What Neuroscience Tells Us About Deepening Learning

Teachers are brain-changers. As I've described in a previous article, our daily work physically alters students' neural networks. The more frequently a student's brain retrieves and connects information, the better the chance that the student will recall it quickly and accurately.

The strongest—and most easily accessible—memories are created through dense, interwoven neural networks. Information has a much better chance at being recalled more quickly when it has been retrieved repeatedly and connected to as many other pieces of information as possible.

However (and this has been a significant reflection point for me as an armchair neuroscientist) even a densely connected, sensory-rich memory is essentially reconstructed when it is recalled. The recalled information can be shaped by context, influenced by the student's emotional state, attention level, and receptivity.

As teachers, how can we help students forge long-term memories that will boost their future learning? Here are some of my take-aways:

Return to information over time.
Strengthening long-term memory is not merely a matter of squirreling information away—but of returning to it and building upon it. It's a continual process rather than a linear one-stop experience.

This realization has led me to plan for pointed repetition and the accurate, explicit spiraling of information over time, particularly for my younger students and language learners. I plan weeks in advance to be more strategic about review and transitions. I also ask fewer "on-the-fly" questions, opting instead for higher-level questioning and opportunities to make connections from the start.

Graphic organizers are more tangible tools I use to encourage the repetitive synthesis of information that the relationship-seeking brain craves.

Slow down.
When I ask a question, I now give students more "wait time" (well beyond the typical one to two seconds) so they have the opportunity for efficient, thorough memory reconstruction. This is especially critical for language learners who must translate their reconstructions to English.

And slowing down is especially important when I am trying to initiate topics by eliciting more than a cursory statement or two. At the start of a recent unit, I posed a challenging question, then gave students time to think, share, and make connections with each other. Within ten minutes, I realized that students could already use about half of the "new" vocabulary I had chosen, and had answered nearly half of the anticipation guide questions. Thanks to those precious 10 minutes, I realized I needed to tweak the unit to improve its rigor and the interlinking of knowledge.

Time it right.
Students tend to be best at recalling the first and last chunks of new information we share with them. Neuroscientists refer to this as the primacy-recency effect. New information presented first has the best chance of being recalled (due to primacy), while the last information presented has the next best chance of recall (due to recency). Those who study learning cycles also suggest that some sort of consolidation needs to occur about every 20 minutes or so.

What does this mean for us in the classroom?

Here's what I don't do during the first peak learning time: homework discussion, in-depth review, announcements, and attendance. (I save these for later in the class period.)

I try to ensure the first 10 minutes of class are extremely pointed, explicitly linked to ...

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