However, when students lack background knowledge that may be able to relate to the new information presented, they may find it difficult to achieve a good understanding of the material.
Additionally, students who are pressured to memorize information without truly understanding the material can hinder their learning in the future. Why? When students are asked to memorize information they don't understand, “that's going to be something you're going to forget very quickly,” Willingham continued. “Understanding is actually the cornerstone of remembering.”
Another reason why students cannot remember what they have learned is because people forget things.
There's a neurological reason why students don't remember something they were there for, said Kara Goodwin, a child psychologist. The prefrontal cortex and hippocampus, the brain areas responsible for memory integration and retrieval, do not fully develop until age 25, she said. “Our brain develops very gradually throughout childhood, so… these memory skills should improve as children get older,” she said.
“Forgetting is a natural part of memory,” Willingham says.
Teaching tools for memorizing information
Despite some forgetfulness, Conlon has her own toolkit of strategies to help her students retain as much information as possible, such as speaking Spanish for most of the class time to ensure the kids get plenty of exposure to Spanish. She also creates emotionally engaging activities and lessons for her students. “I think the more they invest, the more they're able to learn that language and really pay attention to the input they're getting,” Conlon said.
For Kunlun students from first to fifth grade, emotionally engaged learning takes place through play, singing, dancing and reading stories. In Connecticut, where she teaches, play-based learning is now mandatory for preschool and kindergarten, and schools are required to allow teachers to use the play-based learning approach through fifth grade.
According to Willingham, one effective strategy for learning is low-stakes, ungraded tests with immediate feedback. “Going into your memory and trying to find something, even if you fail, is a really good way to solidify something in your memory, but it's kind of fragile,” he said.
Context clues can also be very useful when helping students retrieve information they think they have forgotten. This also applies to adults, Goodwin said. For example, if someone asks you what the capital of Virginia is, you might not remember it, but if they give you a contextual clue like “starts with the letter ‘R’” you might be able to guess it's Richmond. .
Curriculum alignment year after year and teacher-teacher communication
Teachers can help students retain knowledge, but these processes must be integrated into the curriculum at appropriate times, Willingham said. If there is a skill or knowledge that should be retained by the time a student graduates from high school, but that student first acquired that information in middle school, “then that content needs to be revisited periodically,” in meaningful ways, Willingham says. . He said.
Often teachers and other adults can forget what it is like to be a student learning information for the first time. The “curse of knowledge,” as Willingham describes it, makes it difficult “to put yourself back in the mindset of someone who doesn’t yet know (certain information), so it seems like it should be a lot simpler than that.” that it.”
Conlon credited district-level efforts toward stronger vertical expression for the meaningful cross-level conversations she had with other teachers in her department. Through these meetings, Conlon and her fellow elementary teachers were able to meet with middle school teachers to discuss how students could prepare for sixth grade.
Conlon encouraged teachers to take an observation day to see what other teachers at different levels are doing in their classrooms. At the elementary level, you might see students playing, “but that play leads to learning and language acquisition and social emotional skills and all those things that will hopefully set them up for success in sixth grade,” Conlon said.