Working memory in students

Working Memory by Judy C (Reference Librarian)

Recently I was searching for information on  short term memory  and found the whole topic so fascinating that I wanted to share some of what I learned.

Generally psychologists use the term, working memory, to refer to the ability to both store and manipulate information over short time (few seconds). 

Working memory is made up of 3 components:

• Central executive, located in the frontal region, controls attention and higher level processes.
• Verbal short term memory (phonological loop),  located in the left hemisphere, stores all speech based information.
• Visuo-spatial short term memory, located in the right hemisphere, stores images, pictures and location information.

The central executive communicates with both short term memories and coordinates information, but the 2 short term memories are quite separate.  Therefore a person can have one short term memory that is much stronger than the other.

Each person has different working memory capacity, and children have less working memory than adults.  Generally a person can hold 6 to 7 units of information, and once the working memory is lost, it’s lost permanently.

Strategies to boost working memory:

• Chunking information – grouping units of information to create meaning
• Rehearsal – repeatedly saying it over
• Reduce distraction  – lower  background noise made up of conversation, white noise is not distracting

If you want to read more about the topic, you can contact the Professional Library for the “very readable” book, Working Memory & Learning: A Practical Guide for Teachers by Susan E. Gathercole & Tracy Packiam Alloway.

 Judy Chyung – Reference Librarian

PS:  this can be a serious issue with children because it is an ‘invisible’ disability and therefore it can take some time before it is recognized and diagnosed. My high school son has this: too much information can overwhelm and fatigue him (he’ll give up and put his head down on the desk); and I find that at the  secondary level many of the teachers have a strong subject specialty but they are not so great on implementing accommodations for kids.  Lets face it, most of the strategies listed by Judy benefit all students regardless of their abilities.   Rowan

 

Copyright in K-12 schools

The old Pan Canadian Licence is no longer in effect having been replaced with the Access Copyright Tariff, 2005-2009.  Access Copyright has created a new document The ABCs of the Access Copyright Tariff available on their web page. It includes one page that summarizes the dos and donts of the tariff in easy to read language and several pages of FAQs that provide more detailed information.  If you have any questions about photocopying in K-12 schools, this is great place to begin.

Rowan

Buying textbooks

The Libary often receives queries about textbooks, either from parents who want to help their kids or LTOs who want to prepare for classes and assignments in advance of their school placement. TDSB does not have a textbook warehouse for new or  old textbooks; there is no central stockpile of these books. 

If you are a parent or an LTO, you can approach the child’s  school or your placement school to see if there are any borrowable copies. Another alternative is to purchase a new or used copy from a bookstore. We know of 2 such locations in Toronto: The Bookman Textbook & Educational Outlet and ALPHA Textbooks. There may be more, but these are the two that we know about to recommend. 

Rowan

Student Assessment: Growing success

Most Ontario teachers know that the Ministry has been slowly updating the subject curriculum  documents issued in and around 1998-2000.

One of the documents currently under review is the assessment document. The 2000 document is titled Program Planning and Assessment, available to borrow from the library or downloadable from the Ministry.   Recently, the Ministry has created a discussion document titled Growing Success-Assessment, Evaluation and Reporting: Improving Student Learning and it is available for reading and downloading on the OCUP Resources page <here>. We don’ t have it but we are working on it.

TDSB has two popular assessment documents (2006) titled Fresh AER, one for grades K-8,  the other for  Grades 9-12.  TDSB teachers may borrow them from the library although they should be in your schools. if you can’t find them (and we all know curriculum docs have feet and are never where you last saw them), you can purchase them from Curriculum Documents at curriculumdocs@tdsb.on.ca ($25.00 for elementary and $20.00 for secondary).

Rowan

Homework debate, again

The Canadian Council on Learning has reviewed 18 studies published from 2003-2007 on the value of homework and how much is too much.  In their summary they say “homework is more likely to be effective and improve academic outcomes when assignment are engaging, relevant and meaningful  because it forces students to actively focus on thier  homework tasks”.  In other words, it is only as good as it is done well.

Here is our bibliography, now a year old Homework

Rowan

The Beguiling

The Beguiling,  is well known to all Toronto comic book and graphic novel fans (school libraries included).  Located at 601 Markham Road, near Bloor and Bathurst,  Beguiling is celebrating Free Comic Book Day this Saturday May 2nd.,  and between noon and 5:00 pm is handing out up to 5 free comic books per customer. And many of the cartoonists will be available to autogaph books and comics.  Cool or what!

A place for old and used electronics

On the heels of Earth Day, Ontario anounced a program whereby residents can unload their unwanted TVs, computers, printers, fax machines, cell phones and the like. Ontario residents can take this e-junk to specific  sites and know that it will be diverted from land fills and disposed of according to  North American environmental standards.  Check out the web site ‘dowhatyoucan‘ for more information and a list of the sites.  It even includes a Teacher Resources page with links to eco and environmental web pages.

Rowan

Character Education

I’ve updated the Professional Library bibliography on character education. The link is below,

character-development4

Rowan

Reluctant teen readers and Allison Van Diepen

Last week I spent two days at the Ontario Library Association annual Super Conference, and one of the sessions I attended was on reluctant teen readers.  I have a male version at home, very embarrassing for his library mom.  Who’d have thought that a book toting mom could have a non reader in the house?  I tried everything: magazines, reading to him, books scattered in every corner of the house, picture books, graphic novels, high-interest books for boys like BMX biking, newspapers…ultimately it all made no difference, he does not enjoy reading.  When he went to a book store, it was overwhelming; he did not even know where to begin. You can imagine that reading some of those subject textbooks was brutal.

So, the session I went to was delivered by Allison van Diepen, an Ottawa teacher, with teaching experience in Brooklyn and an author of two books Street Pharm, Snitch and a third one Ravento be released any day now.  She talked abut how students, for a variety of reasons, often do not enjoy the  classic reading material found on high school English course lists (dead white guy stuff) but enjoyed reading other books, especially those selected by themselves. Key features for popular books, include: fast paced action right from the get-go, short chapters and paragraphs, action is easy to visualize, lots of dialog, edgy and dramatic, real in that it reflects the daily life and language of the kids. 

I purchased Street Pharm for my 17 year young son and the next day at the dinner table, he announced that he loved it and had already read over 100 pages! The next day he was over half way though it! Hope glimmers on the horizon.

Check out Allison van Diepen’s web page. Like the books she writes, it is a fun hook for teens and includes some teaching materials to support the books.

I should say, that my son also liked books by Andrew Clemens and Eric Wilson.  Keeping the momentum going is the hard part.

Rowan

Harvard Business Review September 08

The September isuue of the Harvard Business Review has a couple of articles that might be of interest to principals and administrators.

The first article by Ed Catmull is titled How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativityand looks at creativity in relationship to the organizational culture.  Pixar has three operating principles: 1) Everyone must have the freedom to communicate with anyone; 2) it must be safe for eveyone to offer ideas; and 3) we must stay close to innovations happening in the academic community.

The second article is by Daniel Goleman and Richard Boyatzis and titled Social Intelligence and the Biology of Leadership.  (We have a bunch of books by Goleman on emotional intelligence). More brain research (read about mirror neurons, spindle cells and  oscillators)  which shows that effective leaders have an effective social intelligence which is defined as ”a set of interpersonal competencies built on specific neural circuits”.  Qualities include: empathy, attunement, organizational awareness, influence, developing others, inspiration, and teamwork.

Give us a call if you are interested in reading these articles, (416) 395-8289.