Teaching for Retention: How to Enhance Student Memory and Focus

The Department of English (College) organised an all-faculty seminar on “Teaching for Retention: How to Enhance Student Memory and Focus” on May 15, 2025. The resource person, Ms Nabila Naphtali Head of Psychology Department adeptly discussed cognitive strategies for enhancing learning and memory in the BISE context. The topics covered included methods for improving student attentiveness, understanding how students store information through the information processing model, techniques for better memory retrieval and retention (such as low-stakes quizzes, brain dumps, elaborative recall, elaboration, dual coding, and spaced repetition), the importance of attention in the classroom, the nature, limitations and effectiveness of rote learning, the process of memory retrieval, the basic stages of memory (encoding, storage, retrieval), reasons for forgetting information, and strategies teachers can use to support better encoding. The seminar incorporated   interactive elements to keep the audience engaged. At the end of the seminar, Head of English Department Ms Eram George presented a token of thanks to the presenter and appreciated the English Department Faculty Development Committee for their efforts with special thanks to Ms Huma Hassan the convenor.