No Brain Connections = No Learning
Creating Meaning & The Use Of Chunking as Instructional Methods
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
How to create meaning and use chunking to improve student's leaning? Start by remembering that the typical human brain can hold about 7 pieces of information for less than 30 seconds. If something does not happen, the information becomes lost – the memory becomes extinct. Memories may not be fixed at the moment of learning but using the three teaching methods explained below will help solve the problem.
The brain is continuously trying to make sense out of the world, attempting to determine what is meaningful in what it experiences. Every encounter with something new requires the brain to fit new information into an existing memory category, or network of neurons. If it cannot then the information will have no meaning and will be shortly forgotten, sometimes almost immediately.
Effective instruction requires teachers to find the experiences and prior knowledge students have had and “hook” new learning to them.
How to create these “hooks”? By using one of the following 3 teaching methods: Create Meaning, use of Chunking, and linking new information to Prior Knowledge.
Solution One: Create Meaning.
When presenting new information, making the new information meaningful helps constructs neural connections within the brain.
Long-term memory determines who you are, what you can do, and how you see your world. Every mental operation you perform depends on easy access of information you acquired earlier in your life. You find an experience meaningful because of its relationship to what is already in your mind.
For instance, determine the number of words that have diagonal lines in them and the number that do not.
16 Words
Tent Cooking Cafe Read
Beach Weekend Tennis Sport
Paint Computer Write Football
Hobby Picnic Internet Tennis
Now think about the meaning of each word below. Then rate the words on a scale of 1 to 10 on how much you like the word.
16 Words
Cherish Dream Treasure Together
True Time Live Laugh
Happy Celebrate Today Enjoy
Smile Experience Hope Love
How did you do? Did you remember more words when you attached meaning to them?
Solution Two: Chunking
Chunking is arranging information into a meaningful pattern by grouping, sorting, organizing, or classifying information.
Herbert Simon, winner of the Nobel prize in 1978 for research on decision making in organizations and one of the fathers of artificial intelligence, explained “How Big a Chunk,” Science February 1974.
Simon defines a chunk as any coherent group of items of information that we can remember as if it were a single item. A “chunk” might be defined as a single unit of information taken in and held for processing in a person’s short-term memory. A chunk may be made up of letters, numbers, sounds, or any other type of information the mind is capable of absorbing.
Chunking is breaking up long strings of information into smaller bits and is any coherent group of items of information that we can remember as a single item. For example, a word is a chunk of letters remembered as easily as a single letter, but carrying much more information.
Chunking is breaking up long strings of information into smaller bits and is any coherent group of items of information that we can remember as a single item. A “chunk” might be defined as a single unit of information. A chunk may be made up of letters, numbers, sounds, or any other type of information the mind is capable of absorbing.
However, there is a problem. That is, the set of information must have some meaning or fit into a pattern.
For example, memorizing a group of letters like ‘AEINLRTG” proves a difficult task.
That is until one is presented with the letters in a different order: “TRIANGLE”
Or better yet!
Another example. Consider memorizing the following.
FACMHDTIWNEB
177620011941
CIAJFKTVSROASAP
All represent 12 separate digits that is well beyond most people’s memory capacity.
A little challenging?
Now examine the three sets again in a crunched format.
FACMHDTIWNEB = FAC MHD TIW NEB
177620011941 = 1776 2001 1941
CIAJFKTVASAP = CIA JFK TV ASAP
Now the three sets are remembered units.
Below is a short video on Chunking.
Solution Three: Prior Knowledge
Just because a teacher is teaching does not mean that learning is occurring. If the new information being presented has no meaning to the student, there will be no learning occurring.
No connection equals no meaning equaling no learning. The brain is constantly trying to make sense out of the world by attempting to determine what is meaningful in what it experiences. Every encounter with something requires the brain to fit the new information into an existing memory category or network of neurons.
The brain uses Prior Knowledge to Predict the best response to new experiences and information.
It is imperative for the brain to connect new content to prior knowledge. If it cannot the information will have no meaning and not be converted to long-term memory and be forgotten.
An effective way to activate prior knowledge is with the use of schemas, which are cognitive frameworks that guide memory, aide in the interpretation of events, and influence how we retrieve stored memories. A schema is an example of how the mind examines similarities and differences between sources of information.
The following videos illustrates and describe the usefulness of schemas.
Educators must remember that no connection equals no meaning equaling no learning. For learning and remembering to occur, every encounter with something new requires the brain to fit new information into an existing memory category, or network of neurons.
The use of creating meaning, the use of chunking and the recall of prior knowledge are proficient “hooks” that will help overcome the problem of forgetting.