Seven Study Techniques That Will Improve Your Child’s Learning

Published on 04 Feb 2015

General Article

Author: Dr Shen-Li Lee

Study Techniques That Will Improve Your Child’s Learning

Want to know how you can help your child study more effectively? Here are seven surefire study techniques that will bolster your child’s learning.

1. SPACED STUDY

One of the biggest mistakes students make is leaving everything to the last minute, then cramming before an exam. A better way is to have two revision sessions with time in between. The time in between allows the brain to process the information learned, which results in better retention of information. Spaced study works for children of all ages and abilities, and for different topics and methods of teaching. Typically, the longer the gap between study sessions (up to a year), the better the retention of information. For instance, 30-day intervals were more effective than one-day intervals. The rule of thumb is that the study sessions should be spaced at about 10 to 20 percent of the retention interval. So if you want to remember something for one week, study sessions should be 12 to 24 hours apart; to remember something for five years, space your sessions 6 to 12 months apart. More about Spaced Study.

2. GET ENOUGH SLEEP

Another common mistake students make before an exam is to pull an all-nighter and not get enough sleep. Sleep is important for the consolidation of new information and for making stable memories that can be recalled later. “When we are sleep deprived, our focus, attention, and vigilance drift, making it more difficult to receive information. Without adequate sleep and rest, over-worked neurons can no longer function to coordinate information properly, and we lose our ability to access previously learned information.” – Healthy Sleep

Related:

The Lost Hour

Sleep and Memory

3. TESTING

As much as students hate tests and exams, they do have their purpose in improving learning. The active process of recalling the answers to test questions helps to reconsolidate information in the brain.

Short-answer questions are better than multiple-choice answer questions

Teach your children to quiz themselves as they are learning new material to facilitate retention

Related:

Test-Enhanced Learning – Taking Memory Tests Improves Long-term Retention

Testing improves long-term retention in a simulated classroom setting

Test-taking may improve learning in people of all ages

4. INTERLEAVING

Children learn better if you mix it up – for example, repeating ten similar math problems is not as effective as practicing ten different math problems. So instead of doing all the addition problems followed by the subtraction problems, alternate between addition and subtraction. This method works regardless of the subject. More about interleaving.

5. CHANGE OF ENVIRONMENT

Similar to the method of interleaving, changing the environment in which your child studies can help enhance his or her knowledge retention. “The brain makes subtle associations between what it is studying and the background sensations it has at the time … regardless of whether those perceptions are conscious… Forcing the brain to make multiple associations with the same material may, in effect, give that information more neural scaffolding. What we think is happening here is that, when the outside context is varied, the information is enriched, and this slows down forgetting,” said Dr. Robert Bjork, the senior author of the two-room experiment in the New York Times.

6. PLAYING VIDEO GAMES

Yes, believe it or not, playing video games (in particular, those horrible shoot-‘em-up rapid action games) has the effect of improving response speed on a variety of tasks and visual attention abilities. This effect can last for years after the training. Unfortunately, non-violent games with similar beneficial effects have not been found as yet. More about how video games benefit the brain.

7. AVOID MULTITASKING

It goes without saying that children absorb information better when they are focused on the single task of studying rather than multitasking.

Even though many people believe they can multitask reasonably well, findings seem to indicate otherwise. According to Aamodt and Wang in Welcome to Your Child’s Brain:

“The brain cannot concentrate on more than one thing at a time… the cost of chronic multitasking may include diminished performance when single-tasking.”

“Evidence from psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience suggests that when students multitask while doing schoolwork, their learning is far spottier and shallower than if the work had their full attention.” – The Creativity Post