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Importance of Retrieval based learning

Research has shown that one of the effective way to promote long-lasting learnings in children is to encourage them to recall a concept or a chunk of learning from memory. Following up with quizzes on the recently learned material, is one of the most effective way to make learning more permanent. These quizzes don’t have to be high stake or graded quizzes. The point of these quick formative quizzes is to encourage students to recall. Recalling from memory makes connections in brain deeper and little more persistent every time.

Retrieval based learning is effective for young children per research as young as 3 years old. This type of learning is important to get the foundational blocks ready for higher level learnings. Just imagine an experience of writing a story without knowing how to form a letter. Learning the correct letter formation and remembering how to put two letters together to make a word, are the fundamental building blocks to be able to write your thoughts on paper or digitally. Flashcards followed by mini tests like quizzes can be a great tool to build those foundational learning building blocks. However, timely refresher tests are required to make it long-lasting learning.

Practicing re-constructing a freshly learned concept is productive rather keep re-reading the same thing over and over again. It’s important to test the understanding of the newly learned material-concept/word, in multi-faceted mini tests or quizzes. Few examples could be to re-constructing the concept, finding the right choice, and to take quiz using pen and paper to deepen the neuron connections.

Spelling skills is one of the foundational skill required for a child to do well on writing and literacy. Poor spellings are linked to poor reading and writing skills in adulthood. Poor spellers struggle with expressing their ideas their way, which impacts their writing quality. Students with strong spelling sense tend to have better reading comprehension and don’t struggle with decoding the word. They can focus on high level of text comprehension rather getting distracted by spellings.

Some practitioners use rainbow writings (copying words in different colors). It’s noticedthat taking practice quizzes are more effective than rainbow writing. The difference between two methods is that rainbow writing based on copying a word while retrieval method is based on recall from memory. Recalling from memory makes neuron connections stronger during every recall.

Lastly, the retrieval learning has proven effective over additional study for learning vocabulary. Also, it’s noted that learning vocabulary is effective when learned using isolated words (like word pairs) rather embedding words in story.

In nutshell, usage of spell-checkers have benefits as far as they’ve been used as productivity tool rather finding the alternative to learning spellings. One should not be relying on spell-checkers for simple spellings. There’s a fine balance between knowing your spellings and overdoing on learning advanced spellings. Both extremes are not productive or needed. The secret to learning is to stay balanced !

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