Learning Plan 6
Brain-based learning
Information
Overview
This is the first of a two-part lesson in which you will learn how to help students meet established
performance expectations by designing effective learning activities. Teachers often focus on their own
activities rather than on the activities that work best for students to learn. In this lesson you will learn how
your students learn, how to avoid cognitive overload, and how to support different learning styles and
connect effective teaching to the different stages of the Learning Cycle.
Target Competency
Apply brain-based learning concepts to the activity of learning.
Linked Core Abilities
Value learning
Think critically and creatively
Use science and technology
You will demonstrate your competence:
o by creating a sketch that represents the memory system, it's related processes, and what
factors impact learning.
Your performance will be successful when:
o sketch shows all three memory systems.
o sketch shows how all three memory systems are connected.
o sketch shows the five different control processes.
o sketch shows how each control process is connected to the memory system.
o sketch shows where accommodation and assimilation take place.
o sketch shows factors that impact each part of the memory system.
Learning Objectives
a. Describe how the three types of memory relate to one another.
b. Differentiate between accommodation and assimilation.
c. Explain the five processes that control the flow of information through the memory systems.
d. Recognize signs of cognitive overload.
e. Outline strategies to minimize cognitive overload
f. Explain how the practice of varying learning activities is related to different learning styles.
g. Identify options for varying learning activities.
Apply the Learning Cycle model to the activity of instruction.
You will demonstrate your competence:
o by completing a chart with examples of teaching strategies for avoiding cognitive overload
that you can use in your specific learning context.
o by illustrating the connection between different teaching strategies and the stages of the
Learning Cycle.
Your performance will be successful when:
o chart shows the selection of a strategy in each of four areas for avoiding cognitive overload.
o chart is completed with examples of strategies that can be used for a specific competency in
your program.
o chart designates in which stages of the Learning Cycle each example can be used.
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Learning Objectives
a. Explain the four stages of the Learning Cycle.
b. Explain the connection between Direct Instruction and the Learning Cycle.
c. Explain the connection between the four stages of the Learning Cycle and information flow
control processes.
Learning Activities
_____1.
_____2.
_____3.
_____4.
_____5.
_____6.
_____7.
PREVIEW the learning plan for Brain-based learning.
VIEW the presentation on learning. FOLLOW ALONG with the text in your manual under tab 6.
COMPLETE Practice Handout 6.1 on recognizing different types of memory. DISCUSS the
results with the larger group.
COMPLETE Practice Handout 6.2 on identifying control processes. DISCUSS results with the
larger group.
COMPLETE Practice Handout 6.3 on comparing learning plans for distributed practice.
DISCUSS results with the larger group.
PARTICIPATE with the larger group in an analysis of a learning plan for the "Build a fire"
competency. REFER to Practice Handout 6.4.
COLLABORATE with a partner to COMPLETE Practice Handout 6.5 on classifying learning
activities according to the stages of the Learning Cycle.
Assessment Activities
_____1.
_____2.
CREATE a sketch that represents the memory system, its control processes, and the factors
that influence them. Use Assessment Sheet 6.1.
COMPLETE the chart shown on Assessment Sheet 6.2.
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A Few Ideas About Learning
This section deals with the topic of learning—how people learn best, what
happens when they become overwhelmed, ideas about designing your instruction to
avoid overload, and how to help students with a variety of learning styles. This
information is critical to consider before you tackle designing the learning activities that
will allow them to master your learning objectives and course competencies.
Teaching vs. learning: there is a difference!
Teaching is the development of instruction. Learning is the acquisition of
knowledge, skills, and attitudes. Ask this question—why does your school exist? To
deliver instruction? Or to facilitate learning? The answer to that question will tell you
quite a bit about your approach to the enterprise of education.
When you move into designing your learning activities, you will first be
confronted with two questions—what instructional materials will you use, and what
instructional strategies will you employ? On one hand you have materials, on the other
hand you have methodology. The decisions you make about these two things will affect
how well your students are able to learn, and how they feel about their educational
experience.
There is debate about which of these decisions should be made first. Some
say you should decide the best methodology for the learning you are trying to facilitate,
and choose instructional materials that fit with that methodology. However, practical
considerations sometimes dictate that you don’t have a lot of choice in your instructional
materials, and there are only so many things you can do with what you’ve got, so you
start with the materials rather than the methodology and make the best of it. So, either
direction of decision-making is appropriate, according to your specific set of
circumstances. The key is to make sure you’ve matched what you’ve got with what your
learners’ needs are. To do that, an understanding of how learning occurs is necessary.
Making Sense of the World
Jean Piaget, the famed French psychologist, gave the discipline of
developmental psychology a framework for understanding how cognitive ability develops
as a child grows from an infant to a young adult. One of the concepts Piaget formulated
was that of assimilation versus accommodation. From birth, people formulate
concepts in their mind about how and why things are the way they are. These concepts
are referred to as “schema” and are basic knowledge structures that allow us to make
sense of the world around us.
A child may see a robin, and ask questions about what it is. His parent
says it’s this thing called a robin, it’s a bird, and explains all about what a bird is. The
child notices that the robin can move through the air without support (fly). So the child
builds a schema in his head that is called “bird” and it includes robins and the knowledge
that one thing robins do is fly through the air without support.
