Examples for the Book Portfolio, Part 1
(Your part 1 may be in pencil, pen, or typed. Handing in part 1 is handing in rough drafts of your finished portfolio.)
Sample of Part 1 of the Term 3 Book Portfolio
a. (first page) Information I’ll need to put on the cover of my portfolio:
My name: Cindy Reynolds
Class Period: B1
Term and year: Term 3, 2008
Title of the book: Hmm? : The Most interesting book you’ll ever read about memory
Author’s name: Diane Swanson
Genre: Nonfiction
Number of pages: 40 (This is for sample purposes only. Your portfolio book will have at least 100 pages.)
[For Part 2, I’ll design a cover page with a colored illustration, and the above information displayed in a neat, legible, and attractive format. For the finished product, the text will be typed or in blue or black pen. No text will be in pencil.]
b. (second page) Information from the book: Hmm? : The Most Interesting Book You’ll Ever Read about Memory by Diane Swanson
1. “If you stashed away 1000 new bits of info every second of your life, you’d still be using only part of your total storage space.” p. 5
2. The brain has three main sections, and the sections that are most vital to memory, according to scientists, are the cerebrum and the cerebellum. p. 7
3. “Your brain burns 25 percent of the oxygen you breathe in.” p. 9 (That is especially interesting since your brain only weights about 3 pounds out of however much you weigh.) p. 9
4. The electrical signal that accesses memory travels at up to 200 miles per hour. P. 11
5. We have two main kinds of memory: procedural or “how” memory, and declarative or “what” memory. p. 12
6. “Short term memory can temporarily store up to seven things at a time.” p. 16
7. When you practice or repeat something, you can move it into long-term memory. P. 17 When making long term memories, your brain actually grows new dendrites which provide new connections. (See page 10 to find out about dendrites.)
8. “On average, people forget about 99 bits of information out of every 100 they receive.” p. 21
9. “Perceptual filtering” means blocking out what you find unimportant or uninteresting. p. 21
10. “Unless you make an effort to recall and use what you are learning, you can lose more than half of it within 30 minutes. The rest gradually fades away.” p. 25
11. Amnesia can be caused by physical injury to the brain, by illness, and by brain tumors, and there is more than one kind of amnesia. p. 26
12. Mnemonic techniques are methods used to organize facts to make them easier to remember. p. 28
13. “Memory-improving mnemonic techniques were named after Mnemosyne (nee-MOSS-e-nee), the Greek goddess of memory, who was believed to know everything.” P. 29
14. A man known as H.M. lost his ability to form new memories after undergoing brain surgery meant to cure him of epilepsy. He could read the same magazine every day without remembering it, and forget the person he had met just a few moments before. Scientists used his case to learn more about the brain and memory. p. 6
15. “Your brain has about a trillion glial (GLEE-al) cells that supply nutrients to all your neurons and speed up their activity.” p. 10
c. (third page) Information about memory from additional sources:
1. According to a reference article in ScienceDaily, “The study of memory “has become one of the principal pillars of a new branch of science that represents a marriage between cognitive psychology and neuroscience, called cognitive neuroscience..”
2. The explanation for beginners on the website The Brain from Top to Bottom, tell us that “Information is transferred from short-term memory (also known as working memory) to long-term memory through the hippocampus, so named because its shape resembles the curved tail of a seahorse (hippocampus in Latin).”
3. Further, it explains that “When we remember new facts by repeating them or by employing various mnemonic devices, we are actually passing them through the hippocampus several times.”
4. The Brain from Top to Bottom also explains the term “inference”:
“If you know that a Porsche is a car, you know that a Porsche has brakes, even if you have not actually seen them, because you know that all cars have brakes. This highly useful form of reasoning is called inference, and it is based essentially on knowledge that we already have stored in our memories. The more knowledge we have already acquired, the more we will be able to draw inferences.”
5. “Every time you learn something,” says The Brain from Top to Bottom,” “neural circuits are altered in your brain. These circuits are composed of a number of neurons (nerve cells) that communicate with one another through special junctions called synapses.”
6. Studies reported in an article posted on Memory Loss and the Brain show that “Alcohol abuse, especially binge drinking, causes surprisingly long-lasting harm to memory and other brain functions.” The studies used lab rats bred to prefer alcohol over water.
7. According to an article on the Exploritorium website, “. . .your memory of an event is something you construct from bits and pieces: from what you saw and heard and experienced and felt at the time; from things people told you afterward; from suggestions and thoughts and implications, all filtered by your attitude, by who you are.” The authors tell about real instances of people remembering in detail things that never happened.
8. Mary K. Miller, in another article published on the Exploritorium website, says that “Regular exercise can improve some mental abilities by an average of 20–30 percent.”
9. Miller and Art Shimamura, a professor and memory expert at the University of California at Berkeley, tell about a hundred and one year old woman and her friends in their eighties who keep their memories sharp, and have formed an organization that helps other senior citizens to do the same.
10. I found out from the book The Incredible Machine that H.M. the man who lost his ability to form new memories, still had a high IQ and could “carry on an intelligent conversation” as long as it didn’t deal with anything that had happened after the surgery.
11. Another interesting fact from The Incredible Machine is this: “What we choose to store in our long-term memories is closely tied to our emotions: . . . Neutral events tend to be forgotten. We learn efficiently only when we are aroused in some way. . .”
d. (fourth page) Works Cited
Long Term Memory. (Level of Explanation: Beginner) The Brain from Top to Bottom. Retrieved January 17, 2008, from http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/d/d_07/d_07_cr/d_07_cr_tra/d_07_cr_tra.html [sponsored by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research]
Memory. ScienceDaily. Retrieved January 17, 2008, from http://www.sciencedaily.com– /releases/2003/06/030606081111.htm
Miller, Mary K. “Young in Mind.” Retrieved January 17, 2008, from
www.exploratorium.edu/exploring/exploring_memory/memory_3.html
Murphy, Pat, and Paul Doherty. “Messing with Your Mind.” Retrieved January 17, 2008, from
http://www.exploratorium.edu/memory/messingwithyourmind/index.html
National Geographic Society. The Incredible Machine. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 1986.
Pendick, Daniel. “This Is Your Brain On Booze.” Memory Loss & the Brain Winter 2007: Retrieved January 17, 2008, from http://www.memorylossonline.com/winter2007/alcohol_brain.html
