For many adults, December is filled with shopping, baking, and holiday magic making. Conversely, for secondary students, December is a moment of reckoning. Many students spend it wondering whether their first-semester study strategies are going to produce test-taking prowess. There is considerable pressure as semesters end and final exams begin. What if we researched the best ways for students to study, and then used that science to make December merrier for everyone? Luckily, the research and science part has already been done for us.
Daniel Pink in his 2011 book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, analyzes the gap between what science knows and what businesses do. Over ten years later, the science of learning and the practice of teaching are engaged in a similar showdown about reading. Over and over again, the pendulum swings, and teachers are caught in the middle with a classroom full of students and a daunting to-do list. Instead of engaging in the continual back and forth, let's listen to the cognitive science on studying, and practice only what makes learning stick.
But...what does it even mean to study?
There are generally two aspects of studying in classrooms: receiving information and retrieving information. Initially, students receive information and record it in some form of note-taking practice. The Harvard Initiative for Learning and Teaching identifies three underlying best practices for both linear and nonlinear notes. Fundamentally, students must be taught to use an organizational structure. Additionally, students need to use the notes to make connections and quiz themselves. And, finally, the notes should be reviewed regularly. Whether you are adopting the Cult of Pedagogy's advice on note-taking or an Edutopia article's view on the topic, the consensus clearly points to students engaging with, collaborating on, and explicitly using the notes they take to make studying more effective.
If receiving information and taking notes is key to having something to study, what should students do with those notes before an assessment? Stare really hard at them until they are burned into memory?
That's unlikely to work well in the long term.
Again, cognitive science has a pretty clear answer here. Students need to retrieve information as often as they receive it if they are to perform well on assessments. There is a wealth of information online about retrieval practices, but some local cognitive scientists in the books Powerful Teaching and Make it Stick have made the information teacher friendly and practical. In short, retrieval practices are any practices that ask students to continually and consistently pull information out of their heads instead of passively receiving it. Frequent and consistent retrieval practices in classrooms decrease stress and increase test performance.
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