Do You Wanna Talk about Designing a Memorization-Centric, Knowledge Based Homeschool with me?

[Gil]

I updated the booklist in the OP.

[Gil]

At the risk of sounding really cocky, it's both exceptionally reaffirming and a little weird to see how much of what I did with The Boys aligns with the more thorough exploration of talent as well as how we struck upon some methods used in a widely superior education system. #YayMe

 Chapter 5 of TIO explains Deliberate Practice,

Quote

The concept of deliberate practice...is quite specific. It...is something entirely unto itself.

Elements of Deliberate Practice

• It's designed specifically to improve performance
• It can be repeated a lot
• Feedback on results is continuously available
• It's highly demanding mentally
• It isn't much fun

In reflecting on The Boys time in younger years, I categorically failed to provide systematic and sustained DP outside of a few very specific domains. There was even a specific job that I had where I used elements of deliberate practice on myself, without quite realizing or meaning too.

Going forward, I'm interested in how I might develop regiments of deliberate practice in a wider variety of academics. I wonder how I could develop a particular Skill-Based curriculum around the idea of Deliberate Practice.

 

[Gil]

For the time being, TIO will be the last book that I read that's not strictly on the topic of developing/training memory or the development and use of memorization skills, because I'm short on time and don't have the bandwidth for lots of side-tracking.

I'm going to try and determine if my current scope and sequence makes sense or if it could be optimized specifically for a memorization-centric, knowledge-based curriculum. Currently, I doubt that I'll change much, but I'm still going try and see if it would make sense to change anything anyway.

Food for thought, questions to ponder.

 

 

[Clarita]

2 hours ago, Gil said:

In reflecting on The Boys time in younger years, I categorically failed to provide systematic and sustained DP outside of a few very specific domains. There was even a specific job that I had where I used elements of deliberate practice on myself, without quite realizing or meaning too.

Reading the description and reviews of the book. I'm not sure you could apply this to more than a few things. 

[Malam]

On 8/12/2023 at 11:46 AM, Gil said:

Tiger's father was a teacher "I love to teach," he's quoted as saying. He was an athlete and had a lot of experience teaching and training young men, and at the time that Tiger was actually born, dad was fanatically interested in golf and had worked to achieve a ranking in the top 10% of players within only a few years for himself. So, Tiger is born to a golfing expert who loves to teach, wants to teach/train his son up in golf and both parents have decided that Tiger is the biggest priority in their lives. Tiger, at age 19, makes it on the U.S. Team after 17 years of intense and tremendous practice with professional-quality teachers first, under his father and later under other teachers.

I guess you could call him a... tiger dad.

[Gil]

1 hour ago, Malam said:

I guess you could call him a... tiger dad.

#rimshot

A small part of me will never forgive myself for not seeing that, the other part will never forgive you for saying it, .

Though I guess he'd have to be called The Tiger Dad or maybe even The Cub Father.

[Gil]

1 hour ago, Clarita said:

Reading the description and reviews of the book. I'm not sure you could apply this to more than a few things. 

I mean, is it limited to only a few things? How many activities/domains can you name that can not be improved on via Deliberate Practice?

 

 

 

[Clarita]

I mean you could do it with anything, but I don't know that you could apply that kind of mental energy and energy sustainably to everything in life.

[Clarita]

On 8/11/2023 at 11:43 AM, lewelma said:

These were 6 week long projects when the kids were young, and moved up to 6 month long projects by high school. Because they were real world problems that the kids were curious about, they were interdisciplinary and very very engaging. 

How did you start that with the little kids? I've only done one off questions with my littles. I don't know if they are ready for a real project...

So far in my reading I need to upgrade my interleaved practice game, and also finding the balance between it being actually engaging and helpful to busy work.

I'm all on board with deliberate practice by the way. It is what made me so good at the things that I'm good at (I'm no Tiger Woods though).  It's also the answer when other parents ask my how I got my son so good at his thing. He watches people who are good at the thing and hones specific aspects of it, a lot. I'm less clear on how to do that over things that a person isn't self motivated in, without turning into Tiger, or Micheal Jackson's dad. (I don't know if the book has better examples... you know people who didn't totally struggle with things outside their super great thing).     

