Lessons · Teaching · how much a person can hold at once
What a person can hold at once
Working memory is the small desk where thinking happens and it holds only about four new things at a time; long-term memory is the warehouse behind it, and that is effectively unlimited.
Hone is a place to practise a career, one idea a day. This is one of its lessons, written out in full and free to read without an account.
What it is for
The Tuesday the lesson died at minute nine. You had given the aim, the three rules, the worked example and the page number, and then asked them to start, and half the room put their hands up to ask what they were doing. Nothing was wrong with the children and nothing was wrong with you. You had put six new things on a desk that holds four.
How to think about it
Before you teach anything, count the new things in it. A new word, a new step, a new symbol, a new rule: each of those is one. Then ask what they can already do without thinking, because anything automatic costs the desk nothing.
Worked example
New today: the word denominator, the word numerator, the common-denominator rule, the two-step methodFour new things, written out before the lesson is planned. Counting them is the whole technique.
Already automatic: adding to 20, reading the plus signAutomatic things cost working memory nothing at all. They are not on the desk.
Desk holds about 4. Today's lesson puts 4 on it.Full. Anything else added today gets dropped, and the dropping looks exactly like not listening.
Move numerator and denominator to yesterdayTwo words taught and practised the day before are no longer new. Today's desk now carries two things instead of four.
Your turn
A lesson introduces three new terms, one new rule and one new symbol. Write the line that totals the new things on the desk.
3 + 1 + 1 = new things
Solve one, graded on the server
The trap
Counting the things you say rather than the things that are new to them. A step you have done ten thousand times is one thing to you and four things to a person meeting it today.