Applying It All to the Classroom

The four topics discussed: Schemas, scripts, long-term memory and semantic memory have many applications to teachers and education.
When children are coming into my kindergarten class, I always assume that everyone knows nothing about being at school. Of course some have had pre-kindergarten, but none of them know what to expect. They have no schema for what kindergarten is suppose to be. We have to develop a script for them to follow for the day. Routine is very important at a young age. They have to understand what is going on and what is expected. They are developing their semantic memory and schemas of events each day. We learn how to behave in different situations and we also gain knowledge about the world through our lessons. In the end we hope they store this information in long-term memory for later use. That is the dream of every teacher though, that a student will gain the knowledge they need to succeed and store that knowledge to be successful throughout their life.