Remembering

Remembering is hard work. Remembering over time is even harder. When students sit their Higher School Certificate, they need to remember work completed in class 12 months earlier. This is a skill that cannot be achieved quickly – it takes practise.

When students go to school, or to tutoring, they learn new things or consolidate learning from other places. If they do not revisit the learning during the week, an average of more than 60% of that learning will be lost, and even more is forgotten by the end of the next week. Within 60 days all but the most superficial of that learning is gone.

In order to remember learning, we need to revisit that learning within 36 hours, again in a week, again in a month and again in two months. Our brains need to be told that the information is important and needs to be “logged” into our brains.

Remembering is a personal responsibility. It is something that we need to practise. It is also a skill that needs to be explicitly taught and valued.

What can parents and carers do to help remembering?

• Ask questions – and then a follow up question – think about WHY? Ask the young person to explain their learning, remembering that how things are taught today may be quite different to how we learnt them in the past. It is counterproductive to say, “That’s not the way to do that.” Ask the young person to show you how they did the task. If it is not making sense, send them back to the teacher to ask more questions.

• Encourage your young person to write down what they learnt each lesson that day. This is a powerful habit to develop before Year 12. It also creates summaries of all work done which makes test preparation so much easier. 5 points per subject per day creates 20 points per week in core subjects.

• Ask specific questions. “What did you learn today?” is most commonly answered with, “Nothing.” Ask what was Science about today? What text were you looking at in English? What topic are you doing in maths? Be specific.