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The child’s yard is filled with robins and he watches them pulling up worms
and flying around all the time. One day he sees this new “thing” pulling up worms in the
yard. This doesn’t look like a robin, so he is not sure what it is. Then suddenly it takes
off into the sky and the light bulb goes on in the child’s mind—it’s a bird! He has just
assimilated this new information about birds into his existing schema called bird. He now
knows that there are different types of birds. He later finds out that this one is called a
blue jay.
Later on, the child sees an airplane for the first time flying overhead. He
exclaims, “Look, it’s a bird! What kind of bird is that?” He knows that things that fly
through the air are called birds and that there are different types of birds. So naturally, he
thinks this is a bird and is ready to assimilate this new information about what kind of bird
this might be into his existing schema called “bird.” But he is surprise when his parent
says, “No, that’s not a bird, that’s an airplane!”
What?? An airplane? What’s an airplane? And so his parent tells him all
about airplanes, and how they are machines, that they are not alive, but they are able to
fly like a bird, but only much higher and much farther because they have engines, and
that humans make them, and humans ride on them. The child learns all about airplanes.
He builds a new schema called “airplane” and knows now that not everything that flies
through the air without support is a bird. He has accommodated this new discrepant
information by building a new schema.
Learning makes use of both of these processes, accommodation and
assimilation. When new information is presented to us, in order for us to make sense of
it, we look for existing understandings in our mind—frameworks for understanding and
remembering the information. If we do not have an existing framework for making sense
of information, we construct new ones. Think of these frameworks as houses with many
rooms that are filled with previously learned information. And what do you think these
rooms represent? Memory.
Different Types of Memory
There are three types of memory used for information sorting, storing, and
retrieval—sensory memory, working memory (short-term), and long-term memory.
Sensory memory is the first room in the house that the information enters—
it’s like the foyer of a home, only bigger. A lot of information can come in all at once. It
doesn’t stay there very long though, just like guests in your home wouldn’t hang around
in the foyer. The brain decides what information is important to attend to and sends that
information on to working memory. The rest is deleted.
Working memory is like the living room of the house. This is where all the
information that is being processed comes in, takes a seat, and waits for the host to pay
some attention to it. Just as only so many people can fit in most people’s living rooms
(there’s room for six to sit comfortably in my living room…) only so much information can
be handled in working memory. Five to nine chunks of information is the usual capacity,
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although recent research suggests it might be more like three to seven chunks. This is
why phone numbers are seven digits.
There is a limit to how much information can be processed in working
memory at any one time. If you have students who can only process three points of
information at a time, then you must think very carefully about which three points of
information you want to present. This is what “chunking” is about—putting together
separate pieces of information to form a coherent “chunk” or unit of information to be sent
on to long-term memory.
Just as the host in a home can only pay attention to one or two guests at a
time, working memory must prioritize the information it focuses on too. Some information
is placed in the background, to be dealt with later, while other information is more urgent
and gets a higher priority. Sometimes, information takes turns at processing, just as a
good host makes sure all the guests in the home are receiving adequate attention over
time.
Long-term memory is where information goes to be stored. This would be
like the attic in a home. Things you want to keep, things that are meaningful, but that you
don’t use every day, those things are stored in the attic. Likewise, information that you
will need at some point in the future, information you don’t use very often, information that
has been rehearsed so much it has become permanent, or information that is important
to support critical functioning is stored in long-term memory.
When you store things in the attic, you put them in containers that are
marked with different names to identify the contents of the container. There are three
containers in long-term memory that are named for the type of information that is stored
in each. One is called “declarative,” one is “procedural,” and the other is “imagery.”
Declarative memory holds all the information that is about things (facts,
concepts, etc.). Procedural memory holds information about processes, or information
about how to do things. Imagery holds mental pictures. When any of these types of
information is needed, it is brought back into working memory so it can be used,
manipulated, or modified.
There are many theories of instructional practice out there that talk about
the art of helping students move information from working memory to long-term memory.
Research has shown that two of the most effective methods for accomplishing this are
elaboration and direct instruction.
Elaboration is a technique that is probably very familiar to you. It involves a
variety of strategies for helping a person to remember information, like creating a mental
picture, connecting the things to be remembered to locations in the environment, or to
words that rhyme, or creating a rhyming phrase about the information, or making a
sentence out of the first letter of each word in the sequence of information to be
remembered.
Direct instruction is a method that will be discussed later when we return to
the subject of designing learning activities.
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Five Main Control Processes
Information moves through the memory systems according to controllers—
like gatemen on a toll road that tell the flow of traffic where and when they can go.
Control processes tell information where to go in the memory system. There are five
main control processes that are of interest to our efforts in instructional design.
1.
Attention: this process governs what information is paid attention to, and
what is ignored.
 You’ve heard the phrase “selective attention,” which refers to our ability to
select out relevant information from a barrage of sensory information. This is
the controller that works with sensory memory.

