I was watching Harry Potter and Neville gets gifted the "Remeberall". Hermione says "It's a Rememberall. It'll turn red when you've forgotten something". It turns red and Neville says "The only problem is, I can't remember what I've forgotten".
This got me thinking about memory, retention, recall and the like. Here's a short list of things I've experience as a teacher when it comes to memory:
#1] We've never done this before Sir (A child exclaims the day after I taught the introduction to him)
#2] I couldn't do this test question because you never taught it us Sir (Another child exclaims, 2 weeks after I did a 6 lesson series on it)
#3] I revised for ages but when I saw the test, it made my mind go blank
Even occasionally when I teach, I look at something as if I've never seen it before in my life.
So what's my key message here?
"It's OKAY to forget"
I really need you to show that sentence to your child. It's okay to forget. Think back to what you did yesterday. Can you remember all 3 meals? Can you remember which roads you took, or what petrol station you filled the tank up, or exactly what time you picked the kids up from their mates, or how much the shopping bill came to. I'd imagine not.
Now put yourself in your child's shoes and think back to the days when we were at school ourselves. We start with going to school. We need to remember to take all our books, our equipment, is cooking today or PE day? Did I bring that piece of homework, did I submit MyMaths? Then we go to registration. "Don't forget it's wet break. Don't forget the school canteen is closed today. Don't forget to bring your £1 in for non uniform day Friday. Don't forget to bring that library book back. Don't forget tomorrow is assembly. Don't forget don't forget". Then we get to lesson 1 and it's French. "Here's 15 words to learn this week. Oh and I'll test you on them next week. And if you can't remember them, you'll likely feel bad about yourself. Also, I'm Mr X and remember that in this lesson, here's my classroom rules you must follow. Oh and if you forget one of them, I'll tell you off. And then I'll tell you parents. And they'll tell you off and take your Xbox off you for a week". Then we remember what lesson 2 is and where to go. It's Maths. "Don't forget I don't like it when you're late to Maths even though I know it takes 5 minutes to walk here making it impossible to be on time. Also my rules are different from Mr X, and because I'm Mrs Y, you'll need to remember all of my rules and routines. And yes if you forget one of them, I will shout at you, making you nervous about Maths. Oh and today we're doing this topic. We'll pick up where we left off. So remember last lesson, which yes, was 5 days ago".
This is what happens to children's brains. All day every day.
So when it comes to revision, I want to help take some of that much needed stress off them. They will revise some topics for hours. And only retain 5% of it. And that's okay. They're not computers. They don't have a built in hard drive that works on binary signals and uses ASCII. They're human and we're all flawed.
Please let them know, that forgetting what they learn is absolutely fine. But what they must do is keeping practising and keep learning and keep striving to improve.
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Mr Smyth
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