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google sites
adobe spark

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Parts of the Brain - Memory & the Brain - The Human Memory

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Parts of the Brain - Memory & the Brain - The Human Memory

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Parts of the Brain - Memory & the Brain - The Human Memory

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The Human Memory - Memory & the Brain - Parts of the Brain

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Final=book writen

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Slides about how brains=handwriting work

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Handwriting
Basic tool
Reinforce early achievement

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Brain

Divided into separate regions

Writing

Brain takes relations

Filters less important info out

Takes info and puts more firmly in our mind

Verbal part

Meaningful sentences

Memory

40% of a lecture

Notes not increasing number

Ppl who take notes

Higher number of key facts

Ppl who don’t

“Random” points

Visualizing

“Tricks” the brain

Improves skill level

Pen and Paper

Boosts memory

Debate

Handwriting notes

Typing

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The Importance of Teaching Handwriting | Reading Rockets

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The Importance of Teaching Handwriting | Reading Rockets

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After a long period of neglect in education, attention to teaching handwriting in the primary grades may finally be returning. This attention can benefit many youngsters, including those with learning disabilities (LDs) involving handwriting, which may accompany reading disabilities, writing disabilities, nonverbal learning disabilities, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Although word-processing programs and assistive technology are undeniably boons to children with writing problems, technological advances do not eliminate the need for explicit teaching of handwriting. Furthermore, very modest amounts of instructional time in the earliest grades - kindergarten and grade one - may help to prevent later writing difficulties for many children.

Why handwriting is important

Contrary to the view that handwriting is a trivial skill, handwriting actually is important for a number of reasons.

One involves the concept of mental resources to which I have alluded in several other columns, in relation to reading and mathematics as well as writing. Just as effortful word decoding may impair reading comprehension, or lack of automatic recall may reduce the mental resources available for learning advanced computational algorithms in math, labored handwriting creates a drain on mental resources needed for higher-level aspects of writing, such as attention to content, elaboration of details, and organization of ideas.

Because handwriting is a basic tool used in many subjects - taking notes, taking tests, and doing classroom work and homework for almost every content area as well as in language arts classes - poor handwriting can have a pervasive effect on school performance.

Moreover, when handwriting is perceived as arduous and time-consuming, motivation to write may be greatly reduced, leading to a lack of practice that may further compound difficulties with writing.

Finally, handwriting in the earliest grades is linked to basic reading and spelling achievement; for example, when children learn how to form the letter m, they can also be learning its sound. Attention to the linkages among handwriting, reading, and spelling skills can help to reinforce early achievement across these areas.

Manuscript or cursive?

At one time, manuscript (print) writing was typically taught in first grade, whereas cursive was introduced later, usually in third grade. Historically, some authorities argued for the superiority of one form over the other for children with LDs, most often for the superiority of cursive over manuscript.

However, there is little evidence that cursive is easier to learn than manuscript, and there are clear advantages to having children focus on the form of writing similar to what they must read in print.

Most critically, children should be able to use at least one form to produce legible, reasonably effortless writing, and instruction should focus on the form that appears most likely to lead to that outcome, especially for older children with handwriting difficulties.

Assessment of handwriting skills

Assessment of handwriting should incorporate observations of execution, legibility, and speed of writing.

Execution includes correct and consistent pencil hold, posture, and letter formation. Counterproductive habits in these latter areas are not always obvious from looking only at writing samples and can greatly impede progress in handwriting. For instance, young children may "draw" a letter such as m using separate strokes, starting on the right side of the letter. Forming the letter beginning on the left side, without lifting the pencil from the paper, is much more conducive to building eventual speed of writing.

Legibility involves the readability of letters, as well as spacing within and between words.

Speed is important as children advance beyond the first few grades so that they can use writing efficiently in a variety of tasks.

If children have learned both manuscript and cursive, as is often the case with older youngsters, then assessment should consider the execution, legibility, and speed of both forms of writing.

