process is called activation of prior knowledge.

Activate prior knowledge bridges

You can activate prior knowledge bridges best if you know what topic your child will be learning next in school and helping him turn on existing memory circuits that relate to what he is about to be taught. Your preparations before the class lesson, such as reminding him of past experiences and interests that activate his prior knowledge circuits will give him the advantage in linking and locking in the upcoming lesson.

Preparing the Brain Bridges so Learning Sticks

The best connections to prior knowledge activate memories that were positive, relate the upcoming topic to personal interests, or draw links from the topic to things your child finds relevant. You will have to be very creative to find ways to connect your child's prior knowledge or interests with some of the topics mandated on tests, such as memorizing the dates for individual battles in the Revolutionary War or the names of the inventers of the cotton gin, sewing machine, and cyclotron, but if it will be tested, your efforts will yield stronger memory storage.

To prepare existing memory pattern circuits, strengthen the links that connect with new learning. Discuss things he is already interested in that will be included in the upcoming class lessons. Instead of just asking what he learned in school each day...and getting a minimal response or worse yet the comment, "Nothing," make your questions more personally relevant. Encourage him to tell you what he was taught that reminds him of things he likes, has done, or wants to do.

For example, if the school lesson is about a part of the country you visited as a family or a part of the world from which your relatives immigrated, look at photos of the trip or have him talk with his relatives about things they experienced or heard about that make that part of the world. Other ways to link new related input with existing knowledge include doing an Internet search together about a country she is studying. Start with things she is interested in, such as the dogs or horses that originated there or their current sports teams. Use Google earth to zoom in on places of interest to her in that country.

Add to your child's prior background knowledge by watching video clips on the Internet related to upcoming class topics. If the class will be studying the geography of mountains or science of weather, watch a video about Mount Everest to stoke interest and provide a background of related memory onto which your child can hook the new information he will hear in class. Preheat interest and memory by showing your child high interest discoveries and innovations that came about because of the science they are about to study.

If the topic of study is Colonial times, watch a video or look at a few Internet sites relating to that theme. Ask questions that prompt your child to describe any similarities between herself and people during that historical era. Emotions are important prior memory link boosters. When she is learning about the leaders of the early colonies, ask her what qualities she would want to see in the leader of a club or team she was thinking about joining. When those memories are stimulated, your child's neural networks and stored patterns are primed to seek and connect with related new information.

Ask questions that prompt your child