Learning and Memory Strategies

Not all children learn in the same way. As a GK-12 fellow, is will be important for you to keep this in mind and provide learning opportunities for all of your students, no matter what their learning style is. The human mind has limitations, which vary from person to person. Learning and memory strategies are ways of working around these limitations to remember more of what is taught, and therefore process more of the information. The links below provide more information about strategies and outline several of these strategies:

The development of strategies

Children are not born knowing how to strategize for the improvement of their memory. As a child gains experiences, strategies are slowly developed that allow more effective learning. Current research shows that this process begins very early, perhaps in the first year of life. It is now known that discoveries of learning strategies most often occur in the framework of a successful learning experience, rather than a failure. In addition, a child will often need an intermediate step, such as an imperfect or half-formed strategy, before crystallizing a final strategy, and even once a strategy is finalized, generalization occurs slowly. This means that a student will not necessarily realize that a strategy that worked on one problem is capable of working on other problems or in other situations as well. While every student will be different, having this general knowledge should allow you to encourage the development of strategies inside your classroom.

Example strategy: clustering

The human brain can efficiently remember around 7 pieces of information at a time. After this, any more information is processed poorly. To get around this, people use the “chunking effect”, or clustering. Clustering is an organizational strategy that allows more information to be remembered by grouping together disparate elements into categories that makes sense to the person. Clustering is important because it has been shown to improve the performance of both children and adults who use it.

Example strategy: metacognition

Metacognition, as it is described on the Vocabulary page, means knowledge about learning, and knowledge about how one learns. However, metacognition is also important as a strategy because it includes self-regulation, or the ability to be in charge of one’s own learning, and the ability to reflect on one’s performance. Metacognition is the strategy that underlies all other learning and memory strategies, because it gives the learner the ability to plan and carry out strategies. Without some form of metacognition, a student would not even realize that a strategy was necessary.

Use of multiple strategies

For the purposes of this handbook, two of the most noted learning and memory strategies have been outlined. However, there are conceivably dozens of possible strategies that a student could use, ranging from a strategy that only works on arithmetic problems, to the more general strategies of clustering and metacognition. Strategies differ in their accuracy, in the amounts of time required for their use, in their difficulty level, and in the type of problems for which it is useful. Because of this, it is vital for a student to be capable of using a wide range of strategies, which can be chosen based on the situation.

Multiple intelligences

The theory of multiple intelligences describes the existence of seven different kinds of intelligence, all of which are relatively independent. These are: linguistic, logical, musical, spatial, bodily kinesthetic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal. While the full implications of this theory are still being discovered at many schools, it is important to remember that the children in your classroom will differ and may have a wide variety of talents and challenges. Students will learn and use strategies in different ways depending on what intelligences are their strengths and their weaknesses. Offering many different kinds of activities and assessments will allow all of your students to utilize their particular talents.