Instruction in handwriting

Relatively modest investments of instructional time devoted to handwriting - perhaps the equivalent of ten or fifteen minutes daily - may pay off in preventing later writing problems, including difficulties with higher-level composition skills.

The early years of schooling are especially critical for handwriting instruction; once children have formed counterproductive habits in handwriting, such as poor pencil hold or inefficient letter formation, those habits can be difficult to change.

Even for young children, however, handwriting instruction should occur in the context of a broader program of written expression in which children learn many other writing skills and develop motivation to write.

Of course, children also should have access to word-processing programs and assistive technology, with appropriate accommodations as needed for individual students.

Here are a few specific suggestions for teaching handwriting:

Teach children consistent formation of letters using a continuous stroke if possible.

Children should learn a highly consistent way to form a given letter every time they write it. Although some letters, such as f and t, require lifting the pencil from the paper to make a second stroke, teach letter formation using a continuous stroke (without lifting the pencil from the paper) when possible.

For example, teach children to write the letter b by starting at the top with a vertical stroke, then making the loop to the right without lifting the pencil, rather than having children form the vertical line and the loop in separate strokes.

Focus initially on learning the motor pattern rather than perfect legibility or size.

When children are learning to form a new letter, it is helpful to begin with large movements such as forming the letter in the air; have children use a sweeping movement with the entire arm, not just the hand. This initial practice should emphasize learning the motor pattern with correct formation of the letter (e.g., as discussed for the letter b above) rather than writing the letter on paper with perfect legibility or size.

Teach similarly formed letters together, and use an instructional sequence that takes into account both ease of formation and frequency in words.

For instance, the manuscript letters c, a, and d all begin with the same loop and can be taught in one group; i should be taught before y because it is simpler to form and is needed more frequently to write words.

Separate reversible letters such as b and d.

Children appear less likely to confuse visually similar letters if they have learned one letter of a confusable pair well prior to introduction of the other letter of the pair. In addition, it can be helpful to teach children to form confusable letters differently; for example, b starts at the top whereas d starts with the loop.

Use written arrow cues to help children remember how to form letters.

Especially when the teacher is working with large groups of youngsters, monitoring each child while he or she is writing may be difficult. Written arrow cues for tracing dotted letters and copying letters are important so that children do not inadvertently practice incorrect letter formation repeatedly.

For children at beginning stages of reading and spelling, integrate handwriting instruction with instruction in letter sounds.

For instance, while children are practicing writing a given letter, they can also be saying the sound the letter makes.

In teaching cursive, explicitly teach connections between letters as well as formation of single letters.

Unlike manuscript writing, cursive writing involves making connections between letters within a word. Once children can form individual letters, explicit teaching of letter connections is important.

Connections involving four letters - cursive b, o, v, and w - followed by a subsequent letter (e.g., as in the words bed, on, have, will) are often especially confusing for children, because unlike most cursive connections, these do not involve going back down to the bottom line before writing the subsequent letter.

Aim for speed as well as legibility.

Whether children are learning manuscript or cursive, speed should not be emphasized until children can form letters legibly and from memory. With either form, however, children must eventually develop enough speed to use writing efficiently in tasks such as note-taking or test-taking.

It also is useful to distinguish different standards for legibility depending on the purpose for writing; for example, in taking notes, "messy" handwriting is entirely acceptable as long as children can easily read their own writing.

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After a long period of neglect in education, attention to teaching handwriting in the primary grades may finally be returning. This attention can benefit many youngsters, including those with learning disabilities (LDs) involving handwriting, which may accompany reading disabilities, writing disabilities, nonverbal learning disabilities, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

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Writing and Remembering: Why We Remember What We Write

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Writing and Remembering: Why We Remember What We Write

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A few weeks ago I wrote a post on note-taking skills. One common experience many people have, and that several people mentioned in response to that post, is that when they take good notes they remember things well enough that they rarely end up having to look at their notes again.

