Reflection Post 3

Description
This week's focus was on cognitive theories of learning. This includes information on how the brain works and what causes a person to either remember or forget information.

Analysis
One theory that was discussed was retroactive inhibition. This is a theory that states children forget information when they are introduced to new information that is similar to the old information (Slavin, 2012). To prevent this from occurring, teachers should use different strategies to teach similar concepts. Primacy and recency effects was another interesting theory discussed. Slavin discussed how primacy effect is that the information at the beginning of a lesson is learned easily and recency effect is that the information at the end of lesson is learned more easily (2012). Applying this in classroom means that teachers should place the most important information at either the beginning or end of their lesson so that there is a greater chance of students remembering it.

Reflection
This chapter was very interesting to me. I have never given much thought to what actually causes a student to remember or forget concepts. The theory of retroactive inhibition really stood out to me because I saw this happen in my classroom this year and now I am able to put a name on what occurred. When teaching multiplication strategies, my students grasped the concept fairly quickly and did well applying them. However, when I began to introduce division strategies (in a similar fashion to the multiplication strategies), my students began to mix up multiplication and division. I realize now that because I used similar teaching strategies with concepts that are related, I set my students up for failure in a sense. I know next year that I need to keep these subjects separated.

I also liked learning about the theories of primacy and recency effects. I often plan my lessons with the most important part of the concept in the middle. After reading this chapter, I will reevaluate the way I plan my lessons and make sure that I begin and end my lesson with the information my students really need to remember.