Why Don't Students Remember What I Teach Them?

You have probably asked yourself that question over the years in response to assessing the efforts of students on assignments in the classroom, lab, or field. One of the many things I have been learning from reading the Willingham book, "Why Don't Students Like School?" is the cognitive principle that "memory is a residue of thought" (p. 41). The statement that the author made which totally grabbed my attention was, "to teach well, you should pay careful attention to what an assignment will actually make students think about (not what you hope they will think), because that is what they will remember." In other words, the things you make students think about is that which they will remember because memory is the residue of thought!"

The resulting teaching tip from this cognitive principle from the author was to "review each lesson plan in terms of what the student is likely to think about." Case in point, if having them do a presentation on some aspect of baking using PowerPoint, will they have thought more about making an interesting presentation using the bells and whistles available in the software or the baking technique they are supposed to present to you and the class?" If it is the latter well no wonder they forget the baking principle because that was not what they were thinking about when preparing their presentation!

So, double-check your lesson plans this summer and determine what students will actually thinking about when the lesson is underway. Now that I am reading the Willingham book I am starting to understand why it is my honors class is one that students remember because they are constantly being asked by me to think (inside and outside of class) how the readings apply to the world in which we live and jot down those thoughts and discuss them in class when compared to my HR class that has them do worksheets from the chapters in the principle text (leading to poor performance on quizzes and exams). I will definitely give that more thought over the summer.

If you are reading the Willingham book this summer, please send your thoughts to me so that I may post them on the http://www.fooded.org/ website or as a post in response to this one.