Teaching and Learning News

Mrs Angela Simpson

In last week’s article, I spoke of the importance of creating and sticking to, a routine in order to study successfully.  This is one habit that all successful learners have in common.  This week’s article explores other habits of successful learners.

  1. Retrieval. Successful learners practice retrieval; recalling facts, concepts and skills from memory.  This proves much more effective than rereading notes for example.  A simple technique you can encourage from a young age is to ask your son to write study notes from memory each day.  Using a separate notebook, ask him to write down everything he remembers from his six classes that day.  What are the things that he thinks he will need to remember for an assessment?  Once he has done this from memory, he can then go over his notes to fill the gaps.  On the weekend, ask him to do this for the whole week.  Not only is he gaining an understanding of how well he is focussing in class, but he is building his revision notes for exam time.
  2. Spaced vs Mass Practice.  Practice is most effective when distributed over time rather than when the sessions are close to each other.  So…cramming doesn’t work.  Spending two hours a week over 5 weeks will result in much better retention than a whole day of studying before an exam.  The mental processes of consolidation increase the neuropathways for durable long-term memory creation.
  3. Regularly test your knowledge.  Boys are notorious for studying in one way only.  They do worksheets.  It may seem that this is a good way of regularly testing their knowledge, but only if they have studied first.  Otherwise, they complete the worksheet in consultation with their notes and textbook. This is not adequately testing their knowledge, it is testing their ability to read.  Boys should be committing content to memory and practicing skills in a spaced manner and then use the worksheets, under exam-like conditions, to test their knowledge and identify gaps.
  4. Successfully draw upon prior knowledge.  We all have experiences we can draw upon and a knowledge of things around us. We have all learnt many things. Being able to link what we are learning now to what we have learnt in the past, helps ground our thought processes and provides a reference point.  By strengthening our learning in points 1 and 2, we can build our bank of knowledge on which to draw.
  5. Practice Elaboration.  Elaboration is the process of giving new material meaning by expressing it in your own words and connecting it with what you already know. The more you can explain about the way your new learning relates to your prior knowledge, the stronger your grasp of the new learning will be, and the more connections you create that will help you remember it later.

We have all heard the words ‘work smarter, not harder’ and know that it makes sense.  There are definitely ways our boys can work smarter to succeed in their studies.