Aaron Wong’s Reviews > Uncommon Sense Teaching: Practical Insights in Brain Science to Help Students Learn > Status Update

Scaffolding:
• Hikers: allowing more time, breaking down steps, extension criteria
• Race cars: in-depth questions about connecting concepts, working with others, complex layered problems, authentic texts, extension projects, AI-differentiated instruction
- p. 28-29

Gauging working memory capacity:
• Excellent: can understand complex explanations & simultaneously take notes
• Average: can take notes but might lose track of challenging material
• Lesser: struggle to take notes & understand simple material simultaneously
• Circumstances (e.g. interest, home conditions) can affect
- p. 25

Chunks of information — a word, sentence, concept — can get bigger with practice. - p. 23

Strategies for lesser-capacity working memory:
• be brief & linguistically-simple
• students should look at teacher
• one-at-a-time instructions
• instructions on board
• mnemonics
• disregard spelling when writing
- p. 22

In an average class, 20% of the class will have the working memory of a child 3 years above/below their age, 3-6+ pieces of information. - p. 20

Write directions down for students to mitigate limited working memory; 14yos already have adult-sized working memories, twice a 4yo. - p. 19

Jot Recall:
• notes/sketches: without looking at notes/page, jot most important ideas covered; compare & discuss in groups
• spaced repetition: jot stuff they learnt in the previous day/week/month
- p. 12-13

Retrieval practice is drawing ideas from your own mind (e.g. flashcards); students need to be taught this. - p. 8

Test anxiety can be reaching into long-term memory and not finding the studied information. - p. 8

Average working memory holds four items; students can’t increase the items, but can make the balls of information bigger. - p. 7