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

Consolidation: During sleep, the hippocampus facilitates the offline connection between the neocortex, serving as a temporary support system. However, this process is not effective when learning new information, such as establishing index links. - p. 48-50

In the hippocampus, information passes through telegraph-line-like axons. Axons are wrapped by fatty myelin, an insulator which speeds up signals. Practising strengthens synapse links and thickens the myelin. This white matter links distant parts for complex skills. Soon, the WM can retrieve information from the neocortex without indexing via the hippocampus. - p. 45-46

Hippocampus is an index that merely links to information in the neocortex. It can link for at most a few months, which is enough time to consolidate the links in the cortex. - p. 44, 46

Declarative learning system: mostly conscious learning you can declare
• working memory
• hippocampus: above each ear, 1.5” inside, size of a big lima bean
• neocortex: ‘napkin’ few mm (6 neurons) thick, 24” X 24”, following & buried in brain’s surface folds (excludes thinner allocortex)
- p. 43

Ways of remembering:
1. Declarative memory: involving facts/events consciously recalled; in working memory, hippocampus, LTM in neocortex
2. Procedural memory: how to do something; in basal ganglia & neocortex
- p. 43

Retrieval processes are involved in expressions of knowledge (e.g. answering factual questions, explaining concepts, inferring, applying knowledge to a new problem, creativity & innovation), drawing upon the past in the service of the present. - p. 43

Active learning:
• uses activities and/or discussions e.g. group work
• higher-order thinking
• creating, consolidating, reinforcing, extending neural links in LTM
• information in LTM (e.g. definitions, examples, accumulated associations) are foundation for conceptual understanding (absorbing, retaining, analysing new information) & springboard for creativity
- p. 40-41

Active learning makes students 33% less likely to fail compared to talk&chalk; grades improved by 6%. - p. 39

Error analysis — identify, explain, fix errors in poor sentences
1. Work through with private think time
2. Compare responses with partner, increasing accountability & social motivation
3. Provide much practice & immediate corrective feedback
- p. 34-35

Teachers & working memory:
• students are worse in self-directed learning, and better with teacher direction
• practice builds info into long-term memory thru quick & automatic procedural learning pathway
• LTM enhances working memory thru automaticity e.g. punctuating sentences
• listening to teacher uses working not LTM, so they can’t implement
• have opportunities to practise during class
- p. 32-33