Effective instruction will activate this controller and “grab” students’ attention
at the beginning of a lesson so they are drawn into the educational
experience.
2.
Encoding: this process is at work when information that has been active in
working memory is moved over to long-term memory. The information is
“encoded” for future retrieval. Learning activities should be designed to
accomplish this.
3.
Rehearsal: Effective instruction gives students the opportunity to rehearse
what they are learning. Rehearsal is necessary to activate encoding. There are
two types of rehearsal: maintenance rehearsal, and elaborative rehearsal.
 Maintenance rehearsal “maintains” information in working memory so the
student can repeat their interaction with it over and over and over again until it
becomes permanent. This is called “remember-level” learning. Think about
your experience learning mathematics, where you had to work problem after
problem after problem because “practice makes perfect!”
 Elaborative rehearsal is much more efficient because it causes the student to
make connections between new information and familiar knowledge
structures. When you connect material to be learned with a student’s
personal experience, it is much easier for them to remember. This is called
“use-level” learning.
 Also of note is research that shows rehearsal is more effective when the
student is given a break between practices. Rather than practicing something
over and over and over, when practice is altered with other activities or inputs
of information, encoding happens more quickly and more efficiently.
4.
Retrieval: this process governs the transfer of information from long-term
memory back to working memory.
5.
Meta-cognition: this process represents the students’ ability to think about
their own thinking process. This allows a student to reflect on the learning
process, evaluate their progress feedback that you provide, set goals, and adjust
study strategies.
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Cognitive Overload
How many times have you been in a learning situation where you were very
interested in learning what was to be presented, but the information was coming at you
so fast you quickly got lost? Pretty soon, nothing made sense anymore, it all started to
sound like gibberish, and eventually you just tuned out? We’ve all been there. That
experience is known as “cognitive overload.”
Nothing is really learned until it is encoded in long-term memory. The
working memory has a lot of processing power, but it is fragile and can easily become
overwhelmed. It can’t handle a large volume of information, and it can’t process
information without adequate time for rehearsal.
There are a variety of strategies you can use to help your students keep pace with the
presentation of information and avoid the overload syndrome.
1.
Build strength into your learning activities:



