young at mind

the curve of forgetting describes how we retain or get of information we absorb.

day 1: you go into a lecture knowing 0% and come out knowing 100% of what you know (regardless of whether you know it extremely well or not)

day 2: you did not do any reviewing of your notes from day 1 therefore you have lost 50%-80%

and as the days progress we forget less and less

think about midterms! notice how around midterms when you’re trying to study for something (that you haven’t been reviewing for regularly) it feels like the material is VERY difficult and almost as if you’ve never learned it before

formula to reshape the curve

within 24 hours of your lecture spend 10 minutes reviewing the material

a week later: it will only take 5 minutes to REACTIVATE the same material

ultimately, you will reshape the curve  

day 30: by this day your brain will only need 2-4 minutes to recall

information on the curve of forgetting was taken from the university of waterloo (x)

my formula to reshape the curve using the information above

before class: spend 10 minutes PREVIEWING the material. 

after class: spend 10 minutes REVIEWING the material

do this regularly. this will be your preview/review system for each class.

a week later: try to review a week later. i know that school/life can get pretty hectic, but try to make sure you are reviewing regularly.

maybe record yourself saying some important details/concepts from your notes the night before and on your daily commute to school plug in those earphones and listen to it. i am an auditory learner and i find that listening to my notes before i go to bed and right when i wake up have truly helped me retain information. studies have shown that the best time to study is right before going to bed and right when you wake up.

a month later: after a month, review what you’ve learned so far in your class. trust me this will be a very very short review. everything will look very familiar to you and it won’t look as difficult as it used to.

basically your review schedule should be the following: 

1 hour before learning the material

1 hour after learning the material (or within 24 hours of learning it b/c i know we’re all very busy people)

1 day later

1 week later

1 month later

remember everyone learns, studies, and retains information differently!! my personal belief is that your technique is what matters most. it is not about your innate ability/talent. find a technique that works for you.

more suggestions:

active learning > passive learning

when taking notes use the Cornell method. it forces you to ask questions and summarize what you’ve learned.

set frequent, short, review sessions

test yourself constantly! there are so many resources online. 

people who are under stress have difficulty remembering things so CHILL OUT

don’t rush, take your time

repetition is key

practice MAKES PERFECT

group items together

fish, vitamin b12, and green tea can help w/ memory

1. Social skills. I teach high school, but you’d be amazed at how many of my students have terrible social skills. Things like technology and the pressure to achieve tend to isolate today’s students. I have kids in my larger classes who, in the third month of school, don’t even know one another’s names. Group work forces you to interact with people who may be unfamiliar to you. 

2. Ability to work in groups is necessary in the working world. Even if you do your specific task on your own, I honestly can’t think of a single job except maybe being a fully autonomous hermit on a small farm in the middle of nowhere without even a friend or spouse around in which you do not ever need to combine your abilities with someone else’s. It’s much easier to learn how to do this in school than to have to learn as an adult. Trust me, I’ve seen it happen. 

3. Access to resources. I do labs in groups. I have to. I’m almost always buying the materials for that lab with my own money, and I can’t afford to buy 6 petri dishes plus the agar to fill them for eighty-odd students. But I can afford to buy those dishes and agar for 20, if I budget carefully and scrub out old dishes from someone else’s lab. I don’t have enough laptops either, so we share. I can’t always get enough paper to print an activity for everyone, but I can print and stable enough packets to work in groups of three. 

4. Skillsets. Right now, my biology classes are doing varying versions of a theme: working on projects concerning human impact on the environment. My honors class is doing this in groups, anywhere from 2-7 kids depending on the project. They combine their unique skills to make a whole project. I have a group combining a very talented artist and photographer with a budding eco-warrior who has experience arranging activities in school government. Together, they’re planning a proposal to present to the administration, lobbying to install a green roof on the walkways outside the library. Neither one of them has the skills to pull this off alone. By working in a group, they are able to combine those skills and produce a greater whole. 

5. The Hive Mind and Peer-to-Peer learning. I have, in the past, experimented with cooperative assessment. I allow my students, provided behavior has proved acceptable, to engage with one another during their exams. This feeds back into several other points, but here’s the thing…..even when I allow them to ask me unlimited questions, the overall scores on the cooperative exams are always higher. The lowest scores, even the ones that fail, are still higher than comparable tests without the information sharing. Many people are more comfortable learning from and asking questions of their peers than they are from someone older or younger than they are. 

6. Synthesis. There are a lot of words for this, and it’s a huge concept in education today, but here’s the short version: in order to really understand a topic, you must be able to break it down and reproduce it in some way. Maybe you’re explaining it to someone. Maybe it’s creating a project that demonstrates a concept. Maybe it’s analyzing the flaws in an experiment or an argument. This is a vital part of the learning process, the apex we are trying to achieve. And it comes more naturally in small groups, likely because of the comfort level associated with comparing your knowledge to that of a peer. If you compare your knowledge to your teacher’s knowledge, odds are good that they’re going to win every time. But comparing to your group-mate….you’re both probably at the same level, which builds trust and a willingness to engage with one another. Students progress further and faster when they help each other keep going.