[lewelma]

34 minutes ago, Clarita said:

How did you start that with the little kids? I've only done one off questions with my littles. I don't know if they are ready for a real project...

We focused on things that interested them that they could see and touch -- so mostly nature based.

4 year old project: we identified and photographed all the different species of ferns in the forest behind our house. We are in NZ where there are a LOT of ferns, so like 30 kinds.  We then made a poster and had him practice a little presentation for his extended family.  There was a large memory component here because he did memorize all the fern species and even to this day can recall their names and identify them in the forest when we go tramping.

5 year old project: we hunted down, identified, and photographed all the 'mini beasts' in our yard.  So worms, insects, centipedes, etc. We had to read up on lots of different ways to collect them and convince them to come out. We had to problem solve why we would find none when we tried a pit trap or a sheet under a shaken tree.  We then categorised them based on phylum and class.  Nothing to complicated for a 5 year old, but I showed him the idea of 6 legs for insects, 8 for spiders, decapods, centipedes, millipedes etc.  Then we created a poster with yarn connecting all the different related photographs.  Once again, a strong memory component here, because he had to learn who was who so he could figure out if he had seen one before or if they were related.  He would get so excited about a new one. One time he was jumping up and down "I always wanted to get a pseudo-scorpion."  LOL . All together we found about 50 in our yard.

6 year old project: we identified and photographed all the different kinds of mushrooms. And then tried to figure out which was the most abundant by counting them and then drawing a map a labelling where you could find them. We made mushroom prints and classified them based on gills etc. Once again, we created a poster and a presentation

7 year old project: we identified and photographed all the different kinds of clouds, and studied how to predict rain based the the clouds.  We then tracked his predictions and if it rained for 10 days to see how accurate he was. We made all sorts of equipment and he recorded everything for a couple of months in a little book in his cute handwriting. poster and presentation.

8 year old: How deep is the soil throughout the forest and why does it vary.  This required a lot of digging with shovels. lol.  I wrote this one up completely as we did it and can track down the thread if it would be helpful.

For all of these we would also watch any documentaries we could find, and get little kiddy books out of the library. Very fun. I brought it up in this thread because the content was memorable and also had a large memory component to it.

Ruth in NZ

Edited August 14, 2023 by lewelma

[Rosie_0801]

@bookbard, have you read Tyson Yunkaporta's 'Sand Talk?'

Redundant if Gil reads Lynne Kelly's books? Or perhaps too far down a rabbit trail?

 

[bookbard]

1 hour ago, Rosie_0801 said:

@bookbard, have you read Tyson Yunkaporta's 'Sand Talk?'

 

I haven't, I will take a look. Lynne Kelly started to work with a local school and there are specific things in her books that she did with schools which I think are so interesting. 

[Rosie_0801]

28 minutes ago, bookbard said:

I haven't, I will take a look. Lynne Kelly started to work with a local school and there are specific things in her books that she did with schools which I think are so interesting. 

I haven't read the books you mentioned earlier in the thread, but did read of her work in a book she co-wrote for the 'First Knowledges' series.

[Clarita]

Also FYI Anders Ericsson mentioned a lot in Talent is Overrated also has his own book Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise. https://www.amazon.com/Peak-Secrets-New-Science-Expertise/dp/0544947223/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

[Gil]

21 hours ago, Clarita said:

Also FYI Anders Ericsson mentioned a lot in Talent is Overrated also has his own book Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise. https://www.amazon.com/Peak-Secrets-New-Science-Expertise/dp/0544947223/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Is it vastly different from Talent is Overrated? In other words, if one reads TiO carefully and completely, does Peak offer something different?

[Gil]

As far as deciding what knowledge to include, is concerned, there are 3 series/types of books that come to my mind. Yes, it's the year 2023 and "you can Google ideas" but some people prefer a finite and concrete resource as a jumping off point.

Textbooks and Test books - A great deal of knowledge can be harvested from well written textbooks and books that are designed for test preparation.

The Teacher's Book of Lists Series - This is a series of books, I don't own them, but I've seen a couple of them in used bookstores over the years that are reference books for Subject Teachers to plan lessons/units with. Some of them were released in the 90s and 00's, and some have been revised (a few times) since then.