2.
Visual aids that the students create for themselves are an example of a
very effective learning activity that supports rehearsal and encoding.
Learning activities that free up the processing power of working memory to
tackle higher level problems are most effective. Think of working memory
like the processor on your computer. When you’re running too many
programs in the background, like virus software, the computer’s processor
is too busy and has nothing left to devote to running the programs you’re
interested in using.
Give students practice at tasks that use the information in ways that will
allow them to come back to it as reference later on.
Tell students what they’re going to do and why: This is another strategy
for freeing up processing power in working memory to devote to the encoding of
information.


Instead of leaving your student to try and figure out what the purpose of a
particular activity is, or what value it might have, or why it’s relevant to the
instructional topic, just tell them! Then they will not be focused on those
questions and be free to focus on interacting with the content in a
productive way.
Give them the supporting information for a process or performance at the
beginning of a learning experience and they will be better able to focus on
the information that really matters.
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Use the “chunking” strategy for presenting information:
3.

4.
The framework you’ve begun building with competencies and learning
objectives is already chunking your information to some extent. Continue to
look for ways to break up the instructional material into manageable units,
with ideally three to five items in each chunk.
Give ample opportunities for practice:



5.
Don’t give a whole truck-load of information to students without giving them
time to stop after each small chunk and engage in a variety of ways to
practice using the information.
Whenever possible use practice strategies (rehearsal) of the elaborative
type.
Providing feedback on those practice episodes also strengthens the
encoding process.
Give frequent rest breaks:

People need to move and switch their focus every 50 minutes or so in order
for working memory to remain clear. Getting up and moving around,
drinking water, or attending to something completely different are all ways
of giving the working memory a rest.
Learning Styles
The traditional method of teaching goes something like this: teacher
lectures, students read a text, teacher lectures some more, teacher gives a quiz, students
read more in the text, more lecture, students take a midterm exam and a final. This is
often referred to as “covering the subject matter.” Covering subject matter is telling,
not teaching.
Students come to the learning environment with a variety of learning styles,
and a variety of “intelligences.” Some students have an aptitude or “intelligence” for
graphical representations, some for audio or musicality, still others are kinesthetically
adept. These varying strengths and learning styles represent a challenge for the teacher
who is trapped in the traditional mode of lecture, read, then test. Students who have
various other strong intelligences are not hard-wired to do well in the traditional model.
They need a learning environment that offers abundant opportunities to exercise their
strengths and utilize their dominant intelligences to interact with the instructional material.
When this environment can be provided, encoding will happen more quickly and more
efficiently.
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Variety is the key to engaging these students. You can vary your
methodologies by using strategies such as:















demonstrations,
simulations,
role-play,
case study analyses,
investigations,
guided practice,
projects,
feedback,
memory aids,
graphic organizers,
information-seeking,
information-receiving,
group discussion,
teacher-directed reading,
student-directed
learning,…
…and the list goes on.
You can vary the learning environment by holding “class” in places other than the
classroom, such as




a lab,
a community center,
a job site,
etc.
Vary the context also by requiring interpersonal contact, such as:





working in pairs,
small groups,
whole class groups,
business partners,
etc.
Vary the material you use by incorporating:





print,
audio,
graphical,
video media,




guest speakers,
panel presentations,
computer programs,
satellite conferencing.
There are many ways to vary learning activities so that you are addressing all the
different intelligences:




verbal,
logical / mathematical,
visual / spatial,
musical / rhythmic,



interpersonal,
intrapersonal,
kinesthetic.
If you don’t know what all these intelligences are like, look them up!
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Direct Instruction and the Learning Cycle
The WIDS model uses a simple instructional model called the Learning
Cycle. This model correlates quite well with a transactional model of Direct Instruction.
Transactional means it requires students and teachers to interact with each other and the
content over the course of the instructional experience.
The Direct Instruction model has several sequenced components:
1.

2.
Overview—review:
helps the students to take a look at what they already know about the topic,
or what prerequisite skills they already possess.

Overview—what and why:
explain to student what they will be doing and why it is important.

Explanation:
explain the information to be learned and give substantive content.

Probe and respond:
ask for student questions and probe for their level of understanding.

Guided practice:
help the students practice application of the content.

Independent practice:
students work on their own to practice application of the content.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

8.


9.

Periodic review:
give students an opportunity to incorporate previously learned skills into
their practice with the new content.
Cues & prompts / corrective feedback:
monitor student progress throughout the learning activities and provide
feedback on how students are doing;
offer correction where needed.
Summative & formative assessments:
students complete learning activities and demonstrate proficiency in
application of content at the end of the unit or lesson.
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Because learning is an iterative process, it is represented as a cycle. The
WIDS Learning Cycle is made up of four stages that each learning experience should
move through.
Those four stages are:
1.

