Speaking of teaching students how to learn

Johnson, B. (2012) Matching Teaching with How Students Learn.  Edutopia.  Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/matching-teaching-student-learning-ben-johnson?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=post&utm_content=blog&utm_campaign=matchingteachingtolearning.

"As we mature, we learn (and remember what we learn) more and more by exploration and discovery. We learn with hands-on and minds-on. We learn in the situation, in the moment and in the locale. Unsurprisingly, this type of memory is called locale memory and it is instant memory. For example, we all remember what we were doing on 9/11. So, we learn instantly by experiencing events that are important to us."

Project-based, experiential learning is what we need to really learn.

". . .  we can easily remember complex storylines from movies or television shows that we have seen just one time. Using Star Wars as a story example, Willingham goes on to describe the four C's that serve as a foundation for any worthy story: causality, conflict, complications, and character -- all held together by action. So, we easily learn content in the action and adventure of the story structure."

In teaching, we can give any topic these qualities.  This is also why most readers can recall what they read when they read fiction or narrative nonfiction, but struggle more with reading/recalling informational nonfiction.  Can we teach students to turn what they read into a "story?"

Giving students the opportunity to experience learning and "remix" it, aka tell the story of it, is how they gain "instant memory" of learning events.  We have to create opportunities for them to do that.