I know the conference happened last week but I'm just finishing one of the presentations and I really enjoyed it. I'm still working on how to get this idea to apply to my classes but it's coming. The presenter's presentation was titled: "Beyond drill and practice, developing automatic recall of math facts for all children." His main idea was to show how automatic recall is the basis for good math skills. I loved it. The way he presented was interesting and useful and convincing. As a parent I see the application immediately but since I don't teach math I'm trying to figure out how to use this in class. I do ask my students to memorize lots of scripture verses and so I think the basis is the same, being able to automatically recall the verses so they can free up their working memory for learning more concepts, I just don't know how to pull it off yet. Perhaps I need to have them memorize just a small part of the verse, such as key words and ideas, and then use those as the triggers to bring the whole verse out of stored memory. I'll work on this and let you know.

M