Anna said she was frustrated when her mother would get mad at her for knowing what to do one minute and then being completely confused the next. Her mother said she couldn’t understand it and thought that Anna was just saying that because she didn’t want to do any practice work. Anna knew how to complete the assignment examples and then the minute she tried it on her own, she suddenly couldn’t do it. What’s happening? Is Anna avoiding? Is her mother asking too much? It just doesn’t make sense. Anna felt badly, like something was wrong with her brain. How could she know what to do and then not know at all in the span of just a few minutes?
Ah, yes. The brain is a slippery beast. I explained to Anna how her brain worked when she was trying to learn new things.
When we are first introduced to a topic or some bit of information, we haven’t really learned anything yet. We hold that information in the front of our brains in a type of mental lobby, like a lobby in a building, and we refer to that as working memory (for short-term holding). From there, if the information is sticky, it may move to another room, we’ll call the waiting room before possibly moving to a more permanent place that we call long-term memory (for long-term storage). I find it helpful to create a picture in my mind. I imagine a small group of dancers waiting in a lobby to get called into an important audition. Most lobbies have around four chairs, though some dancers wait in lobbies with only three chairs, and some wait in lobbies with even more than six chairs. Here, I’m using the word chairs to indicate places we can sit information that comes in through our senses, but the size of the lobby is not related to what you might think of as intelligence.
Our thoughts and ideas, the metaphorical dancers, sit anxiously on the available chairs in the lobby, hoping to get through the door to the waiting room call backs (i.e. the hippocampus in the brain) and then, if very lucky, they book the job which will get them through the door to dance the Cancan (i.e. long-term memory in the neo-cortex of the brain.) I imagine long-term memory as a room with separate lines of dancers, holding hands like paper dolls, dancing the Cancan.
When we learn something new, we don’t actually realize whether we are in the lobby or dancing the Cancan. Often times, it feels like we are dancing the Cancan, until we try to recall something later, and we realize the bit of knowledge we are looking for is gone. If too much time passes or we get distracted, the thoughts slip off of their chairs in the lobby, not even getting to audition for the part. The good news is that there are ways to ensure information gets through the door to book the audition (i.e. long-term memory) and we can give our children the skills to unlock that door.
Some people (with fewer lobby chairs) may take longer to get learning into long-term memory, and they may have to work harder as a result. The number of chairs changes as children grow (up through the early teen years) and some kids just have fewer of more chairs in the lobby. Understanding this is important because depending on the capacity of the lobby (i.e. working memory), you will adjust how you set up learning experiences for your child. The amount of seat time or learning time doesn’t matter, but what matters is the amount of time your child is working at her full potential. The good news is that people with smaller working memories are often more creative. When thoughts slip away from the temporary holding spots of working memory, new thoughts take their place. These new ideas can be connections that others don’t readily see. The need for extended pacing and greater effort may not be equal across all content areas for learners. Some subjects might be readily accessible to a child and others might need more time and effort.
It’s not uncommon to have a small working memory and remember this does not have anything to do with intelligence. I think many of us have thought we understood how to do something and then when we’ve gone to try it on our own, we just aren’t sure anymore. Sometimes it’s because we’ve had someone helping us through the tricky spots and now that person isn’t there anymore. In this case, the person that was modeling for us just needs to slow it down a bit and let us do more and more on our own before pulling away. In other cases, we got it on our own in our working memory, but that understanding didn’t make it to long term memory yet. We need more practice, more guidance, a bit more hand holding and perhaps varied situations to get it to stick.
One suggestion is to use a technique called Mix it Up. When your child uses Mix it Up, she focuses on problems from a variety of topics she’s learned over the past few months. Because they are all different, she needs to evaluate each one as it’s own challenge and then resurrect her understanding of the topic to be able to solve the problem. That kind of thing resembles real life much more than a worksheet of basically identical problems that requires no strategic thinking. Kids will simply fill in the blanks without even thinking about how they are solving the problem.
Sure, Mix it Up takes more effort, but less is more. A little focused evaluation is far better than an hour of fill in the blank. As an added benefit, it becomes immediately clear which problems your child needs a bit more practice with. You might use Mix It Up during superpower time and set a timer, so your child works within a manageable container that feels good.
Leave me a comment: What about the dancer analogy helps you understand how learning makes it to long-term memory?
