Succeeding in school is a mystery to most children. The pathway of learning, testing, and good grades is broad and all children travel it but the doorway to academic success is narrow and few are awarded an A grade. The most common road sign along the way reads “Study and you will do well!” But maps for what it means to study are vague and seldom shared. How to study is the mysterious missing link to school success; we preach about studying but do not children how to study.
What do we know about this?
Our study of child development tells us that children, especially when they are young, are natural learners. Their brain sees and hears and files information automatically. Over time, their brain learns to read and textual information magnifies the quantity of information their brain processes. Children are natural learning sponges; they soak it all in.
Our study also tells us that children are born forgetters. There is a natural dumping of the information their brain processes if they do not purposefully change it from short-term to long-term memory. If they did not forget most of the millions of bits of information they see, hear, read, and feel, they would be in perpetual chaos trying to make sense of the incomprehensible.
Education attempts to meaningfully focus and train a child’s learning brain. A school has curriculum and teachers have instructional methods to teach children subject matter content and academic skills. A spiraling 4K-12 curriculum presents more complex and complicated information so that children can build sophistication in what we know and can do. Teaching and learning help children make sense of what to remember and what to forget.
Education also has tests for children to show they have indeed learned information and can perform academic skills. There is a rational sequence of learn, study, test that drives the annual school calendar. We teach what we test. We test what we taught. We tell children to study, but we do not teach them how to study.
Is there a problem?
You bet there is. On the one hand, schools cite the high-quality instruction of their teaching faculty and their standards-based curriculum. School say all children are taught and prepared to do be successful learners. However, test results continue to look like a bell-shaped curve with as many children achieving less than average as the number of children achieving more than average. And on higher stakes testing, more than half the children tested do not show proficiency in their test results.
It is oxymoronic to claim high quality instruction and accept low quality test results. Yet, we do.
The reason is that most children do not know how to study – how to make sense of what they have learned. I often ask children how they study. “I don’t study” is the most frequent answer. “Why don’t you study? I ask. Again, the most common response – “I don’t know what to do.” When a child tells me that they do study, I ask them who taught them. “No body. I Googled what to do” is the most common response from children who study. Ugh!
What if we taught, practiced, and consistently reinforced best practices in studying? What if students studied for a test under our supervision? What if we did not test a child until we verified that the child had used best practice study habits to prepare for the test? Well, it is likely that every child would be a successful learner. Are we prepared for this result? That may be the greater question.
Best practice study methods
We misconstrue study as how to pack information, and skill sets into the brain. That is why ineffective study is known as “cramming.” Why is this a mistake? Because testing is about getting information and skill set manipulation out of the brain. We do not test students on how to cram; we test on how to de-cram. Studying should be building the capacity to retrieve what has been learned from the brain not trying to get more information into it.
How do we know this? Without other instructions about how to study and left to their own designs, most children do these two re-packing strategies. They –
- Re-read the text material and re-read their notes, sometimes several times.
- Underline or highlight text material and class notes and then re-read the underlining and highlighting.
Post-testing analysis of children who use these practices align how they studied with some B but mostly C, D, and F grades. Study habits using retrieval habits align with A and B grades, though some retrievers still have bad testing days. Study is demanding work – when it feels easy, studying is not working very well. Re-reading, underlining, and highlighting are easy and feel easy. They do not tax the brain; hence they do not work. The following practices feel like and are demanding work.
These are effective retrieval practices.
Flash cards.
- Making and using flash cards seems tedious with a lot of manual not mental work but using flash cards works. Keep flash cards simple – one fact or one concept per card. Write a prompt on one side of the card – a word, concept, process, or cause and effect. Write the definition, explanation, sequence in a process on the other side of the card
- Make a card for terminology – words in the text in bold print and words in the text that the teacher uses in class.
- Make a card for cause and effect, like “these are three causes of the Great Depression.”
- Make a card for steps in a process – “the steps in photosynthesis are …”
- Read the introduction to a chapter – “In this chapter you will learn…” or the summary – “In this chapter, you …” Make a card for each of these major ideas, concepts, and processes.
- Review class quizzes. Make a card for any question you answered incorrectly on a quiz.
