PLE #6

Today in class, there was a presentation about knowledge and memory that was presented last week. When they first began presenting, they touched on topics that we learned in the past. At first I was unaware of the reasoning behind re-talking about issues and topics that we already talked about but as they continued I realized they were basing the material that we learned previous to what we would learn in the lesson they would present. 

I have seen this related in my lesson plan that I had to make last week. In the direct teaching lesson plan, we were asked to put information in there that the students would have learned prior to the lesson we were going to teach. We did this as a recap and making connections between what we learned and what we will learn. Both times this was played out and I really appreciated seeing the connection between the concepts. I also liked the illustration about the Pack Man  and how as students and educators, we are continuously being fed and feeding knowledge into the student's heads.

In coninutation, I thought it was funny that they brought up the use of mnemonic devices. I always wondered if those were useful and relevant to the studetns who are learning them, but in a particular website that I found, I thought it was helpful for they described them as a

 "technique to help your brain better encode and recall important information. It’s a simple shortcut that helps us associate the information we want to remember with an image, a sentence, or a word".

According to the website, they have been used for centuries for people to make mental shortcuts between different types of information and I think it is extremely helpful and relevant for children to use.