Long-term memory stores important knowledge that we learn over time, such as facts and the timeline of an event (Psychology Today,2025).

Short-term memory stores memories of people we just met, the current stats about a topic, or today's temperature (Psychology Today,2025).

Sensory memory stores current sights and sounds for a brief time (Psychology Today,2025).

Sensory memories are located in different parts of the brain. and remembering them brings them back together (Marshall M.D., M., 2022). Every time a memory is created, its pieces are stored in the hippocampus (Marshall M.D., M.,2022). The amygdala flags powerful emotions and stores them (Marshall M.D., M., 2022). Different pieces of a memory end up in the outer part of the brain, called the cerebral cortex.

In my classroom, I help students transfer information from their working memory to their semantic memory daily during my Phonics to Reading lesson and Wit and Wisdom lesson. When teaching both lessons, the words and information continue to build on each other day by day. The same sight words that keep adding on each week are repeated over and over again in both lessons and stored in the students' semantic memory.  Semantic memory is where we store words that we have memorized and word definitions (Psychology Today, 2024). For example, in kindergarten, we started with 3 words and will keep adding 3 or more words each week. The students have taken what is stored in their working memory and moved it to their long-term memory as they keep memorizing more sight words and learning more skills that they need to learn how to read and write.  I also stand at my door each morning and review the sight-words from the current week and some from the week before until most of my students know them.  It amazes me how much information they move from their working memory to their semantic memory just by reviewing their sight words and repeatedly reading and writing them during our lessons. We also work on sensory memory skills by imagining the sights, sounds, feelings, tastes, and smells in a story during our lessons.

Marshall M.D., M. (2022)  Memory. Harvard Health Publishing. https://www.health.harvard.edu/topics/memory

Psychology Today. (2024). Types of memory. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/memory/types-of-memory 

A great way to not overload a student's working memory and transfer information to long-term memory would be to mix things up (DiTullio, G., 2021). Some useful activities that I already use in my classroom would be turn and talks, demonstrations, hands-on learning, and story mapping (DiTullio, G., 2021).

DiTullio, G. (2021). How to engage student's memory processes to improve learning . Edutopia.  https://www.edutopia.org/article/how-engage-students-memory-processes-improve-learning

Age-related trauma is caused by the breakdown of the neuron's wiring in the hippocampus as we age (Marshall M.D., M., 2022). Remembering things will take a little longer as we age.

Head trauma can also cause memory loss due to the high impact from sports like boxing, soccer, and football (Marshall M.D., M., 2022) .

Stress can overwhelm us and help cause us to forget things, and cause short-term memory loss.

Marshall M.D., M. (2022)  Memory. Harvard Health Publishing. https://www.health.harvard.edu/topics/memory

To activate background knowledge in my classroom, I am constantly implementing think-pair shares in my math and ELA lessons. The students can bounce ideas and thoughts off of each other and put knowledge in their brains, as I like to tell them.

For retrieval practice, I flash sight words at my door every morning as the students are entering my classroom and I give daily ELA and Math exit tickets.

For contextualized learning, we do lots of turn and talks in Math and ELA. We also draw a picture to summarize what we learned in a story for ELA. We do a lot of hands-on activities during math with different types of manipulatives. The kids think they are playing while learning,and love our math center time.

DiTullio, G. (2021). How to engage student's memory processes to improve learning . Edutopia.  https://www.edutopia.org/article/how-engage-students-memory-processes-improve-learning