The Writing Teachers Book of Lists
The Reading Teachers Book of Lists
The Literature Teacher's Book of Lists
The Vocabulary Teacher's Book of Lists
The Social Studies Teacher's Book of Lists
The American History Teacher's Book of Lists
The Elementary Math Teacher's Book of Lists
The 5-12 Math Teacher's Book of Lists
The Science Teacher's Book of Lists
The Music Teacher's Book of Lists
The Art Teacher's Book of Lists
The PE Teacher's Book of Lists
The Health Teachers
 

Core Knowledge (AKA What Your __ Grader Needs to Know) Series. I've been advised not to use the earliest editions from the 90s as they contain factual errors in some content knowledge subjects.

What Your Preschooler Needs to Know
What Your Kindergartner Needs to Know
What your First Grader Needs to Know
What your Second Grader Needs to Know
What your Third Grader Needs to Know
What your Fourth Grader Needs to Know
What your Fifth Grader Needs to Know
What your Sixth Grader Needs to Know
 

A more comprehensive version of these books are called the Core Knowledge __ Grade Teacher Handbook. They're meant for schools and a lot bigger/meatier than the home-version of the books you buy at Costco or Barnes and Noble.

 

A Possible One Book Solution
Living Memory: K-8 Memory Work for the Secular Homeschool

This is the 2nd edition of the 2008 book which is out of print.

[Clarita]

1 hour ago, Gil said:

Is it vastly different from Talent is Overrated? In other words, if one reads TiO carefully and completely, does Peak offer something different?

I don't know. It's just a tendency I have when researching to look up the thoughts/works a book or paper references. I will update when I've read them both. 

[Gil]

Does anyone have any strong opinions on Bloom's Taxonomy vs the Bloom's Revised Taxonomy?

I think that I'll be reading the books to see in detail what each one is all about.

I was going to go with Revised, just cause--and I might still do that--but I feel that I should at least make sure that I take the time to understand the Revised Taxonomy vs the original Taxonomy.

[Clarita]

I just read "Applying the Principles in Our Lives" (From TiO) I think it's more important to teach my children how to do deliberate practice than just what content I teach them. I was kind of shocked especially in the section Practicing in the Work, I thought everyone use "deliberate practice" on things they wanted achieve.  

For context this section talks about how to practice in the context of when you are in the actually doing the job/work. 

1. (Before the work) Setting goals - You should set goals based on the process to achieve your outcome instead of setting a goal of the desired outcome. Whether you set a goal of wining an order/or closing out with profit (bad) rather than working harder on discerning a customer's unstated needs. 
2. (During the work) Self observation/metacognition - During the hard/uncomfortable parts of doing the work, instead of just trying to get over the difficult parts, mentally pause during the hard parts to identify deliberate practices one can do to improve their abilities. Instead of trying to take your mind off the pain while running in a race, elite runners are focused on making sure their bodies are doing the "right" things to optimize their running.
3. (After the work) Instead of vague evaluations on what they did, excellent performers compare themselves against concrete standards and identify the errors they made. More importantly they believe they are responsible for their own errors as opposed to average performers who focus on external factors keeping them from their goals. This also helps excellent performers rush headlong back into the things that are hard for them (so they can try their new adaptation and process) whereas average performers will then tend to avoid the hard situations and not get better.

 

[Gil]

3 hours ago, Clarita said:

I just read "Applying the Principles in Our Lives" (From TiO) I think it's more important to teach my children how to do deliberate practice than just what content I teach them. I was kind of shocked especially in the section Practicing in the Work, I thought everyone use "deliberate practice" on things they wanted achieve.

Deciding on the content is absolutely essential in a knowledge-based curriculum--even if one doesn't choose to make it memorization-centric, though I'm leaning very heavily towards that direction.

 

[Clarita]

1 hour ago, Gil said:

Deciding on the content is absolutely essential in a knowledge-based curriculum--even if one doesn't choose to make it memorization-centric, though I'm leaning very heavily towards that direction.

I guess then I would add how to do deliberate practice and how to learn as one of the contents that I teach.  

[Gil]

38 minutes ago, Clarita said:

I guess then I would add how to do deliberate practice and how to learn as one of the contents that I teach.  

