Podcast: Helping Students Overcome the Forgetting Curve

Have you ever delivered a lesson and felt your students were acing it, only to revisit the same information a week later and realize hardly any of the new content stuck? You just came up against the forgetting curve—and lost.

Our brains are hardwired to forget things unless we take active steps to remember. According to research, nearly half of new information—if not used right away—is forgotten within an hour of exposure. And if you wait a week, up to 90 percent fades into the mist.

But that’s not inevitable. In this critical episode of School of Practice, high school teacher Cathleen Beachboard shares her top three strategies to help students remember what she’s just taught them. We’ll ask her how she weaves these strategies directly into the learning process as she works to “flatten the forgetting curve.”

Related resources:

• 3 Ways to Help Students Overcome the Forgetting Curve Our brains are wired to forget things unless we take active steps to remember. Here’s how you can help students hold on to what they learn.
• How to Engage Elementary and Middle School Students’ Memory Processes to Improve Learning Strategies like connecting new information to students’ prior knowledge guide them to store what they’re learning in long-term memory.
• Why Students Forget—and What You Can Do About It Strategies like connecting new information to students’ prior knowledge guide them to store what they’re learning in long-term memory.
• Making Retrieval Practice a Classroom Routine (video) By regularly working in activities that get students to recall content they’ve learned in the past and apply it, teachers can ensure deeper understanding.
• Connecting Science to Problem-Solving in the Real World (video) Tackling authentic problems in science class helps students see the link between the lab and the challenges facing our world—and builds multiple skills along the way.
• Finding the Retrieval ‘Sweet Spot’ for Students To help students understand and recall challenging material, spend more time in collaborative practices like drawing and highlighting together, new research says.
• Research: A New Look at Memory Retention and Forgetting According to this meta-analysis, memory doesn’t just gradually fade in one consistent way. Instead, short-term and long-term forgetting work in different ways.