Infusing lessons with data: Mini-lesson on Short-Term Memory/Clustering
The following lesson could be incorporated in either and Intro to Psychology class or Cognitive Psychology class where the topic revolves around memory.
Students will be shown a table of 25 random words for two minutes. The words will then disappear, and students will be asked to write down as many words as they can remember. They will be given two minutes to do this. Students will then be asked how many words they remembered. Teacher will fill out Excel sheet or tally on board.
Next, students will be shown a second, similar table of words for two minutes. For this table, the words are not random, they can all be divided into one of five categories. After the two minutes have passed, the words will disappear, and students will be asked to write down as many words as they can remember. Again, they will be given two minutes to do this. Students will then be asked how many words they remembered. Teacher will fill out sheet/tally on board. Difference between Time 1 and Time 2 will be discussed, which will segment into discussion on clustering. The teacher can use attached Excel sheet to tally student’s answers and create the table graph included (current numbers are simply dummy numbers to show the look of the graph).