Yes, it's been my experience as well that that Deliberate Practice is definitely a skill that should be directly taught if you want your student to "learn how to learn".

When The Boys were young, I did all the meta work of observing, reflecting, analyzing and tweaking for them and made adjustments as needed without running things by them or explaining much of the reasoning. They gradually matured into more and more useful input and more and more appreciation of the explanation, but it wasn't until they were older that they really had the maturity to think through something that they were learning and care about getting better in such a way that they were able to engage in deliberate practice independently.

[Clarita]

On 8/20/2023 at 6:40 AM, Gil said:

Is it vastly different from Talent is Overrated? In other words, if one reads TiO carefully and completely, does Peak offer something different?

I've just finished the Introduction and the first chapter. I prefer Peak to TiO, mostly because I like the writing style better. Both are well written but Peak is written more in a research book style.

There is more detail in Peak about experiments that Ericsson conducted. There is information about their hypothesis, other participants, what happened as oppose to just the conclusion. I find that information useful to me for implementation and I like reading about that stuff. I think TiO does summarize the results of Peak well enough.

[Gil]

So, this month I'm revisiting Make It Stick because I want to create a topical unit designed around it's principles. I have the ultimate dream of creating a robust curriculum for Amiga based on it's principles.

I'm also trying to get The Memory Book for my read next week.

[Shoes+Ships+SealingWax]

On 7/28/2023 at 10:42 AM, Miss Tick said:

Have you looked at the open source app Anki? You can't talk about memorization without at least acknowledging it 😀. It is a spaced repetition system. Easiest for discrete items like language learning, but I've seen people do all sorts of stuff with it.

Is there a way to change the terminology for rating card difficulty? I would love to use this with my 5th grader & have put together a number of decks, but he’s really turned off by having to select “FAIL” for cards he doesn’t know. 😬 

[Miss Tick]

Just now, Shoes+Ships+SealingWax said:

Is there a way to change the terminology for rating card difficulty? I would love to use this with my 5th grader & have put together a number of decks, but he’s really turned off by having to select “FAIL” for cards he doesn’t know. 😬 

Huh. I don't remember that in the ratings. I wouldn't have liked that either! I'm sorry that I don't have an answer for you.

[Malam]

11 hours ago, Shoes+Ships+SealingWax said:

Is there a way to change the terminology for rating card difficulty? I would love to use this with my 5th grader & have put together a number of decks, but he’s really turned off by having to select “FAIL” for cards he doesn’t know. 😬 

That's strange, on my version of Anki the "fail" button is labelled "again". Which version are you using?

[Shoes+Ships+SealingWax]

8 hours ago, Malam said:

That's strange, on my version of Anki the "fail" button is labelled "again". Which version are you using?

Apparently I got suckered into a spin-off app called AnkiApp 🤦🏻‍♀️ I’m going to see about transitioning everything over to the “real” Anki. 

[Miss Tick]

28 minutes ago, Shoes+Ships+SealingWax said:

Apparently I got suckered into a spin-off app called AnkiApp 🤦🏻‍♀️ I’m going to see about transitioning everything over to the “real” Anki. 

Sorry to hear that. Happened to me at I've point also.

[jboo]

I haven't seen listed in your down the rabbit hole suggestions: Mary Carruthers and Jan M. Ziolkowski's "The Medieval Craft of Memory, An Anthology of Texts and Pictures", which has (with commentary, and translated) the text of a number of medieval writers' works on memorization, and Carruthers's "The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture", which is more interpretive.

[Clarita]

I just borrowed the book Phonics From A to Z by Wiley Blevins. It is strictly about reading and touches on spelling, however it combines a lot of research on how children learn to read/spell with research in orthographic rules and word frequency in English. In a way it highlights what are the most effective things children should memorize/internalize to learn reading and spelling. (A word of warning though, he wrote a curriculum so he does shamelessly plug this curriculum and other books he's written.)

That book bought me to another book about research on reading and spelling called BrainWords I haven't read this book just yet so I'll come back to update once I've read it. (This book advocates learning spelling and reading at the same time because research shows that it's more effective.)

