Page 13 - Knowledge Organiser Yr7 24-25

The Forgetting Curve
Desirable Difficulty
Why?
We know that forgetting is a normal part of the learning process. However, we can help to interrupt the process. We also know that the harder that you think about things, the more likely we are to remember them.
Why?
Desirable difficulties are learning tasks that require more effort; the reason this effort is ‘desirable’ is because it is much more effective for long-term learning. They are active, rather than passive and involve hard thinking.
Spaced Learning
1
2
3
Retrieving
This can be with a cue (prompt) but ultimately, you want to be able to free recall as much as possible.
Social
Testing someone else is helpful as they are likely to remember some information that you cannot and you will be able to make links in your learning together.
Learning Walkthrus for Students and Parents
If you or your parents want to know more about how to learn well, we recommend this book, written for pupils and their parents that has more techniques that help you to learn well.
Discuss or write down everything you can remember about a topic in a week/month or year to make it more difficult to remember.
Interleaving
Review one topic after you have studied a different topic also makes it harder to remember, but can make more links.
Vary the conditions
Use a different method of revision varies the conditions. If you often do flashcards, vary this to doing brain dumps on the same material.
Forgetting is natural!
Ebbinghaus in 1885 established that if we do not revisit information, we are likely to forget most of it over time. However, repetition or revisiting helps us to remember more.
4
5
Forgetting is natural!
Our ability to think, reason, problem-solve, create, and collaborate depends entirely on what we know. The more securely our knowledge is stored in long-term memory,
the more we can do with it. So, how do we develop a good schema? By thinking deeply about the information we want to learn until our understanding reaches the level of automaticity.
13
Knowledge Organiser How do we learn? Year 7