REINFORCE KNOWLEDGE
What does this mean?
We value different kinds of practice in the classroom and much of our work as teachers is dedicated to improving the quality of students’ practice by teaching them how to engage critically and creatively with lesson content.
For example, learning to think well requires practice. Practice routines that encourage students to develop proficiency and fluency in their thinking (for example, by asking questions of material, explaining ideas, connecting concepts and themes, reasoning using evidence) support both the acquisition and the consolidation of knowledge.
Tasks should provide appropriate levels of cognitive challenge to ensure all students are required to practise thinking in order to advance their understanding in our classrooms.
Desirable difficulties include varying the conditions of learning instead of keeping them constant and predictable; interleaving instruction on separate topics, rather than grouping instruction by topic (called blocking); spacing, rather than massing, study sessions on a given topic; and using tests, rather than presentations, as study events.
Robert Bjork
Why is this important?
TO REINFORCE KNOWLEDGE THROUGH PRACTICE IS TO:
- Enhance the retention and recall of knowledge.
- Support the development of automaticity and procedural fluency.
- Design tasks that consolidate students' understanding of core concepts and develop key skills.
- Reframe the use of tests and testing in the classroom to facilitate knowledge retrieval.
- Promote the transfer of knowledge by enabling students to apply their learning in difference contexts.
- Enable students to deepen their learning and develop expertise.
- Emphasise the link between practice and improvement and thus motivate students to learn.
- Target areas for improvement by focusing students' attention on specific aspects of their learning.
- Help students to become more independent as learners over time.
- Cultivate habits of mind and dispositions that are conducive to learning.
Spaced practice is one of the most powerful ways to enhance students' retention of important concepts. You can space exposure to content in numerous ways, such as reviewing a few of the most important concepts at the end of each class or reviewing those concepts at the beginning of the next class. The former involves spacing within a class, and the latter involves spacing across classes.
John Dunlosky
