Advertorial or involves a deeper search through memory results in better learning . Other such manipulations that increase difficulty for students could be using fill-in-the-blank questions instead of multiple choice , reducing or delaying feedback , or asking nuanced questions . As educators , we should be wary of structuring activities that are too easy for students to accomplish – it might feel like you ’ re helping your students , but long-term performance most likely will suffer . Creating effort is the most important thing .
4 . Why teach word roots :
Knowing that someone who is malicious is evil probably hints that a malevolent person is up to no good because both words share the common root “ mal .” Roots can act as important focus points to build large word networks . There ’ s some evidence that suggests that words having the same roots are clustered together in memory . For example , retrieving the meaning of “ untrustworthy ” is much faster if you ’ ve recently retrieved the word “ trust ”; therefore , it appears that “ trusty ,” “ distrust ,” and “ untrustworthy ” might be stored closer together in our mental lexicon . All words that we teach in Membean are broken down into their constituent prefixes , roots , and suffixes to provide yet another way to remember words .
5 . Why metacognition is important :
Students need to learn how they learn . In fact , metacognition is the most important skill with which schools can equip their students . More and more , learning using technology is unsupervised ; therefore , students need to become experts at managing their own learning . When a student becomes aware that “ this is the sixth time I ’ ve seen this word , and I still get it wrong ” or “ I need to slow down ” or “ I ’ m finding this word difficult , but I notice that it looks like this other word I know ,” they attend to the word more . Once the word has their full attention , they are more likely to reprocess it and / or employ useful word-learning strategies . Deliberately employing learning strategies harnesses a multitude of pre-existing memories to help make sense of new information .
“ We have harnessed teenagers ’ selfabsorption to our advantage . In the same way they love to take ‘ selfies ’, kids love to see data about themselves . Any time you ’ re willing to sit down with a child to show them a different picture of who they are and how they learn , you have their attention .” – Erin Edmundson , Canadian International School Abu Dhabi
6 . Why assessments can be unreliable learning indicators :
If your students seem to be understanding a concept in class and perform well on their weekly announced test , it seems fair to assume that they ’ ve mastered the information . This intuition can be very wrong . Assessments are often a measure of temporary knowledge , i . e ., they provide an indication of current strength , but say little about permanent changes to long-term memory , which is the real goal of learning . Students could simply cram the evening prior to the test and perform very well — while little permanent learning has actually occurred . What ’ s known today could be inaccessible tomorrow . Assessments give a false sense of confidence .
7 . Why students should get comfortable with forgetting :
While there ’ s no limit to what we can store , there is a severe limit to what we can recall . Memory is optimized to allow quick retrieval for items that are frequently accessed and forget those items that are less likely to be needed . We all know of words we know that we know — but can no longer recall . The surprising thing , however , is when a forgotten word is relearned again , it comes back even more strongly . Relearning provides a renewed opportunity to re-encode the word into long-term memory . The cues from the current learning environment are combined with the cues from when the word was learned the first time ; this combining allows for faster retrieval the next time . Students are often frustrated when they forget . Teachers need to reassure students that forgetting is a natural part of learning .
8 . Why quizzes should be the center of learning :
“ Testing ” is often thought of as a bad word . The relentless emphasis on tests as measurement instruments to gauge what students know has done a disservice to the power of tests as learning instruments . Frequent lowstakes quizzes are the single most powerful learning strategy because they alter the organization of longterm memory to make tested items more readily accessible . Since each quiz occurs at a different time and different questions on the same word exercise different memories , in time many retrieval routes are established for each word . If one specific memory route is unavailable , there ’ s always an alternate way of getting at the word . Membean spends 80 % of allocated training time asking questions .
There is a direct correlation between the amount of time students spend on Membean and improvements to their accuracy – Carolyn Ingram , British Internal School of Jeddah .
Words Matter
A classroom that promotes word consciousness is a classroom that supports learning about the world . It recognizes that the answer to modern information overload is equipping students to be effective communicators . It celebrates a unique and miraculous gift of the human mind – the ability to convert a series of hisses , pops , and explosions of sound into a tapestry of ideas . The marriage of technology and cognitive science promises to have a significant impact on the classroom — if effectively implemented . Membean can help .