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Utilizing visual aids such as graphic organizers, diagrams, charts, or images in the classroom can enhance learning, memory, and retention. Students’ engagement into the learning process increases with the use of visual aids, this helps with strengthening retention. Graphics and videos provide interest in the students which will help activate long term memory. Visual aids also help with cross curricular material, they can help students apply knowledge learned across different subject areas.

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How To Use Visual Aids for Spanish Learning

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Chunking information is another strategy to help enhance memory and retention. “It allows all students to process the content to which they were just exposed and to make sense of and digest it before encountering additional volumes of information.” (Ewing, 2024) Reducing the load of information that students are taking will make it easier for students to retain. It also allows students the time to process and digest the material, enhancing memory and retention.

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Sensory memories are “short-term memories of just-experienced sensory stimuli such as sights and sounds.” (Psychology Today, 2024) This memory type is the short form of memory, that provides a visual or auditory sensory. This form of memory can be used to include different engagement strategies that can help engage students’ senses, which will increase students’ comprehension. Short-term memory is a part of the early steps of where information will be stored for a limited time. This is where students will store new information until they are able to store long-term. Long-term memory is the process of storing and retrieving information (Sousa, 2022). In an education learning environment, this is where information that is effectively retained stored. Long-term memory is essential for students to succeed in an education sense, but also in a wide range of skills for survival.

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Memories are established in the brain throughout a process involving encoding, consolidation, storage, and retrieval. Information is passed from the senses through to the temporary memories, where a wide range of factors affect the ability to store long-term. The process of information allows the brain to store experiences into memories and retrieve when necessary. Memories form from a pattern of neurons firing together, activating a continuous stimulus. “Eventually, repeated firing of the pattern binds the neurons together so that if one fires, they all fire, ultimately forming a new memory trace, or engram.” (Sousa, 2024) In a learning environment, the more educators can connect students' sense and meaning to learning, the more likely the memory will be stored.

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Retention is the ability to maintain and recall information over time, controlled by the long-term memory. Transfer is the ability to apply knowledge and skills to new situations. Both retention and transfer play a critical role in the learning process as retention refers to how well the information was stored, and transfer refers to prior knowledge and the ability to apply that knowledge. In the learning environment, learning does not always equal long term retention, this is important for educators to know this as it will ensure that proper strategies are used to assist students with building sense and meaning for long-term memory. Transfer happens during and after learning. As educators you want students to be able to make connections to prior knowledge and retain the information to apply in future situations. Retention is needed for transfer in learning, if students can’t efficiently retain knowledge, they will not be able to able that knowledge.

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During a traumatic event, the brains’ structure is physically changing. It triggers the response of ‘flight or fight’, which can cause anxiety, stress, and increased heart rate, which can lead to short term memory and memory gaps. “Traumatic memories get stuck in the emotional memory of the amygdala rather than reaching the hippocampus, the area of the brain that records the details - like what, when, and where of an event.” (Wolz, 2019) This gives insight on the emotional turmoil that individual may go through when reliving and traumatic event. The ability to from and create new memories can be affected by trauma in the brain, as it may be difficult to form new emotional connections and separate prior traumatic experiences.