Four Ways to Make Learning Easier

For Parents, Teachers, & Others Who Want to Raise Smart Kids

Photo by Anuja Mary on Unsplash

We cannot store every piece of information our brain encounters in our memory. How does it decide what needs to be remembered? Well, since our brain likes to avoid thought, if we spend a lot of time thinking about something, our brain decides to store it.

If we keep thinking about something over and over again, it must be important, and our brain doesn’t want us to have to go through the slow and laborious process of thinking about it again so it stores it away in long-term memory so we can get back to that information quickly and easily next time.

So whatever your students are actually thinking about is what they will remember. Well, that explains a lot!

“Memory is the residue of thought.” Willingham

Now, for the great realization of cognitive scientists that there is one type of presentation of material that is used in a special way by the brain.

1. A story

Stories are what Willingham calls “psychologically privileged” which means they are treated differently in memory than any other type of…