Are your students forgetful, and their forgetfulness is driving you bananas?
If yes--read my previous post about The Forgetting Curve.
Basically, our brains are hardwired to get rid of any information they don't deem necessary for survival. The Forgetting Curve presents a real challenge for educators.....after all our job is to bestow knowledge to students.
So how do we fight the forgetting curve? How do we help students retain taught information?
We combat the Forgetting Curve in following ways:
1. Improve Clarity
Make information easy to absorb from the onset by using learning intentions and success criteria. We want students to know what we will teach them and how they will know they're successful. We should tell them BEFORE we teach.
Check out this quick video about learning intentions an success criteria from educational guru, John Hattie:
2. Learning Reinforcement
Perhaps one of the biggest findings in Ebbinghaus's original experiment was that re-engaging with material again and again, at spaced intervals, leads to a dramatic reduction in the forgetting curve (check out that graph below!)
So, as teachers, we need to design lessons where students are asked to re-retrieve information at spaced intervals. This is an excellent way to help cement learning to memory.
3. Make Learning Relevant
We all remember information easier if the topic is something we are passionate about. How might we present information to students to help them care about it and to help them see the relevancy?
4. Make Learning Interactive
People learn better when they are actively involved. We must give learners opportunities to interact with the content and not be passive observers. Learning is not a spectator sport!
5. Use Microlearning
Microlearning is a fancy word for chunking and chewing information. Information is easier to learn when it comes in bite-sized pieces. A long teaching session makes it difficult for our brains to absorb all of the information.
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