4 tips for learning retention
I’m going to give you The Seven Laws of Teaching. For now though, let’s focus on one of them, “The Law of the Learning Process.” Another way to say it is that the “learner must reproduce in his own mind the truth to be acquired.” How this happens is through a variety of ways and depends on the age of the student. Young children are great at memorizing. Make it fun and interesting, and they’ll memorize much. And they’ll remember it when they’re older. Let me show you. I’ll start, you finish:
Baa baa, black sheep…
Rock-a-bye baby…
1. Music for Retention: You may not have said them for a decade but knew them perfectly. There are so many things in our minds like this, and they are there because we reviewed them and, maybe, because of the music that accompanied them. Music makes memorizing much easier.
2. Review for Retention: How many songs can you sing without thinking? You have heard them over and over again and can sing them perfectly. But you didn’t sing them just one night and never again.
3. Study Habits for Retention: If your children are studying for a spelling test and only study the word list the night before, their retention will not be great. They need to develop study habits where they start studying the day they receive the new words. Like learning, teaching with retention in mind requires spreading out the repetition.
4. Benchmarks for Retention: You know the significance of 1776 in American history. So, given the choice of what date the first state ratified the Constitution, you would know that it was some time after 1776—but not too much.
Tools to memorize and to benchmark references are both great for making learning stick. And great teachers build their teaching on them. It is so important to help children understand that they are not just studying to get a good grade, but to learn. As teachers and parents, we need to foster that love.
Oh, and the 15th president was James Buchanan, and Delaware ratified the Constitution in 1787—just in case your phone wasn’t handy.
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