This seminar delves into the psychology and neuroscience of long-term memory formation, exploring specific classroom strategies that make learning easier and teaching more effective. The seminar begins with a review of working memory (WM), an essential cognitive capacity that combines and integrates new information with prior knowledge. After exploring the temporal and spatial limitations of WM, you will practice three key skills: identifying the academic work that overwhelms WM most quickly, recognizing WM overload in the classroom, and using research-supported strategies to avoid and solve WM problems. You will then examine the latest research into the formation of long-term memories, focusing especially on the desirable difficulties that promote encoding, consolidation, and retrieval of new material. With an emphatic focus on the practical, this seminar will offer practical strategies for lesson plans, syllabi, homework and assessment and will also emphasize the importance of individual differences among both teachers and students in creating effective classrooms.