Working Memory - Andy Houghton 03/02

Schemas

Develop and add to knowledge over time, new information is added to schemas as they grow more complex

Brain pieces together information when coming across a new experience to make sense of what is going on

In school, teachers constantly question children, challenging what they already know before, building on existing information

Early Learning

At a young age, children learn basic knowledge about something - e.g. that birds are creatures that fly

As children grow older, they develop more knowledge - e.g. beak and feathers are part of a bird. Reception / Y1 - learn that birds lay eggs (Life Cycles) and make nests (Habitats)

This increases further into more in-depth, complex knowledge - e.g. Y2 - birds fly (Animals, including Humans) and that penguins are birds that don't fly (Arctic Explorers)

More specific knowledge is added - e.g. Y4 - some species of penguins live in warmer climates (Australia)

Child's knowledge is constantly built upon throughout life

Links to Prior Knowledge

Y4 / Y5 children begin accessing spy novels, e.g. Alex Rider - through reading similar genre / materials, children may become introduced to James Bond - when this schema is developing, children may become aware tuxedos are synonymous with spies - as an adult may realise that the penguins from 'Madagascar' are actually spies:

Warm Climates - Black and White - Tuxedo - Spies - Mission

All this knowledge links together to develop complex and integrating schemas, prior knowledge is constantly added to to make sense of new situations and experiences

What is Learning?

Learning is a change of long-term memory

Its a change in knowledge, understanding and skills

If nothing has changed in a person's long-term memory, then nothing has been learnt

Long-term memory is infinite; can store unlimited amounts of data

Working memory is finite; not much space

Learner takes in information, and processes this in the working memory - this is then stored in the long-term memory

The brain cleverly builds schemas which can be brought back into the working memory at any time

Schemas are built using links or cues to prior knowledge

The brain builds upon schemas so that more 'powerful knowledge' can be easily accessed again and again

Long-Term Memory

Aligning your curriculum so that it builds upon what has previously been taught

However, we cannot reteach everything constantly

Links across curriculum - Invasion: Trojan Horse, Romans, Vikings, WW2 - revisit on many occasions different periods in history where countries were invaded and the impacts of this

Recycling the Links

Y5 - How have invasions benefited society?

They need to draw on their knowledge from Romans, Vikings, WW2 to answer. This knowledge has been revisited many times from learning about different periods in history

It is stipulated what needs to be taught at each year group, so children leave each year knowledge-rich and informed, ready to build upon that in the next year, that there isn't a gap

Progressive Knowledge and Skills

Documents provided to the teacher outlining what they have to do for each subject - teachers are less intimidated and overwhelmed

Working Memory

Humans are lazy creatures - the brain is wired to avoid difficulty so our working memory is relatively limited (changes from person to person) 15 / 20 minutes - brain wants to keep human safe and in comfort zone

To increase capacity of working memory the brain needs to fed information that it can link (schemas), using visual aids (process pictures faster than words), chunking new information (not too much is presented at once) - if presented with too much, brain will be overwhelmed and a lot of that information will not be stored and will be wasted

Brain will recognise it already possesses knowledge of a certain topic from previous years and so will be more inclined to learn new knowledge rather than learning new knowledge 'from scratch'

Reduce extraneous load (any distractions)

E.g. Volcanoes - creating a paper mache volcano

What the children needed to know

• Technical vocabulary / definitions - lava, chamber, summit, crater, ash, magma, crust

• How a volcano forms

• What causes an eruption

• The impact of climate change

• Where active volcanoes are located

What children actually know

• PVA glue is useless

• Rude words can be found in the paper

• Mixing the colour brown ruins all the other paints

• Paper mache takes a while to dry

• The reaction of mixing baking soda and vinegar is actually quite disappointing and creates a horrible smell

Conclusion - Sometimes the learning that takes place when teaching a topic a certain way is not beneficial - and some information that is taught to the children is not retained and stored because they were too busy doing activities that weren't relevant enough to the topic

The Impact

Better retention of powerful knowledge

A streamlined 'essential' curriculum

Reduction of extraneous load

Teacher focus upon being the expert

A teacher at Shevington Vale

• Pre-planned long and medium-term plan

• Pre-written knowledge and skills document for every subject

• Pre-selected reading books aligned to the curriculum

• Pre-written knowledge organisers for every foundation unit

• Pre-written lesson continuums which structure the learning for every subject

• No marking or tracking

'In some ways, automaticity is beneficial and critical to the effective functioning of a teacher in the classroom. it reduces the overall level of cognitive load necessary to process multiple complex interactions, which allows the allocation of working memory to careful assessments of the needs of individual students'

'The maximisation of available cognitive resources will enable less experienced teachers to manage their classrooms successfully and allocate sufficient attention to the individual students they teach' - Feldon, 2007

'Evidence from controlled studies almost uniformly supports direct, strong instructional guidance rather than constructivist-based minimal guidance during the instruction of novice to intermediate learners. Even for students with considerable prior knowledge, strong guidance while learning is most often found to be equally effective as un-guided approaches. Not only is unguided instruction normally less effective; there is also evidence it may have negative results when students acquire misconceptions or incomplete or disorganised knowledge' - Kirschner, 2010