Good morning, happy Easter to all! I would like to ask how do you create a lesson plan if you were to teach memory skills to students? I need a side hustle to get by and so far I have understood the memory techniques but I am not a teacher. Thank you for your help.
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Master your memory for at least one large, mnemonic-assisted learning goal and you’ll know the best possible lesson plan like the back of your Guidonian hand.
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Thank you very much sir!
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Я тренер по развитию памяти .
Напиши план занятий. Это обязательно. проставь время необходимое для выполнения задания . И ты сам поймёшь сколько и куда.
@docraymund, I have been a teacher and have developed around 35 semester-based or intensive week-long courses with lesson plans, lectures, and exercises. I thought doing some memory exercises for some friends would be fun. I was wrong. It was possibly the most difficult task I have done. Computer programming books (
O’Reilly) and all the textbooks that I’ve used in my colleges and my trade school are well organized and often all it took was finding the right book. Mnemonic books are not in textbook style. They are more like a large FAQ. There are no modern books that I’ve found take the approach of a textbook for classroom training. (I plan on changing that.)
I ended doing a grueling systematic analysis just so I could write a lesson plan and exercises. The curriculum extended to about ten modules but I was able to completely write out the first two. Then I offered the modules to anyone who wanted to take them through me free here on the forum
I would like to add a few steps to the course design and development process that @metivier started. I agree that you need a large project to master to understand the system. I picked the Bible and after five years I think it’s doing well. I might release the fully rewritten New Testament in visual mnemonic terms eventually.
It is follows the similar style that Jerry Lucas, co-author with Harry Lorayne of the The Memory Book, developed in his Remember the Word, but made it extremely difficult by ignoring some cardinal mnemonic principles. I also added stories to reinforce the system and simplify his mostly bizarre imagery. He rewrote the Gospels but I’m a little the way through John and will keep going I hope.
The three steps I would add for course design and development are that after you understand the system, you have to be an outside observer who assumes nothing and listen and watch your brain for the process as you walk through the progression of the material. You have to be the student and the teacher at the same time. Then you have to document that process that you heard with clear structured technical writing.
Also, you have to illustrate your process with examples and exercises that show each step of the way, sometimes in multiple ways so that the student doesn’t get the idea that there’s only one way to do it. The process of exercises is
- Show them a fully completed exercise (a walk-through) from start to finish if possible as an example to use if they get stuck. My computer students copied my code as I wrote it.
- Give them a very simple exercise to complete in multiple ways for one concept. I walked the classroom to help stuck students or correct mistakes.
- Expand the exercise to include more concepts, repeating the basic concepts.
- Build on the exercises to finally get to where it becomes of practical use.
- Offer more difficult exercises for those students who become bored doing the simpler exercises.
The end result of the beta exercises after many months was that I took several high-quality students through the first module until they ran out of steam. (I do require my students to work and I’m sure it was more than they expected.) I was very pleased with the results they gave and the feedback I got. They would have gotten an A grade if this were a real college. I’d offer you the lesson plan but it would be useless since it’s dependent on all the analysis of the material from my perspective with SEA-IT and psychological concepts. You can find the outline in the linked post above.
Finally, you must get some teacher experience under your belt first before you think about developing a course so that you know what works and doesn’t work. Offer yourself as an understudy to a polished instructor first and don’t go it alone. The college system uses teaching assistants to learn the trade. My technical school had aspiring instructors to sit one class for two to three times with an experienced instructor before attempting to teach it. Even then they sometimes co-taught it with that instructor taking over half the modules. They were not allowed to vary from that instructor’s material. For the first time, and the second if they requested, they always soloed while the experienced instructor watched, took notes, and gave feedback after every day of training.
I hope you got some insight to the process that it takes to get up to speed for teaching others. In my school, we were able to ramp up new instructors after three to four months and I think they matured after about one year. Good luck to you!
Doug
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Thank you, thank you! Wow that’s a lot of material to digest. May I ask an off topic question? I heard computer science students often have group projects what do you do if other group mates don’t participate or contribute? In other words they’re just in for the free grade?
@docraymund, great question. That’s taken me years to work through. One 16-week intensive boot camp I taught was just that: a big group project. And I had multiple groups for multiple projects in a college setting as well that was the most problematic.
Just remember first, that’s it’s not your duty to be their parent. You are there to provide the environment and not the pressure. Pressure will come to perform from the group members if they have learned to contribute in a group. If they haven’t learned that, you will have two learning tasks that will be happening at the same time.
It’s messy. Spats, running to you, the parent to solve their problems (don’t do that), freeloading. I had one group where only one person did the work. I told him, that’s life. Do the work, get the grade (but I considered the dynamics when assigning the grade and made sure that group projects didn’t outweigh individiual assignments where the freeloaders did poorly.)
The number one key to group performance according to the best study that I taught from Google was group participation in voicing opinions. Everyone should share equally. Make sure they understand that. That means that discussion times should be fairly equal for individuals first.
Let them self-organize and pick the team lead, types of contributions, etc. If someone doesn’t get the job done, it’s the responsibility of the team lead to do it or find the laggard some help. I assign the groups looking for variety instead of homogeneity. This is Agile thinking. If it was obvious that only one person was doing the work, I put the group on notice that this was not going to be tolerated. When the project was over and things didn’t change, I reassigned to sole worker to another group that needed help and let the rest of the non-participants just fail on the subsequent group assignments.
Make sure that you’ve done the project yourself multiple times completely in different ways. You have to know where the dragons lie before you can offer assistance. Maybe you haven’t given enough direection on a particular topic.
The size of the group should be three and no more than four. It’s impossible to wiggle out of work easily with three people it seems. Too much of a spotlight. Four people is good if there is enough work. With five or more, it requires good leadership and maturity in group participation, not something you encounter in school.
Doug
Thank you very much! I also wanted to ask what if you’re the student who works hard on the project because you’re striving to be on the honors list but your group mates are only satisfied with a passing grade?
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@docraymund, if you are getting the same grade as everyone else, talk to the teacher about how to do that. Here you are ducking the responsibility of the group dynamics which is really pointing to the person that sees the problem… you! I provided more inidividual work than group work and also included a group exercise that evaluated other group members on their participation. More participation, more points. I was partial to giving more points to students’ who showed effort even though I had strict grading rubrics I designed.
The other advice I gave initially and I think is the best, was to find out how to motivate poor performers to do better work as a leader and become that leader! The benefits are much better. Stronger team, better future assignments, learning valuable group lessons. Google it, GPT it. Info is out there:
6 Actionable Tips to Motivate Underperforming Employee
- Know their problems.
- Recognize their efforts.
- Be straightforward and empathetic.
- Carry out regular follow-ups and meetings. Over-communicate is what I say.
- Ask them questions and get clarifications.
- Allow them some personal time.
Doug
Thank you.
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