Ep #21: 3 Steps of Learning and Memory

How does your child’s memory work? And how does knowing about that and understanding that help us come up with better ways to help our children learn things that are important and be able to remember the things that we need them to be able to learn and remember? Today I’m sharing a really cool three step process of how memory and learning works in your child’s brain.

And we’re going to be talking about some fun tips and ideas of how to help children not only easily store things into their memory. But also be able to set it up for retrieval later and then be able to practice that and really create those strong neural connections and pathways in their brain. It’s all coming right after this in this episode of the Raising Healthy Kid Brains podcast.

Welcome to the Raising Healthy Kid Brains podcast where moms and teachers come to learn all about kids’ brains, how they work, how they learn, how they grow and simple tips and tricks for raising the most resilient, kind, smart, compassionate kids we can. All while having lots of grace and compassion for ourselves because you know what? We all really need and deserve that too. I am your host, Amy Nielson. Let’s get ready to start the show.

It is one of our children’s primary jobs to be learning and this is something their brain is doing all the time. And so it’s important for us to understand how that works and what that process looks like inside their brain. I read the most fascinating book a while ago and I wanted to share just a little bit of it with you and talk about it. It’s called Make It Stick. I’ll have a link to it in the show notes and I just wanted to tell you a little bit about this three part process they talk about around memory and learning and how we actually get things into our children’s brains and make it so that they can retrieve that again.

So the first part of this three step process in learning or memory is called encoding. So encoding is what happens just throughout the day as kids are getting mental notes of things that are happening around them. So think of it as sketches on a sketchpad. You have kids that like to draw or sketch, or do you like to do that? And you’re just kind of drawing something out and then at my house we end up with papers everywhere with all these sketches on them. My children are quite into art. And so I have sketches all over the place.

And sometimes that first draft is just really light sketches that they draw something out a little bit and maybe they come back to it later, maybe they don’t. So think about that, just notes or sketches on your sketchpad, short term memory. Now, these things are easily, easily forgotten. So for an example today we’re going to talk about learning multiplication tables and granted, this is not something we’re doing in preschool kindergarten age group, but just give you an example.

So if we’re talking about it and trying to explain to kids, okay, here’s this series of numbers. If we’re going to do the skip counting by three. And we give them the series of numbers, three, six, nine, 12, 15 and we just go on. So what’s happening in their brain, there is this little, tiny drawing starting to happen. We’re explaining to them what maybe this looks like. And then it will probably very quickly be forgotten unless we do the next step. So step one is encoding.

Then we are going to go to step number two, which is really important and it’s called the consolidation. So consolidation is where we kind of recognize and stabilize those memory traces. Now, in encoding we’re putting a lot of things into our brain that we’re going to end up trimming out. So a lot of those things that you heard one day and then you forgot the next day and they just weren’t that important and your brain has to do a lot of trimming so it doesn’t keep just enormous amounts of information that you do not need.

And so that’s part of your brain’s job is to take those things in short term memory and get rid of a lot of them. But the ones that we want to stay, we really have to move on to this next step or they will go away. So consolidation, we’re working on that. It tends to occur over a while, maybe several hours and then kind of over days as we keep working on it, it requires some deeper processing. And so our brain is kind of replaying the thing that we heard or learned about. We’re giving it meaning. We’re filling in blank spots. We’re making connections to past experiences and to information and knowledge we already have in there.

I’ve heard this one in a book called Atomic Habits, this sandwich idea where we’re taking something that was already there before and another thing that was already there before and maybe we’re putting in the middle and adding them together or just finding some way to connect it with something that we already know. And then that helps us keep that information in our brain. So prior knowledge is a prerequisite for making sense of any kind of new learning. And this is why we build. We build from very early on. We start talking about numbers and helping them do one-on-one correspondence and doing groupings.