[Gil]

So, I'm interested in research and anecdotes re: introducing and using various memorization techniques to young children (2yo-4yo)

Currently, everything that Amiga has memorized or is memorizing, she's internalizing via "brute-force" (aka loads of repetition. Daily, ritualized repetition). We just recite things each day and throughout the day as an attempt to establish the skill of memorizing.

It works, Amiga has several things that are important for her to know memorized and thinks that it;s grand to sing/say/recite her information.

As she's still young, I'm fine with it for another year or so, but I'm interested in building more durable memorization skills into her education.

While, I'm not ready to start introducing mnemonics yet, as I feel that her language and abstract-thinking skills aren't strong enough for her to "get it".
I am thinking about starting her with a Memory Palace...

 

[Gil]

7 hours ago, Clarita said:

I just borrowed the book Phonics From A to Z by Wiley Blevins. It is strictly about reading and touches on spelling, however it combines a lot of research on how children learn to read/spell with research in orthographic rules and word frequency in English. In a way it highlights what are the most effective things children should memorize/internalize to learn reading and spelling. (A word of warning though, he wrote a curriculum so he does shamelessly plug this curriculum and other books he's written.)

That book bought me to another book about research on reading and spelling called BrainWords I haven't read this book just yet so I'll come back to update once I've read it. (This book advocates learning spelling and reading at the same time because research shows that it's more effective.)

What does he say are the most effective things for children to memorize for literacy?

[Clarita]

2 hours ago, Gil said:

What does he say are the most effective things for children to memorize for literacy?

It is a dense (a lot information) book at 300+ pages, I also skipped past the initial stages of reading because both my children can blend letter sounds into words.

It seems to me the basic premise is to get students to notice letters and the ways they interact to make words. So it advocates for teaching the generalizations (he wants to stray from calling them "rules" even though he does refer to them as "rules" because most people do and it may not be a book people read cover to cover), via application versus just having children be able to verbalize them. It does not have a definitive list, instead it gives you lists of most frequently used generalizations and how effective they are (so a lot of phonics books have a lot of "rules" that are "may" be this, thus it's how often that "rule" actually happens in words). 

For example it shows you a chart of the most frequent spellings of the 44 sounds of English, but also shows you how often each spelling pattern is used to symbolize that sound with a percentage based on the 17000 most frequently used words. Same with phonics generalizations (like "... g often has a sound similar to j in jump when it comes before the letter i or e") and how often these generalizations are utilized. These charts are there to help you decide what is best for your student and when.  

To the camp of reading instruction he leans towards, it would be to have children learn spelling and reading at the same time, because children remember best when they can apply their knowledge. Since he wants students to apply their knowledge every step of the way the sequence of when you learn the generalizations, phonemes and morphemes are based on how frequently they are encountered. For example this book is geared toward K-3 grade and while it has information on teaching student how to prefix and suffix words this book doesn't cover Greek and Latin roots just the most common prefixes and suffixes. There is a next book that I suppose covers word study for older ages.   

[bookbard]

I think it all depends on the kid. My eldest has a great memory, show her once and she's got it. Like me, she visualises and has synaesthesia. Memory palace works great, but really once she's seen it, she's got it. My youngest has a terrible memory (in his IQ test, his working memory was below average), and does not visualise at all - my husband is the same, if you ask him to 'see' a circle, he can't understand what you mean. So for my son, a memory palace is meaningless because he can't mentally walk through a house. Rhymes and chants have been more helpful for him. 

[Gil]

7 hours ago, Clarita said:

It is a dense (a lot information) book at 300+ pages, I also skipped past the initial stages of reading because both my children can blend letter sounds into words.

It seems to me the basic premise is to get students to notice letters and the ways they interact to make words. So it advocates for teaching the generalizations (he wants to stray from calling them "rules" even though he does refer to them as "rules" because most people do and it may not be a book people read cover to cover), via application versus just having children be able to verbalize them. It does not have a definitive list, instead it gives you lists of most frequently used generalizations and how effective they are (so a lot of phonics books have a lot of "rules" that are "may" be this, thus it's how often that "rule" actually happens in words). 

