Not the easiest of lessons with bsyo this week - other commitments had left a gap of three weeks between lessons, and it showed in her ability to recall what we had learned last time (ight), as well as in a slowing of her use of phonically regular information from letters. A litte revision, plus the technique of having her select words written on slips of paper as I called them out, brought us back into line by the end of the lesson. As a weakness in memory had been identified by her school, the experience reminded me of the need to build up memory in weak readers by keeping on flashing back to new material until it is automatically recalled from long term memory. The flashbacks can and should be turned into whatever games and activities the child enjoys. Finished the lesson with a choice between some medieval art and Audubon's birds. Bsyo chose the birds, and we looked at around a dozen plates - I have the original water colour edition, not the £20m version - and read the names, which included regular and irregualar words. This is the double-tracking idea, in which the learner is engaged at their full intellectual level as well as tackling basic reading. Bsyo is indeed bright, and enjoyed this.
This was another reminder of the road education continues to travel in its use of memory. For millenia, memory has been abused by mindless rote learning - although the ancients did leaves us two very useful techniques, the room and the journey (you attatch what you want to learn to familiar contexts, which provide prompts.) Then, from around Thomas Dewey onwards, we had a revolt against this that led to a total neglect of memory, which deprived learners of useful knowledge, such as multiplication tables and grammar. This remains prevalent. Brain research, which is giving us genuine insight into the role of memory in thought, is beginning to redress the balance, but it takes decades for such knowledge to work its way into the education system, where so much is determined by the balance of political forces, and by sheer force of habit.
Memory is a key tool, without which the brain cannot function. Investigate....