Zeigarnik effect
Paragraph Six: Flashes, Specks and Connections
Yes, I’m still hung up on the Zeigarnik effect. I feel its weight on my shoulders every day in the schools. What is our work coming to? A flash of light that fades almost before it’s lit in the short term memory of the students, or the building of a pattern that will serve the students for a lifetime?
Walt Whitman has a line in his poem “There Was a Child Went Forth” (also cited in my third blog post) that reads...
Paragraph Six - Second Grade Empiricism and the Zeigarnik Effect
I was able to get back to Tom McMurrer’s second grade classroom this week, at last, and catch up on progress there. They did it! The little folks wrote letters to each other and took a walk to the post office. Because it was the chaotic holiday season, the workers couldn’t show them around, but the young correspondents did post their letters, and not a single hand lost to those alligator-jawed post boxes. Even better, as foretold, the letters arrived at their homes, full of...