For example it shows you a chart of the most frequent spellings of the 44 sounds of English, but also shows you how often each spelling pattern is used to symbolize that sound with a percentage based on the 17000 most frequently used words. Same with phonics generalizations (like "... g often has a sound similar to j in jump when it comes before the letter i or e") and how often these generalizations are utilized. These charts are there to help you decide what is best for your student and when.  

To the camp of reading instruction he leans towards, it would be to have children learn spelling and reading at the same time, because children remember best when they can apply their knowledge. Since he wants students to apply their knowledge every step of the way the sequence of when you learn the generalizations, phonemes and morphemes are based on how frequently they are encountered. For example this book is geared toward K-3 grade and while it has information on teaching student how to prefix and suffix words this book doesn't cover Greek and Latin roots just the most common prefixes and suffixes. There is a next book that I suppose covers word study for older ages.   

So...phonics?

Boy, one day I oughta write a book on education! It's amazing what these educrats can make a living off of!

[Clarita]

55 minutes ago, Gil said:

So...phonics?

Boy, one day I oughta write a book on education! It's amazing what these educrats can make a living off of!

Yes, but I do love all the nitty gritty details. There are never too many books! I could easily be convinced to read your book too. 

 

[Rosie_0801]

You have read ElizabethB's old threads about teaching the syllabary?

[Gil]

2 hours ago, Clarita said:

Yes, but I do love all the nitty gritty details. There are never too many books! I could easily be convinced to read your book too.

I couldn't write a book--maybe a pamphlet.

Step 1: Commit to Using Loads of Parental Elbow Grease and Common Sense

Step 2: Purchase A Few Quality Materials in the Core Skills

Step 3: Do Some Skill Work Every Day

Step 4: Squeeze every drop of use from your chosen purchases.

Ok, so maybe less of a pamphlet and more of a paragraph.

 

[Clarita]

5 hours ago, Rosie_0801 said:

You have read ElizabethB's old threads about teaching the syllabary?

I have been to her site, which has also been immensely useful. I haven't watched a lot of the videos because it's easier for me to process via reading rather than a video.

[Gil]

14 hours ago, bookbard said:

I think it all depends on the kid. My eldest has a great memory, show her once and she's got it. Like me, she visualises and has synaesthesia. Memory palace works great, but really once she's seen it, she's got it. My youngest has a terrible memory (in his IQ test, his working memory was below average), and does not visualise at all - my husband is the same, if you ask him to 'see' a circle, he can't understand what you mean. So for my son, a memory palace is meaningless because he can't mentally walk through a house. Rhymes and chants have been more helpful for him. 

I'm actually debating what to do about building a Memory Palace with Round 2. Amiga has been volunteered as Guinea Pig for memory training. We've  began by developing her attention to detail with casual games of "Did You Notice...?" and "Do You Remember...?" but are open to considering any and every technique as the goal is to really develop the attention and memory-skills of the child.

So far, Chants already work on getting her to memorize something in sequence (spellings, information, etc)
Rhymes and mnemonics don't particularly work just yet and I'm not sure that she understands rhymes just yet.
Visualization skills--how does one develop them in someone else?

 

 

[bookbard]

On 11/27/2023 at 1:13 AM, Gil said:

Visualization skills--how does one develop them in someone else?

 

That's the question. Is it innate or learned? If you ask, 'imagine a circle, what colour is it?' to one of my children, they'll go into great detail. The other will just say 'I can't see things like that.' I think with a little child you can tell stories and ask them to close their eyes and imagine what you're saying, not just visually but all the senses. 

[Clarita]

29 minutes ago, bookbard said:

I think with a little child you can tell stories and ask them to close their eyes and imagine what you're saying, not just visually but all the senses. 

I know some educational philosophies (Montessori and Charlotte Mason are the two that I've seen) talk about telling young children stories and having conversations about the stories afterwards to build memory skills. Conversations that are open ended to allow them to form their own connections to things they know. I don't know that there are studies saying this is a great method or not, but it's easy to make age-appropriate (through content chosen and because you would just move at the pace of the child. It does go a long with some of the principles the book Talent is Overrated, it's an activity in focused listening (absorbing information), synthesizing the information and recall.

I believe Montessori and Waldorf philosophies also add in activities where children are read/recited/told stories specifically without pictures or other visual aid. 