Motivation:
get the students excited about the content

Comprehension:
give the students material to digest
2.
3.

4.

Practice:
give the students opportunities to practice with what they received in the
comprehension stage
Application:
assess their proficiency on the competency
These four stages correspond with the steps in the Direct Instruction model.

The Motivation stage encompasses the overview—review step of Direct
Instruction.

The Comprehension stage is the overview—what & why, and the
explanation steps in Direct Instruction.

The Practice stage of the Learning Cycle includes the probe & respond,
guided practice, independent practice, periodic review, and cues & prompts
/ corrective feedback steps of the Direct Instruction model.

The Application stage of the Learning Cycle is analogous to the summative
assessment in Direct Instruction, or any other model for that matter.
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Each of the four stages of the learning cycle also facilitates one of the 5
different control processes we talked about earlier. Here’s a detailed look at what should
be happening at each stage of the Learning Cycle.
1.
Motivation stage:
At this stage you want to engage students so that the attention process is
activated. Your students need to be inspired to actively engage in learning the
content, and ultimately they must be able to answer for themselves the question:
Why do I need or want to learn this material? It is not motivation enough to say to
them, “Well, it’s part of the curriculum,” or “Someday you’ll thank me.” No, they
need to be guided through a process that allows them to find a reason within their
own experience that makes learning the material a desirable thing to do. So, your
job as the teacher is to provide an opportunity that makes a connection between
the content and a concrete experience, and then to give them an opportunity to
reflect on that experience from their own perspective.
Many of you were motivated to take this training because you’ve had people come
to work for you who were not trained very well, if at all, and it is frustrating. You
know you could do a better job of teaching new artists your craft. That is your
concrete experience, and you’ve reflected with yourself and with others in the
industry on what a pain it is that education offerings for your industry are not of a
higher quality. So you are motivated, you are inspired, you are primed to learn this
material so you can do the job you wish others would do too. You’re ready! Bring
it on!
2.
Comprehension stage:
During this stage you begin to deliver the content. Students are now
processing information in their working memory and making a connection between
why they want to learn the material and an understanding of what they will be
learning. Going over the competencies they will need to demonstrate, and the
learning objectives that help them get there, are the first things you should do.
Give the students the road map.
The most critical thing to remember here is that you are a facilitator of
learning. You will have planned out learning activities that are designed to assist
the student in being an active participant in their own learning and that give them
opportunities to interact with the material and construct their own understandings.
Resist the temptation to do too much lecturing, assign too much reading of the
textbook, or otherwise pull the focus away from the “what” that the student is doing
and put it on the “what” that you are doing.
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3.
Practice stage:
The goal of this stage is to facilitate encoding, so that means you need to
have the students engaged in elaborative rehearsal, rather than maintenance
rehearsal. Remember that maintenance rehearsal only keeps the information
alive in working memory but does not help transfer it over to long-term memory.
Just as in the Direct Instruction model, guided practice with lots of examples
should be provided for the students at first. Help them see what their practice
should look like and then give them lots of feedback on how they are doing.
Slowly transition them to independent practice, where they are challenged to
extend their ability to use the information in new ways.
In planning your instructional time, you will want to swing back and forth
between the comprehension stage and the practice stage. Don’t overwhelm your
students with all the information at once. Remember the principle of chunking—
give them three to five units of information at time, with activities for practice that
allow them to encode that information and move it out of working memory into
long-term memory so that working memory is clear and ready to receive the next
chunk of information.
4.
Application stage:
This is point where you give the student the opportunity to demonstrate
their proficiency on the competency. Here is where they will bring together all that
they have learned and practiced to demonstrate their application of the material in
a real-world context. They will be retrieving information about how to do a task out
of long-term memory, along with all the supporting knowledge they’ve encoded,
and getting it into working memory where they will use it to demonstrate that they
can perform the competency. Your job here is to be sure you’ve designed a
