What I noticed today is how background knowledge is heavily connected to long term memory. In my other education class, Diverse Learners with Dr. Brenning, we spent last class talking about short term and long term memory. Long term memory allows us to save things we have learned for future use and while memories do not always last forever, they can be revisited and strengthened. Long term memory can be referred to as a library full of printed books. When doing the activities today with George Washington and King George III, I realized how this was true. Even though my memories from learning this information in high school was a little dusty, I was able to remember George Washington and bits and pieces about the Revolutionary War as well as King George the III and his reign during turbulent times. As said by Shoob and Stout, “learning new content is strongly tied to background knowledge about a subject.” And furthermore, background knowledge is tied to the frontloading and information stored in long term memory. Like seen in the Social Sciences Skills Progression chart, skills and learning build off of one another from frontloading, to long term memory, to retrieval as background knowledge when learning more about the topic.
2 thoughts on “Class #4”
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Sophia, Thank you for such a thoughtful reflection! I like that you made a connection to Dr. Brenning’s class based on the George and George lesson! The skills progression chart is truly remarkable and will serve as a helpful guide for vertical alignment for years to come.
Like Lynne, I appreciate that you are making connections between different courses in the program. Activating prior knowledge really is about digging into long-term memory to see what students know and remember. Isn’t it amazing that something you haven’t studied in a long time can still be recalled with a little push?