[bookbard]

There are a few peer-reviewed studies about working memory - one is about using block play and one is about spending time in nature. I do think they're both great activities anyway! However, I personally feel that if you have a significant working memory deficit, nothing is going to 'fix' it. It's who you are, and you can compensate for it - there are some very successful people with these issues. Same with slow processing issues. And, in fact, the older I get the more I feel like you can compensate and remediate a lot of cognitive issues up to a certain extent, but there are a lot of things even very early intervention can't fix. And we need to be ok with everyone being different in that way.

However, that's not really what this thread is about! There is an online memory program that was developed by special educators for teachers in Australian schools that you might find interesting. Improving working memory and attention in primary school students - The University of Sydney

[Gil]

In designing knowledge-based courses, I found myself asking: What do I need my student to know at the end of this?
For how long will they need to know that information-- 5years? 10 years? 15 years? 20 years? their entire life?
Then it occurred to me that after a while that more than any particular body of knowledge mastered (though I definitely have a desire for a certain body of knowledge to be mastered and internalized) that my true decades-long goal is to develop strong memorization skills in and of itself within the kids.

In theory, I'd like my children, when they're 45+ years old, to be able to

1) take in new information (multi-steps or pieces of info in general) with greater accuracy, speed and ease
2) retain and recall that information as needed
3) in a manner that's not just a parlor trick (i.e., memorizing a deck of randomly ordered cards)

In the effort of training a strong memory and really trying to develop the brains ability to take in, retain and recall things, I've been rethinking a lot of what I'd assumed/calculated for Round 2s elementary education.

 

This of course doesn't mean that I'm not interested in a Knowledge-Centric education--I absolutely am, but I'm also starting to think about instilling the skill of learning differently.

[hi.im.em]

Thanks for starting this thread, @Gil, it's been a fascinating read. Just out of curiosity, what is on your list of things that you want your daughter to commit to long term memory? Now we've discussed the 'hows', i'd love a summary of your 'whats' and 'whys'. 

I have a (probably advanced, she is starting to read/blend letter sounds) 3.5 year old so I am super interested in your plans. 

For dd's future memory work, I have: math facts, all 75 phonograms, periodic table symbols, spelling/grammar rules?. I'm debating teaching her latin from a youngish age as I know it. I'm unsure about the utility of learning factoids from the content subjects. I believe in the neo-classical concept of hooking knowledge and background knowledge but this can't really be anki'd into long term memory. I like the 'core knowledge' series to make sure I cover the essentials but I'm not sure whether it's important to memorise it. Have you seen the 'steps' curriculum (used to be called connecting the thoughts)? It's similar to Core Knowledge I think but has you 'do' more with the material. 

For now she has spontaneously memorised many songs/nursery rhymes, a few of her favourite childrens books, the owl and the pussycat poem, the hymn 'who put the colours in the rainbow?' and the 'yellow is the sun' song from right start math. SWB recommends poetry memorisation for memory training and it also probably helps with vocabulary acquisition. This has inspired me to pull back from reading (we were doing lots of montessori style sound games) and swap it for more memory work. 

Edited May 16 by hi.im.em

[Gil]

On 5/15/2024 at 7:48 AM, hi.im.em said:

Thanks for starting this thread, @Gil, it's been a fascinating read. Just out of curiosity, what is on your list of things that you want your daughter to commit to long term memory? Now we've discussed the 'hows', i'd love a summary of your 'whats' and 'whys'. 

I have a (probably advanced, she is starting to read/blend letter sounds) 3.5 year old so I am super interested in your plans. 

Thanks for your interest, her list is still in development but on the front end of her life the emphasis is on her language skills because she's being raised bilingual and I'd hate for her to lose the

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For dd's future memory work, I have: math facts, all 75 phonograms, periodic table symbols, spelling/grammar rules?. I'm debating teaching her latin from a youngish age as I know it. I'm unsure about the utility of learning factoids from the content subjects. I believe in the neo-classical concept of hooking knowledge and background knowledge but this can't really be anki'd into long term memory. I like the 'core knowledge' series to make sure I cover the essentials but I'm not sure whether it's important to memorise it. Have you seen the 'steps' curriculum (used to be called connecting the thoughts)? It's similar to Core Knowledge I think but has you 'do' more with the material.