performance assessment that actually measures the competency, and not any of
the learning activities they completed.
A Word About Meta-cognition
All throughout the instructional experience, you are facilitating metacognition through the learning activities you design. Students need time to reflect
on their learning experience and incorporate that reflection back into their
activities. By building in time for reflection as well as time for feedback, other than
the performance assessments, you are helping students think about their
thinking—which ultimately improves the quality of that thinking over time.
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Practice Handout 6.1
Directions: Read the following list of activities. For each one, determine if the
memory system used is sensory (S), working (W), or long-term memory (LT).
Enter the appropriate initials after each activity.
_____1. How to tie knots to anchor a boat.
_____2. Calculating interest.
_____3. Names and characteristics of common weeds.
_____4. Hearing a voice.
_____5. Differentiating assessment strategies from criterion.
_____6. Seeing and smelling a fire.
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Practice Handout 6.2
Directions: Determine which processes are illustrated in the events described
below: attention (A), encoding (E), rehearsal (RH), retrieval (RT), or metacognition.
______ 1. Sandra stops the music she has played while students work in small
groups to indicate that it is time to begin a new activity.
______2. Sam repeats the steps for investigating a domestic disturbance, listing
them in order over and over.
______3. Stephen highlights particularly relevant points in the prepared training
materials for a workshop on commercial lending.
______4. Allen review the performance standards for completing a supply and
demand analysis to determine which criteria he can meet and which
need further study or practice before he can be confident of
successfully completing the performance assessment.
______5. When demonstrating CPR on the final test, Liz mentally pictures the
graphic chart depicting the steps and the order in which they are
performed.
______6. Charlotte has her police science students analyze a domestic
disturbance case study and then role play how they would handle the
initial investigation.
______7. As Ellen prepares to perform her first on-the-job performance appraisal,
she thinks through the principles for giving employee feedback.
______8. When studying medical terminology, Jane uses graphic mental images
to help her memorize new terms.
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Practice Handout 6.3
Directions: Determine which learning plan provides more effective distribution
of practice—LP 1 or LP 2? Be prepared to justify your conclusion.
Learning Plan 1
Learning Activities:
1.
Attend a
lecture on the writing process.
2.
Complete
assigned textbook reading.
3.
Review
the handouts on the writing process.
4.
Review
sample essays
5.
Develop
a five-paragraph essay on a current event topic.
Learning Plan 2
Learning Activities:
1.
Discuss
the steps you currently use when you write with a small group.
2.
Listen to
an overview of the writing process.
3.
Compare
the writing process to the steps you listed in your small group discussion.
4.
Listen to
a description of Step One—Brainstorming.
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5.
Work
with a small peer group to practice brainstorming ideas for a five
paragraph essay on a current topic.
6.
Obtain
feedback on your work from your instructor.
7.
Listen to
a description of Step Two—Organizing.
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Practice Handout 6.4
Directions: Read the scenario below for the “Build a campfire” competency from
the Tent Camping Basics course at the School of Outdoor Living. This scenario
dooms the students to cognitive overload. Formulate some recommendations to
contribute to the group discussion on how to improve this course using the
strategies you’ve learned. Refer to the chart provided in Assessment 6.2 for
hints about avoiding cognitive overload.
Scenario:
The Tent Camping Basics course will be taught on five consecutive mornings.
Monday through Thursday, the class will meet fm 8:00 to 12:00 in a classroom.
On Friday, the class will take a field trip to a local campground to practice and
be assessed on the course’s competencies.
The instructor will address the “Build a campfire” competency on Tuesday/ he
plans to deliver a short mini-lecture while the participants take notes on
appropriate locations to build a fire and sources of fuel for a campfire. The class
will view a short video lesson on how to build fire rings and fires. The in small
groups, they will brainstorm the various uses for a campfire. The instructor is
inviting a park ranger as a guest presenter to talk about the various precautions
campers should take with campfires and what first-aid measures they should
know.
For hands-on experience, the participants will apply the knowledge they gained
on Tuesday during Friday’s field trip to actually build a campfire.
Recommendations:
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Practice Handout 6.5
Directions: Read the list of learning activities for the competency “Build a
