Making memories - classroom activity

PURPOSE

To learn about how we remember things - how we take in information through our senses and store it in our brains for later use.

PROCESS SKILLS

observing, predicting, collecting and recording data, classifying, drawing conclusions

MATERIALS

30 blank index cards, unfamiliar faces cut from magazines, copies of students photos or familiar faces from magazines, glue sticks, scissors.

TIME NEEDED

30 minutes to make face cards and 30 minutes to carry out the activity

PREPARATION

1 Before class, prepare a deck of ten cards that features faces of people your students know. For example, you may use photos of students or other teachers, or clippings of celebrities from magazines.

2 Define memory for your students and ask them why they think we remember some things and not others.

3 As a class, make a set of 20 unfamiliar-face cards: Have students look though old magazines, cut out pictures of faces, and glue them to blank cards.

4 Number the backs of all the cards, including those you prepared in advance. Set the familiar-face cards aside.

ROUND ONE

1 Randomly select ten unfamiliar-face cards and record their numbers on the chalkboard.

2 Show students the faces on those ten cards. After one minute, place the cards in the deck. Ask students to predict how many of the faces on those cards they will be able to remember. When they agree upon one prediction, write it down.

3 Shuffle the deck and present all 20 cards at once, asking students to point out the ten they've already seen.

4 When students have selected ten cards, write their numbers on the board. Compare those numbers to the ones you already recorded.

ROUND TWO

1 Substitute ten of the unfamiliar-face cards with the ten familiar-face cards you made ahead of time. Write the numbers of the familiar-face cards on the board.

2 Show students the ten familiar-face cards for one minute, then put them back in the deck. Again, have students forecast how many faces they'll remember, and write their prediction on the board.

3 Shuffle the deck and present all of the cards, having students indicate which faces they'd seen.

4 Once students have selected their ten cards, compare their selections to the numbers on the board. (You should notice a dramatic increase in accuracy from the first round.)

5 Compare the results of round one with those of round two. Ask students to draw conclusion about how the brain processes familiar information better than unfamiliar information - including pictures, words, actions, etc.

FOR INTERMEDIATE

Encourage students to change the conditions in subsequent rounds and keep track of their results. For example, try using five familiar faces and five unfamiliar faces, and let students predict how well they will do. Or let them find out if lengthening the time spent looking at cards increases the number of faces they remember.

COPYRIGHT 1996 Scholastic, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group