Coffee! Just kidding …
In last month’s newsletter we saw that our brains learn by making mistakes.
The harder you struggle to retrieve the information you’ve read and stored away, and the more mistakes you make and correct, the deeper and longer lasting the learning becomes.
So for starters, we need to make reading text or watching videos an active process of remembering and retrieving information.
1. Active reading strategies
When you are reading text you should:
- Convert the key points into a series of questions and write them down.
- Shut the book / close the text and use your questions to help you write a summary of the main ideas in your own words. This could be as a paragraph or note-style or a mind map (my personal favourite).
- Go back to the text and make any corrections or add anything you’ve missed. You can also include links to other topics or concepts, and definitions for any terminology you’ve used.
Now you are in a position to complete the end of topic (summary) questions in your text book and the questions at the end of every Crunch Chemistry post which are more like the ones you’ll find on exam papers.
If you get stuck, spend some time thinking about the problem and then come back to it later – often the brain needs a little down time to do all the behind the scenes processing that has to happen when you are learning new material properly.
And if you have any light bulb moments, add them to your summary notes / mind map.
The mistakes you make will also highlight any gaps you have in your understanding. Make sure you deal with them!In an ideal world you should be doing all this BEFORE class so that you can use lesson time to tackle the really hard stuff and get help with any concepts or questions that are eluding you.
2. Reviewing what you’ve learnt
You need to revisit your list of questions the following day, and again a few days later, and then in a couple of weeks.
Turn them into flashcards!
This is super important because practicing retrieving the knowledge is the only way to strengthen all the new neural connections and pathways you made when you were first learning the material.
This is how you entrench new knowledge so that it is easily recalled when you need it or easily re-learned when revising.
Spoiler alert – there’s a right way and a wrong way to use flashcards … who knew? Tune in next time to find out more 🧐.
3. Reflecting on homework and tests
This is a critical part of the learning process and yet it is rarely common practice. When you get feedback on your homework or when you get a test back you should be asking yourself these questions:
• do I really understand this topic / have I mastered it?
• what is the evidence for my judgement?
And wherever you’ve made mistakes:
• is this something I thought I knew or did I take a guess?
• is my mistake down to lack of understanding or poor exam technique?
Be honest with yourself here!
If your answer is just plain wrong, then you probably don’t understand the material or you’ve simply not made the effort to really learn it. If you’ve got the gist of it but you’re not getting the marks then it may be that you are using the wrong wording or key terms, or perhaps you need to read the questions more carefully to find the clues.There’s a lot to get your head around in this newsletter but I promise you, these strategies really do work!
If this has been useful then please share the link and thank you very much for reading,
