Cognitive load

So tonight in class we talked about cognitive load and I realized that this is so very important for teachers to understand! This is 100% why I wasn't good at math in high school. My teachers would throw so much information at me at one time and I wasn't successful but then when I had one on one help that went at my pace, I did fine.

I was always given too much information to process at one time. I try to make sure I teach in chunks, especially when teaching kids how to read and count music. I try to think very carefully about how much information to teach in one lesson, especially when teaching a younger student. Too much information at one time can overload a student. I also liked the ideas of the color coding of information and having some ideas to remember like, "supplementary" starts with an "S" and means "straight." I use things like that all the time when teaching music as well as mnemonic devices such as "every good boy does fine" for the lines of the treble clef and sayings like, "I don't particular like modes after lunch" for the order of the modes, or "funny clowns give diseases after eating bugs" for the order of the sharps.