Utilizing ‘Priming’ theory To Support Teaching Process

What is “Priming”?

Priming is one of the unconscious ways our memories work when we're identifying words, objects, tasks, or situations at hand. Priming is part of our implicit memory, in which the things we consider when we try to recall past experiences connected to a certain association, such as a joyful or sad time, an important date or person. How did you celebrate turning 20? What clothing did you have on at the time?

According to the book "The Learning Brain" (Polk, 2018), priming occurs when “previous exposure to a stimulus facilitates your processing of similar stimuli in the future”. In education, the concept of priming is used to stimulate the learner's hardwired need to know and make it a satisfying experience so their brains recognize the value of energy spent learning. There are several different reasons for this effective strategy:

• It reduces anxiety for students who need predictability.
• It often results in higher achievement in learning.
• It can be done quickly and with little preparation.
• It helps students transition from one activity to another.

Particularly, this technique involves introducing new material before the lesson occurs. It is a strategy to get students ready for a task they typically struggle with. This can be done individually with a student or as a class, and frequently takes place the day or morning before the lesson. Sometimes, teachers prime students right before their lesson, like when they hand out some worksheets with funny activities related to a book they are about to read.

 

How is Priming effective in learning?

Judy Willis (2014) introduced some of the methods used in priming. Among the simplest of these strategies is promoting curiosity and the learners' natural tendency to make predictions by advertising the content the same way that a marketing company might. Considering the following scenarios:

• Scenario 1: “Everyone, take a seat. Today we will be learning about landforms.” (Teacher walks to the front of the room, and gathers her materials) some children show interest, most are not, and some are even distracted during the few moments of unstructured time she is preparing to speak.
• Scenario 2: Children walk into their environment greeted with model landforms, posters, worksheets, and modeling clay to manipulate into landforms. The children explore these items and begin to ask questions about them. There has been zero instruction at this point from the teacher.

It is evident that scenario 2 has triggered engagement despite no type of authoritative directions because this promotes advanced interest, and the resulting questions increase the student's curiosity, opening the brain's attentive intake filter. In short, it preps their minds to engage. They went from having to "listen" to wanting to "learn".

When learners want to know the required information to create solutions to problems that interest them or to create products that they care about, the brain applies the effort to learn what is required to achieve desirable goals. Regardless of how interested students are in the subject at hand, priming unconsciously generates inquiries that spark curiosity since people naturally want to hear how their predictions turned out.

Additionally, teachers must be mindful of the things they can do to encourage the learning and unlearning processes. To support this process, we provide a great number of worksheets that include various sorts of exercises as well as activities to appeal to students’ interests on Worksheetzone.org. Explore now!