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SGL Notes Newsletters>
SGL Notes - vol VII
December 17, 2003
Solid Ground Learning Notes – vol. VII
Hi Everyone,
Here is the final installment of the memory newsletters –
part 3 of 3 parts.
Long-term memory is a seemingly limitless storage area for
preserving knowledge, skills and life experiences. It is
thought that long-term memory is so enormously vast that
when we can’t remember something it is not lost from
memory. It is that it is simply lost in long-term memory.
The ability to remember what has been stored in long-term
memory is strongly dependent upon how systematically the
information was filed in the first place. There are 4
principal filing systems. Information can be stored:
• As pairs (names with faces)
• As procedures (how to tie a necktie)
• As categories (types of certain fruits), or
• As rules and familiar patterns (where to put quotation
marks in a sentence).
We can have problems in any or all of these forms of
filing. We need to be highly organized and methodical when
first filing the information to memory. It also helps if
we store the information in two parts of our brains. For
example, if it enters your head in words then make pictures
in your mind or if you read the information then find an
opportunity to talk about it.
General Memory Strategies
• Long-term filing works best if you go right to sleep. A
student shouldn’t study and then place a phone call to her
best friend. Call your friend, then study, then go to
sleep – in that sequence to foster optimal consolidation in
memory.
• The best way to remember something is to change it, to
transform the information in some manner. If it is visual,
make it verbal. If it’s verbal, create a diagram or
picture of it. Use plenty of lists, tables, and graphics.
• Ask yourself, ‘What does this stuff fit with or remind me
of?’ Connect new data to prior learning or experience to
file the new information in several categories of
knowledge.
• Practice makes perfect. Recall and recognition work best
when they work often. If you seldom use certain skills or
information they’ll be hidden away when you need them.
• Consciously activate and exercise active working memory.
Do mental arithmetic – How much is 21 times 11? Play Simon
Says. Underline or highlight while reading and then go
back and summarize or paraphrase.
Quote For the Day:
“Some people make things happen, some watch while things
happen, and some wonder ‘What happened?’. Which type of
person are you?
-Author Unknown
All the best to you and yours,
Sincerely,
Jennifer Sackley
SOI Practitioner
Solid Ground Learning
solid.ground@shaw.ca
www.solid-ground-learning.cityslide.com
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