Students
frequently employ four familiar, but not necessarily effective, methods when
studying. Instead, teachers should guide students through instruction and
planning to become more adept at some less familiar but more effective
strategies for learning.
Many
students use some typical, but ineffective, strategies for studying:
·
Reading
assigned text
·
Marking
with highlighter or pencil
·
Reviewing
the material a day or so before test
·
Rereading
what was highlighted or noted previously
The
trouble with these methods is that when students depend on them, without
adjustment, they will let them down. The result of relying on these strategies along
might be some short-term success, but ultimately the long-term memory and
understanding is missing. Students have crammed a kind of familiarity about the
material, but haven’t done what is needed to make sure they have understood—which
is necessary for long-term retention.
Of course,
reading and marking (or better, note taking) is an important step toward
understanding. But there are three simple strategies students can use to ensure
that their study time is more efficient and more effective for the long-term.
1. Dialogue With the Author
I
encourage my students to engage mentally with the author as they are reading.
Particularly when reading non-fiction, such as a history text, it’s important
for students to conduct a kind of mental discussion. They shouldn’t read
passively, or simply let the author ‘lecture’ to them in print. Indeed, even
during a lecture students should be asking (silently) questions, such as:
-what
is the author saying is most important about this subject?
-why
did the author choose that particular word or term to describe that action or
event?
-how
does what the author is saying relate to what I’ve learned previously?
-what’s
the writer’s worldview? Does it influence how he/she presents this material?
-do
I think what the author is saying is accurate? Do I have questions about this
text?
Obviously,
the student will want to balance asking questions with paying attention to the
author, but what’s important is that students develop the habit of being
active, participatory readers. This will make understanding and long-term
memory of the material much more likely.
2. Distributed
Practice Time
Cramming
for hours right before a test can actually be an effective strategy—if all you
care about is short-term memory. Students who cram may pass the test, but they
will almost always forget what they supposedly ‘learned’ in a very short time.
More effective is dividing the studying necessary over a longer period of time.
Given the same amount of time, students who spread this out over several days
or weeks or months rather than cramming will experience much longer retention.
Cramming simply doesn’t work if learning means being able to remember and apply
what was learned several weeks or months later.
3. Practice
Testing
Trying
to remember, and the work that that requires, can actually be more beneficial
for memory and learning than simply rereading. Rereading material, while a good
practice, can give a false sense of assurance because terms and ideas seem
familiar. Of course, familiarity is not the same thing as knowing. Take away
the text and quiz the student—then you’ll see what they really know. Students
can self-test through flash cards, summarizing, etc. Teachers can build short
but frequent quizzing into their class schedule. This immediate feedback has
been shown to result in significant memory gains.
The
goal of learning is long-term memory and application. As teachers, we want
students to retain what we’ve taught them and to be able to use that knowledge
in other contexts and for others means, sometimes years down the road. By teaching
students to use the very simple strategies described above we will help them to
be more likely to learn better and to retain longer the things we work so hard
to teach them.
(adapted from Daniel Willingham, Educational Leadership, October 2014)
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