- Then, practice retrieval. Read the prompt from one side of the card and say aloud the fact, definition, process, application, or reasons for on the other side. Doing this aloud is a commitment to the answer; doing it silently is too passive. Mix the cards up so they are not always in the same order. Practice retrieval until you can accurately answer the prompt on every card.
Brain Dump.
- Consider the topics that will be on a test. For example, a test on a chapter(s) in a book or on a genetics and heredity or cell structure or the order of operations in Algebra or on the causes and implications of the Great Depression. On a sheet of paper write down all you know about the topic(s) on the test. List terms and definitions. People, places, dates, and events AND the significance of each. Write out processes – this is how mitosis works. Retrieve all that you can and try to make sense of it.
- Then compare your Brain Dump with the text and your notes. Work on completeness and accuracy.
- Then, repeat brain dumping until your output accurately mirrors the input.
- Practice tests. When a teacher returns a quiz or test, write down the correct answers to questions or problems you answered incorrectly. Keep all quizzes and tests returned to you. For retrieval practice, copy the questions and retake the quiz or test. Check your answers with your kept copies. Redo practice tests until you can answer all questions and problems correctly.
Distributed retrieval practice.
- Remember cramming? Do not spend four hours the night before a test trying to remember what you have not remembered. Instead, spend one hour each school night four nights before a test making and reviewing flash cards from the day’s assignments. Spend one hour each night for four nights before a test doing a brain dump. If you do not practice retrieval, your brain forgets as fast as it remembers.
- Distributing retrieval practice over time builds short term memory into longer term memory.
Interleaving/mixing up the order of retrieval demands.
- When practicing retrieval for a test, change the “batting order” of your retrieving. If you start with flash cards on terms and definitions one night followed by processes, then explanations, the next night start with processes or explanations. Do not get into a groove for retrieval. Mix up what you are trying to retrieve to make your brain work harder.
Explanations not just facts.
- Making sense of what we know reinforces the structure of our memory. Retrieval begins with the facts of who, what, and when then builds into stories that explain how and why. This is effective retrieval, especially for essay tests. Remembering the labels and steps of the digestive process is best told in explaining the process of how digestion works.
What should we do about what we know?
Consider your own school education and how you were taught to study. I am wagering that you were taught how to organize what you were to learn but were not taught how to study what you learned. We teach the Cornell note taking system, graphic organizers, and mnemonics to assist remembering. And nothing more. These are processes for learning. They are not processes for retrieving what we have learned
We should teach all children how to remember and how to retrieve what they remember, and we should practice these systems repeatedly in school and not expect children to learn them out of school. What does this look like?
- Most teachers plan their first summative quizzes and tests for the third or fourth week of school, usually the end of September. This is when children are finishing a first unit of instruction. BEFORE giving any children their first end of unit test, teach them how to study.
- In the third week of school in 4th grade, a week or more before the end of the first unit, TEACH FLASH CARDING. Why 4th grade? We teach children how to read in 4K through grade 3. In 4th grade children begin to read to learn. The amount of content knowledge increases in 4th grade. Additionally, in 4th and 5th grade students begin to attend subject area classes – ELA, math, science, social studies, art, music, world language. Each of these subject areas have content-rich assessments.
- Use direct instruction to teach children how to sort what you have taught, what is most important to know, and how to make flash cards of this information. Make this an “I do – we do – you do” lesson to ensure every child knows how to create proper flash cards.
- Use class time for children to study their flash cards. Children should study independently and collaboratively. Teachers should actively coach children how to use flash cards reinforcing effective use and correcting ineffective use.
- Only give children the first unit test of the school year after they have learned how to study for the test.
- Repeat this before any end of semester tests in 4th grade – both first and second semesters.
- Do this every year in grades 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8. Build and support student study habits.
The Big Duh!
The goal of teaching is to cause learning. Learning is knowing. Testing is the way we ask children to show what they know. So, success in testing, retrieving what they know, should not be a mystery for children. High quality instruction does not stop with packing information into a child’s brain, it continues with how children use the information they packed in.
Teach all children how to study. Every child can earn an A on a test if we teach them how to earn it.