campfire.” Label each activity according to the learning process stage it
addresses: motivation((M), comprehension (C), practice (P), application(A). Then
sequence the activities so they move the learner through the process in the
correct order.
Sequence
Stage
Learning Activity
______
______
1. REVIEW the competency, performance standards and
learning objectives to clarify the performance expectation
for this learning plan.
______
______
2. BUILD a campfire that meets the performance criteria for
this competency. Work with a small group of your peers.
______
______
3. EVALUATE three case studies, identifying how a fire
hazard code applies and where it was violated.
______
______
4. LISTEN to Ranger Rick’s presentation on campfire safety
and fire codes.
______
______
5. LISTEN to a mini-lecture on selecting appropriate campfire
fuel.
______
______
6. VIEW a demonstration explaining the purpose for and
showing how to build a fire ring.
______
______
7. VIEW a demonstration showing the steps for constructing,
starting, and tending campfires.
______
______
8. DIFFERENTIATE between appropriate and in appropriate
campfire fuel. Work with samples provided by your
instructor.
______
______
9. PARTICIPATE in a discussion in which you compare taste,
appearance, and appeal of camping foods.
______
______
10. CRITIQUE campfires build by other small groups.
______
______
11. PRACTICE building a model fire ring.
______
______
12. PRACTICE constructing models for at least two types of
campfires.
______
______
13. TASTE TEST samples of campfire food, dehydrated foods,
and foods cooked on a camp stove prepared by the
instructor, comparing their taste, appearance, and
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appeal.
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Assessment Sheet 6.1
Directions: Draw a sketch depicting the three different kinds of memory, the
control processes that direct the flow of information through the system, and
note the different factors that influence that process, such as varying learning
strategies, chunking information, etc. Note on the sketch where assimilation
and accommodation take place. Check your sketch against the scoring guide
provided here.
Sketch…
Yes
No
1. shows all three memory systems.
2. shows how all three memory systems are connected.
3. shows the five different control processes.
4. shows how each control process is connected to the memory
system.
5. shows where accommodation and assimilation take place.
6. shows factors that impact each part of the memory system.
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Assessment Sheet 6.2
Directions: Using a competency that you’ve written, plan for connecting your
teaching to the learning. Check the strategy you would like to use in the left
hand column. In the right hand column provide at least one specific example of
how you could use the strategy you checked. Also indicate which stages of the
Learning Cycle your example could be used in. Refer to the example chart
presented first. Check your work with the scoring guide.
Example Chart:
Competency: Arrange text in a word-processing program.
Strategies for Avoiding Cognitive
Overload
Example
Stage of
Learning
Cycle
Provide strong instructional
materials
Job / Task Aids
References-based training
 Complete handouts
Provide a short-cut chart.
C
Continually refer students to software
documentation during instruction.
C
Sequence Supporting Knowledge
First
 Preview learning plans and
competencies first
 Start with easier KSAs first; build to
more difficult
Present and practice supporting
knowledge prior to major competency
task
Provide opportunities to practice each
skill before moving on to the next
demonstration.
P
Chunk Instruction
Create short lesson plans
 Use structured writing in handouts to
help consolidate knowledge
Divide information between 5 minilessons:
1.
Navigating
2.
Editing
3.
Justifying
4.
Formatting
5.
Relocating
Provide Distributed Practice
 Use maintenance rehearsal to
automate skills when job aids are
inappropriate
Incorporate frequent elaborative
practice
Provide frequent feedback on student
progress and performance
Give feedback on student
performance after every skills practice
activity.
C&P
P
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Competency:
Strategies for Avoiding Cognitive
Overload
Example
Stage of
Learning
Cycle
Provide strong instructional materials
 Job / Task Aids
 References-based training
 Complete handouts
Sequence Supporting Knowledge First
 Preview learning plans and
competencies first
 Start with easier KSAs first; build to
more difficult
 Present and practice supporting
knowledge prior to major competency task
Chunk Instruction
 Create short lesson plans
 Use structured writing in handouts to
help consolidate knowledge
Provide Distributed Practice
 Use maintenance rehearsal to
automate skills when job aids are
inappropriate
 Incorporate frequent elaborative
practice
 Provide frequent feedback on student
progress and performance
Scoring Guide
Chart…
Yes
No
1. shows the selection of a strategy in each of four areas for avoiding
cognitive overload.
2. is completed with examples of strategies that can be used for a
specific competency in your program.
3. designates in which stages of the Learning Cycle each example can
be used.
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