ABSTRACT
This chapter includes information based on the importance of sensory and emotional input to the physical growth of the brain. It emphasizes how information gathered through each of the five senses (vision, hearing, touch/movement, smell, and taste) is especially powerful when accompanied by emotion and novelty. Readers will find information from the early research of Ebbinghaus and von Restorff and advanced by later researchers on the serial position effect on learning and retention. Students retain more information from the start and ending of lessons than during the intervening intermediate time. Sets, the beginning of lessons, and closures, the ending of lessons, set the perimeters of a primacy-recency effect in lesson planning. Retention of learning is made stronger by the inclusion of novelty and emotion in lessons. At the end of the chapter are 20 teacher-tested ways to engage students in novel sensory experiences the moment they enter the classroom and 10 ways to plan the closure of a lesson. The authors describe ways to gather, create, and store collections of sensory materials that will not break the budget. The online references at the end of this chapter are accompanied by QR codes.
