Why is it that we often find ourselves limiting our child’s learning to their schoolteachers and classroom? There is no surprise that the classroom is likely to be the primary source of instruction; but if you really want to increase their cognitive ability to learn, the mental, emotional, and academic development of the child should reach beyond the walls of the classroom. However, it is important for you to know that not all good students are born good learners. The individual personality of a child, together with their willingness and competence, at some point in their lives, moves them to become a good learner.
It is common to have students who find it exceptionally difficult to remember a set of instructions and directions they have just been given. You might notice how they forget the content from a recently-held conversation, or they may fail to correctly write down steps from a math problem. Such students often have deficits registering and storing information in their short-term memory, which makes it harder for them to access or retrieve information from their long-term memory. To have information consolidated in memory, it must first be attended to. An evidence-based learning technique, Spaced Repetition, which is becoming increasingly popular today, has shown massive improvements with the process of human memorization. Repetitive review of the subject matter, often using flashcards with a spaced repetition algorithm helps children with progressive and long-term retention.
Over the years, extensive research has been carried out about this phenomenon and the results found have managed to establish this concept as one of the best strategies for memory-based issues in children. Individuals with dementia and the Alzheimer’s disease have also received therapy with spaced repetition and some of them have reportedly been able to cope with the advancement of their illnesses. Studies have demonstrated that our ability to recall a piece of knowledge relies objectively on the number of times we see it, the sequence of and the time between each review. Your aim here is to ensure that your child spends the least possible time trying to remember forgotten information while focusing on the recollected knowledge. Letting a student space out their learning over a period of time allows the brain to retain the information more effectively. This is known as the ‘spacing effect’ and it happens because the break in between the study intervals allows the student to strengthen their learning before they revisit the material.
The main idea is that a suitable distribution of the study material overtime is definitely more advantageous than the massing of it in a single stretch. Minimal variation in how the material is presented to your brain decreases your learning because it contributes to the processing of bland and boring data. This, in turn, makes it challenging for the brain to comprehend and hold it. As opposed to such an occurrence, learning over a space of time allows the material to be presented in a unique way each time you look at it. The reinforcement and remembering eventually becomes easier and therefore, it helps you learn better. Different systems of the ‘spacing effect’ can be adopted to make your way through spaced repetition. A typical order includes going over the information after an hour, a day, a week, a month, and then twice a year.