In fact, it seems that writing anything down makes us remember it better. On the other hand, not writing things down is just asking to forget. It's a kind of mental Catch-22: the only way not to have to write things down is to write them down so you remember them well enough not to have written them down.

Oy.

Curious about this, I decided to do some research into the psychology of writing and memory. As it happens, I have quite a background in the anthropology of memory, none of which did me any good reviewing the psychological literature. There's not a lot out there, not that I could easily find anyway (not being familiar with the psychological literature probably hampered my search) but what I did find was interesting. Seems it's not simply wishful thinking that lets us ignore our notes once they're written; there's good evidence that the act of writing itself helps us remember things better.

Not all things, though. What's especially interesting is that writing things down appears to help us remember the important stuff, and that the better our notes are the more likely we are to remember.

But first, some basic neuropsychology (!). The brain is divided up into several regions that process different kinds of information. There are separate regions that process visual information, auditory information, emotions, verbal communication, and so on. Although these different regions communicate with each other (for example, when we look at a piece of art we often have an emotional response, which we might then transmit to the language center of our brain to share verbally) each of them has its own processes it has to complete first. (OK, this is all a vast over-simplification, but what can I say? I didn't take notes that day in Neuropsychology 101...)

When we listen to a lecture, the part of our brain that handles listening and language is engaged. This passes some information on to our memory, but doesn't seem to be very discriminating in how it does this. So crucial information is treated exactly the same way that trivia is treated.

When we take notes, though, something happens. As we're writing, we create spatial relations between the various bits of information we are recording. Spatial tasks are handled by another part of the brain, and the act of linking the verbal information with the spatial relationship seems to filter out the less relevant or important information.

So here's what happens: in one psychological test involving students watching a lecture on psychology (psychologists who work in academia have a virtually unlimited supply of research subjects - their students!) students who did not take notes remembered the same number of points as the students who did take notes. That is, the mere act of taking notes did not increase the amount of stuff they memorized. Both groups of students remembered around 40% of the information covered in the lecture (which as a professor makes me sad, but I guess that's the way humans work). But the students who had taken notes remembered a higher proportion of key facts, while those who did not take notes remembered a more or less random assortment of points covered in the lecture.

What this and other tests suggest is that when we write - before we write, although indistinguishably so - we are putting some degree of thought into evaluating and ordering the information that we are receiving. That process, and not the notes themselves, is what helps fix ideas more firmly in our minds, leading to greater recall down the line.

Which is fine for notes, but what about other kids of writing? Apparently the same thing happens: in building a link between the spatial part of our brain that we need to use in order to make marks on paper that make sense (that is, to write) and the verbal part of our brain that we need to compose meaningful utterances to supply our writing hand with, we strengthen the process by which important information is stored in our memory.

But there's something else going on, too. When we write something down, research suggests that as far as our brain is concerned, it's as if we were doing that thing. Writing seems to act as a kind of mini-rehearsal for doing. I've written before about how visualizing doing something can "trick" the brain into thinking it's actually doing it, and writing something down seems to use enough of the brain to trigger this effect. Again, this leads to greater memorization, the same way that visualizing the performance of a new skill can actually improve our skill level.

The first thing just about every personal productivity writer in the world tells us is to write everything down. If you're a "writer-downer", you know how important this is, and you know that it works. Hopefully, now you know a little bit about why

it works, too.

TIME. IT'S THE CURRENCY OF LIFE.

But unlike money, you can't make more. You can, however, maximize each and every second you spend. Lifehack's mission is to help you make enormous gains with the limited time you have. With the insights we provide, your seconds can be worth hours, and days can be worth years in value.

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Writing and Remembering: Why We Remember What We Write

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A few weeks ago I wrote a post on note-taking skills. One common experience many people have, and that several people mentioned in response to that post, is that when they take good notes they remember things well enough that they rarely end up having to look at their notes again.