I'm familiar with Core Knowledge, but I'm not sure I've ever heard of the other stuff-I just didn't spend a lot of time looking at elementary level curriculum. It just wasn't a priority when I was teaching The Boys so as Round 2 kicks off, I might learn about some new materials.

However, I do feel its important that things learned as a part of your basic schooling are still known into young adulthood, so my hope is that the information gained will be retained information that develops as actual knowledge (aka, things that are known/understood, etc) so that they're functionally informed, not easily mislead adults who can follow News from around the world and will hopefully have something interesting to say.

I cringe when I see how American News has to break things down over and over again for the US Audience. It's pathetic and sad that so many Highschool Diploma carrying citizens don't actually know much, not to mention the college degree'd crowd so it's required to show simplified maps, definitions, etc.

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For now she has spontaneously memorised many songs/nursery rhymes, a few of her favourite childrens books, the owl and the pussycat poem, the hymn 'who put the colours in the rainbow?' and the 'yellow is the sun' song from right start math. SWB recommends poetry memorisation for memory training and it also probably helps with vocabulary acquisition. This has inspired me to pull back from reading (we were doing lots of montessori style sound games) and swap it for more memory work. 

Since your payment of $0.00 has cleared, I will offer you my advice: I wouldn't subordinate literacy to memory work. Literacy requires memory anyway so if she's progressing and enjoying the reading activities, I wouldn't stop doing that.

Once she's reading, she's reading for the rest of her life. Thats going to automatically include her memorizing (letters shapes, sounds, combinations, high-frequency words, etc).

I'm a Early Academics and Reading First type of teacher, but there's not much that my 3.5 year olds are going to be memorizing that'll be so important as to pause successfully progressing reading lessons/activities etc.

I would rather add 3 minutes of memory work to my toddlers day than take time from reading that's going well.

Remembering that you paid a whopping $0 for it, use my advice as you will.

[daijobu]

On 5/24/2024 at 3:50 AM, Gil said:

However, I do feel its important that things learned as a part of your basic schooling are still known into young adulthood, so my hope is that the information gained will be retained information that develops as actual knowledge (aka, things that are known/understood, etc) so that they're functionally informed, not easily mislead adults who can follow News from around the world and will hopefully have something interesting to say.

I cringe when I see how American News has to break things down over and over again for the US Audience. It's pathetic and sad that so many Highschool Diploma carrying citizens don't actually know much, not to mention the college degree'd crowd so it's required to show simplified maps, definitions, etc.

I hope you can elaborate on this a bit, as it is not something I have noticed. 

Your comment hit me particularly hard because I read it soon after attempting to read this article in the NY Times which left me fairly confused.  You might want to add Chinese Real Estate to your list of topics to teach your students because for some reason China's "Lehman moment" is going to have some ...impact (?) on us?  Though I could not tell you what that will be or why. 

Last night I read another NYT article about the bankruptcy of Red Lobster ostensibly as the result of poor marketing.  But head to the comments  section and you'll post after post about private equity investors and the complicated way they purchased the restaurant chain and then gutted it of its assets for their own benefit leaving it bankrupt.  I'm not really clear on how this is allowed to happen, or what is really going on under the hood.    So add Private Equity investments to your list as well.  

If anything I feel like American news is just too hard for my little brain to grok.    

Edited May 25 by daijobu

[Gil]

 

On 5/25/2024 at 3:02 PM, daijobu said:

I hope you can elaborate on this a bit, as it is not something I have noticed.

Sorry, we don't have a TV with channels at home so I when I'm out visiting or someplace with a TV, I tend to watch tv news.

I haven't noticed the same thing with print journalism, but I mostly read our local paper from the store.

One example that comes readily to mind is when Ukraine was invaded a couple of years ago, the news that I watched kept including simplified animated maps to teach/remind viewers where Russia and Ukraine are, and to depict the movement of people from Russia to Ukraine.

"This is the US, this is Europe, and then over here you have the country of Ukraine, and this is Russia..." it struck me as weird when I noticed that the news KEPT explaining that type of geography.

[daijobu]

Sorry I haven't watched TV news in ages.  You'll find more challenging material with print journalism, but it isn't free.  You get what you pay for.