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Retention - is it up to you, or the curriculum you choose?


Tranquility7
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Is retention up to the curriculum, or the parent/teacher?  

  1. 1. Is retention up to the curriculum, or the parent/teacher?

    • Retention is totally up to the curriculum (if it doesnâ??t review, we usually donâ??t either).
      6
    • Retention is mostly due to the curriculum, but I add in a little review here and there.
      10
    • Retention is mostly up to me, but I donâ??t do nearly enough reviews.
      2
    • Retention is mostly up to me, and I do ok on reviews but wish I did a lot more.
      7
    • Retention is totally up to me, and I review practically everything we learn.
      9
    • Other
      14


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For elementary grades, how much do you expect the curriculum to manage all of the reviewing and retention, verses taking care of all of that yourself?

 

I convert pretty much everything we study into memory work of some kind, and incorporate it into our daily reviews (I’m using a spaced repetition software to manage it all). But every now and then I hear someone say that a curriculum is bad because there is low retention. I’m not sure I’d even know if a curriculum had low retention, since we always review everything on our own. If we didn’t, I’d probably think EVERY curriculum had low retention, since I think we would forget it all without any review, you know?

 

So tell me, do you convert your lessons with your DC into memory work and review periodically on your own, or do you just leave it up to the curriculum (and once the curriculum is finished you don’t do any more review of it unless it comes up in another curriculum later)?

Edited by Glory
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Hmmmm... I'm not really sure how to vote. I choose curriculum for skills subjects that builds upon itself, so outside review isn't necessary. In content subjects (history, science, etc.) I don't have a goal of retention in the early elementary years. My goal is exposure. I don't expect a child to remember in high school something they learned in K. :)

 

I guess that's an â€otherâ€.

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I kind of follow Boscopup's method-I don't expect retention in many Elementary subjects, and those that I do tend to be the ones that have review innate in moving on. I do keep memory work-type stuff (history sentences, Latin vocabulary, Lyrical science, Geography songs) on the carschooling playlist, which is some review.

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Hmmmm... I'm not really sure how to vote. I choose curriculum for skills subjects that builds upon itself, so outside review isn't necessary. In content subjects (history, science, etc.) I don't have a goal of retention in the early elementary years. My goal is exposure. I don't expect a child to remember in high school something they learned in K. :)

 

I guess that's an â€otherâ€.

 

:iagree: Skill retention should happen if you're progressing in an orderly way. Content retention isn't that important to me in the elementary years. They'll soak things up and retain them, but we don't do memory work really.

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Hmmmm... I'm not really sure how to vote. I choose curriculum for skills subjects that builds upon itself, so outside review isn't necessary. In content subjects (history, science, etc.) I don't have a goal of retention in the early elementary years. My goal is exposure. I don't expect a child to remember in high school something they learned in K. :)

 

I guess that's an â€otherâ€.

 

i'm glad I read through the replies before responding b/c after reading the poll options, my thoughts were,ummmmm, none of the above (or the obligatory other. ;) )

 

:iagree: w/boscopup. She articulated it well. It is the reality of how my kids have progressed from K through to graduation. They do memorize poems, etc, but that is for fun, not required. (my 8th grade dd memorized Edinburg after Flodden last yr. It is something like 19 pages long!)

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Hmmmm... I'm not really sure how to vote. I choose curriculum for skills subjects that builds upon itself, so outside review isn't necessary. In content subjects (history, science, etc.) I don't have a goal of retention in the early elementary years. My goal is exposure. I don't expect a child to remember in high school something they learned in K. :)

 

I guess that's an â€otherâ€.

 

Yep, other than math, I don't care much retention. They will retain if they are interested

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I'm always struggling to find curricula that I think is worthy of memorizing. I've yet to have a student who has memorized easily, so I'm pretty picky about requiring memory work.

 

I have had students memorize scripture, hymns, math formulas and facts, Latin and Greek. But even in those subjects I have really struggled to pick what I wanted them to memorize.

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Thanks for the replies. Very interesting!!

 

At risk of derailing this thread... may I ask which software you use? :bigear:

Thanks!

 

Sure! We use Anki. It is not perfect, but I highly recommend it anyway :) We have used it a few months now (we are using the 2.0 beta version), and I'm still tweaking it to figure out the best way for us to use it, but overall it is going well. I just convert everything we cover into memory work and then enter them into Anki. Ideally we would review our decks 6x/wk, but 3-4x/wk is more realistic, and that seems to work okay with the program.

 

I have all our different subjects split into different decks. Creating the cards can be a hassle (and I am still behind on some), but one thing I am *really* excited about is that I can just reuse the cards for my DD when she gets older (DS and DD can each have their own copy).

 

DS usually enjoys reviewing his Anki decks, and it is a profitable time since it gives us ample opportunity for making connections between previous and new knowledge.

 

Btw, I noticed you are foreign-language focused; spaced rep software seems to have been developed initially for language learning, and having now used it for a variety of different types of content, I would say that it does indeed work most effectively for tiny bits of info like foreign language vocabulary (as opposed to poetry, for instance).

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Living books are usually written by one person who has a passion for the subject and writes in conversational or narrative style. The books pull you into the subject and involve your emotions, so it’s easy to remember the events and facts. Living books make the subject “come alive.†They can be contrasted to dry writing, like what is found in most encyclopedias or textbooks, which basically lists informational facts in summary form. You might be surprised to find that living books are available for most school subjects — even math, geography, and science!

From "Simply Charlotte Mason"

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