The point Charlie Brown is making is that unless we can actually do a thing, we haven’t learned it, and it follows – certainly for me – that unless we can remember a thing when we need to, we haven’t learned it either. So, alongside devising ways of enabling young people to gain key knowledge and skills – the activities we give students to do every day to learn new things – we must be just as diligent about devising regular activities that oblige them to remember the key knowledge and practise the new skills. We must, in other words, create many opportunities for our students to do retrieval practice.
In my experience, students are often not keen to retrieve ‘old learning’: ‘I’ve done this before, why am I doing it again?’ and ‘I already know this stuff!’are common complaints, and they are understandable – going over stuff can feel boring. We have to persist because without frequent retrieval practice new learning will not stick. Stating the obvious, two of the main reasons why learning doesn’t stick are 1) Reasons related to the learner: failure to understand in the first place, not paying attention, not practising enough and so on, and 2) Reasons related to the teacher. Of the reasons related to the teacher, I believe the most common one is not providing sufficient opportunities for effective retrieval practice over time. I don’t underestimate the challenge of providing these opportunities; time to cover a packed curriculum is a huge issue for teachers, and retrieval practice of already-covered material hoovers up time. But but but: teaching well without sufficient retrieval practice is like painting a wall by throwing a can of paint at it: some of the paint will stick, but what are the chances of ever getting a fully-painted wall that way? Retrieval practice paints the wall with a roller, over time. Maybe you’ll still miss the odd bit, but you’ll have a far better-painted wall.
Learning is about remembering because we have to be able to remember stuff when we need it, both in order to succeed in examinations and to have the knowledge we need to help us live full lives.
Memory is, therefore, arguably the dominant structure in our cognitive architecture.
Mark Patterson, Principal, Hinchingbrooke School
Part of the ACES Academies Trust
Hinchingbrooke School is a part of ACES Academies Trust. ACES Academies Trust is a company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales with registered number 07732319. Our registered address is Hinchingbrooke School, Brampton Road, Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, PE29 3BN. This email and its attachments are confidential to the ordinary user of the email address to which it was addressed and to the ACES Academies Trust including representatives of its schools, and must not be copied, disclosed, or distributed without the prior authorisation of the sender. It may also be privileged or otherwise protected by work product immunity or other legal rules. If you have received it by mistake, please let us know and then delete it from your system. You should not copy the message or disclose its contents to anyone. Although every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the information contained in the email and its attachments, ACES Academies Trust cannot guarantee its accuracy or currency.