And then we just kind of add on where we’re adding and taking away. And then we get into something like multiplication where we’re helping them see those groups and then here is a group of three plus another group of three plus another group of three. And it’s just a different way to look at numbers where we can kind of get to bigger numbers faster than having to add up all of these individual things. And so we’re just working based on that prior knowledge they already have. And what’s really cool about that is as we add on an add on and add on, we’re revisiting what they’ve learned in the past which is going to be part of step three and we’ll get to that in a minute.

As we’re working through consolidation you can kind of think about it in the book, Make It Stick, they kind of talk about it as a first draft. So that initial encoding is maybe first draft. And then we make a few revisions, we do some editing. We kind of let go of some parts and then maybe add in a few really important details. And then over a couple of days we try to connect it to examples and come up with more supporting information. And we’re just kind of taking things that are back in the database of our brain that we already have in there and we’re adding things to it. We’re connecting it.

We’re building relationships, the synapsis between all these different things and kind of just anchoring it there into our brain and coming up with a better and better and better draft of what hopefully will become a very permanent and usable piece of learning and memory. And also as we’re doing that, we’re giving it meaning which is really important for being able to retrieve that information later and also use it. So we don’t want kids to just be able to recite all of the multiples of three.

I mean that’s helpful but what we really need for them to understand is why that matters and how that’s helpful in their lives as they’re moving forward through their education and just using it in daily life.

Okay, so we’re going to get to step number three. So step number three is retrieval. If you put something into your brain but then you can never get it back out again then how useful is it? It’s not. We have to be able to get it back out again. And so we’re going to talk for a little bit about that. So durable memory, it’s memory with staying power, learning that has staying power, the really good kind requires two different things. So the first one is an anchor. As we are taking that stuff that we had in short term memory, those traces, the little notes that we took and the little drawings.

Then we’re shifting that through the process of consolidation, which was step number two and we’re shifting that into long term memory. We have to anchor it there securely. So we talked about some of the ways that we do that during consolidation. We’re going back and working on it. We’re connecting it. We’re doing all these things. But we need to make sure it’s anchored there really, really well in long term memory. That’s a process we have to work on and we do that over days and sometimes over weeks’ worth of time as we build and build on that knowledge and reconnect it and reconnect it with new things.

But then number two, the other thing we also need for that durable memory and durable learning with staying power is setting it up for retrieval. We have to leave a way to get back to it and to bring it back. And so we’re associating that material that we learn, those things that we’re working on with a set of clues and maybe even diverse clues to help us be able to recall that knowledge later.

So one of my favorite examples around this, back at university I was taking a business ethics class. And it was really different than any class I had ever taken before. They were basically just memorizing lists and lists and lists of things. And so every test we would just have lists of these six things and these seven things and it was just memory, memory, memory, memory. And it was random lists of random things that didn’t seem to really connect with anything. And it was very difficult and a lot of people in this class did not like it very much.

So what would happen though is I could store things in memory pretty quickly. That was something I had gotten pretty good at. And so I would go and I would memorize all the lists and I would go in for my test and I could spit it all out and do these lists like crazy and do well on the test. And then if you had asked me a month later any of those things I couldn’t tell you because I didn’t have a way to retrieve them later. I needed a way to come back and pull them out later. And so part of that would have been consolidation.

If I had had to continue retrieving them over time or if I’d left clues for maybe if I had done something like having fun acronyms or just some different kind of way to remember and pull those out later. So setting up these cues for retrieval, we see them all the time. So one of our favorite things that we like to use are songs. And going back to this example we’ve been using throughout this episode of multiplication tables and skip counting.

One of the things that I did early on in my business was post some songs to YouTube of our multiplication songs. And they’re basically taking these strings of numbers that feel probably very random to children. But putting them into nursery rhyme tunes that they already know. And so they already know we’re taking something new, there’s these series of numbers and we’re attaching it to something they already know, this step two consolidation which are these tunes that the children have had in their heads since they were very, very tiny like, row, row, row your boat.

And then we put those two things together and suddenly we’ve created a really, really good cue for them to come back later and be able to retrieve those numbers and it works like magic. And we have kids learning their multiplication tables in a matter of minutes instead of flashcards for days and weeks and it being so difficult. It’s incredible. And this is how our brain works. And if you can see these pieces then you guys, we can take these tools and we can find ways to use this more.

So let’s talk about these songs, these multiplication table songs. We did step one which was encoding. Here is this list of numbers that we need you to know. And then maybe we introduced it with a song, who knows. And then we go to consolidation. We’re going to talk about why this matters and why multiplication matters, and why these series of numbers they are spaced out three apart. And then we’re going to revisit it over and over again. As part of retrieval we attached it to a song which was something they already knew.

And that’s kind of working with consolidation too because we’re attaching it to a piece of knowledge they already have in their brain, which just gives us some really good staying power. So we connect those two things. We have them repeat it over and over and over again. So we’re going to do retrieval practice. Retrieval practice is where we’re doing spaced intervals. We’re going to do it today and then maybe we’ll do it again at the end of the day. And then maybe we’re going to do it again in two days. And then maybe we’ll do it again two days after that.

And that spaced retrieval practice helps them pull that out, pull that out over and over and over again. And that is what is really going to not only keep that information anchored in their brain but allow them to put it in a place in their brain that is so quickly accessible. So songs are not the only way to do this. There are so many different mnemonic devices that we can use. We’ve talked about acronyms. We’ve talked about stories, maybe that I think in a previous episode, that you can use stories for memory.

Rhymes, all kinds of different things that we use as kind of those cues, those clues for retrieval. But the really important thing is being able to do those spaced intervals of retrieval. And then if you have those memory devices, those are just magical and help so much.

Knowledge and skills and experiences that are vivid or that hold significance to us and those that are periodically practiced are the ones that really, really stay with us. And so as we’re trying to help kids learn these are things to remember, things that are vivid memories for them, things that really stand out, things that hold significance, if we can help them add significance, build significance around that thing they’re learning that also is very, very helpful. And then those that we practice regularly, is this part of retrieval practice.

And sometimes if we can combine several of those things together then we just create those really, really strong connections in a child’s brain that allows them to not only take the information, encode it, consolidate it, build it there in their brain but then also anchor it and build a pathway back to it so they can retrieve it and pull it back out again. And then hopefully do that as quickly as possible as they practice that retrieval over and over and over again.

I hope that information was helpful. And here is what I would absolutely love. Come on over to Instagram or Facebook or your place of choice and let us know some of your favorite cues or memory devices that you like to use. Do you have a favorite song? Do you have a favorite rhyme? What’s one of your favorite ones that you use to anchor that learning in a child’s brain and then help them to be able to retrieve it? I’d love to hear some of yours. Obviously we talked about the multiplication table songs, the skip counting songs.

And we will leave links to those for you here in the show notes so that you can see those. They are magical and I love them so much. I’ve used them with all five of my children and they’ve worked beautifully well. And I’ve seen them work in schools and houses all over the world. So it’s been fantastic. So we’ll include that for you and I hope that you have an amazing and fabulous rest of your day. Thanks for listening.

Don’t you just love all the fun things we’re learning on the show together? Well, we wanted to give you a chance to practice a little bit of it at home. And so we made you a special freebie just for being a listener here. And you can grab it at planningplaytime.com\special-freebie. That is planningplaytime.com\special-freebie.

So what this freebie is I’ll tell you, is an amazing alphabet activity that you can start using with your kiddos. And it is based in play and is so fun. You can use dot markers with it. You can use Q-Tip painting. You could use circle cereals. There’s all kinds of options, but you can print it out today and get started. Just head over to planningplaytime.com\special-freebie and we’ll send that to you right away.

Thank you for hanging out with me today for this fun chat on Raising Healthy Kid Brains. If you want to see more of what we’re doing to support kiddos and their amazing brains, come visit us on our website, planningplaytime.com. See you next week.