Teaching for retention (or not)

[Danestress]

I like teaching "mastery" subjects. Math, Latin, violin. We work and work and I see the progression. Each new lesson builds on the material already mastered, and with plenty of review, I see my children obtain working knowledge. I can see what is coming next at each grade level, and I have sort of a "plan" of what my children should be doing.

 

I struggle, though, with subjects that are more informational. To what extent do you teach history with the intent that your children will store the information in their long-term memory, and to what extent do you accept that you are studying and reading things that will not be within your child's "working knowledge" capacity a year from now?

 

For example, two years after you cover Ancient Greece, what do you expect your children will really remember? And if you can identify what it is you expect them to remember, why are you teaching the things you DON'T expect them to remember?

 

Sometimes we "dig deep" because I want my children to learn how to find information or how to write papers and the material at hand provides and opportunity to do so. But apart form the practice of research and writing, do you spend time really thinking about what information you want to see become permanently instilled in your child's long term memory? Do you keep your lesson plans based on what you want your child to really master and remember, and how do you balance that with wanting your child to just read a lot about (as an example) Ancient Greece so that they are left with the general knowledge that it's an interesting topic and worth reading more on from time to time?

 

One reason that I am thinking about this is that I had a really good education as a child. My parents sent us to a private school that prepared us very well for college. It was demanding, and I remember very frequently in college having the sensation that my class mates didn't really know how to annotate a bibliography or had dreadful writing skills or didn't know really basic things like the Pythagorean Theorem. But even so, I learn SO much homeschooling my children. I relearned things I had forgotten even when teaching 3rd grade. How pathetic is that?

[i.love.lucy]

For me it's more about "exposure". I certainly don't expect my children to memorize everything they are being taught, and I too enjoy seeing the mastery in certain subjects. But what I like is the ability to expose them to so much literature, philosophy, culture, music, etc, so they become well rounded individuals. Then they can decide for themselves what to study further.

 

I have very poor long term memory. I only remember snippets of my childhood and often think I don't remember anything I was taught in school. But, as I'm teaching my children I find that a lot of it's still there, locked away in my brain or subconscious. And certainly we can all agree here that being well read is one of the greatest gifts we can give our children.

 

Instead of spending countless hours on mind numbing busy work at school, our lessons are short and we can explore so much more!

[lllll]

I struggle, though, with subjects that are more informational. To what extent do you teach history with the intent that your children will store the information in their long-term memory, and to what extent do you accept that you are studying and reading things that will not be within your child's "working knowledge" capacity a year from now?

 

For example, two years after you cover Ancient Greece, what do you expect your children will really remember? And if you can identify what it is you expect them to remember, why are you teaching the things you DON'T expect them to remember?

 

I don't really 'teach' history. I give them the GB's list (ours is a combo of WTM and HTRAB lists) and they read them. I discuss what I can, they discuss amongst themselves, etc. What I have done, though, is to insist they read a good bit of history outside of the GB, yet related to the GB they are reading. They read bio's, books about the time period (vs just the WTM recommendations for the context paper), primary sources if available, and so on. All of them really enjoy this and I can see where it helps pull everything together and makes it stick for them. It's not necessarily the details that stick. It's the over all flow and timeline of history that sticks. For example, when we're discussing parts of the Bible, they are able to fill in the blanks with more broad world history information. It's not just Bible stories, ancient Greece stories, Roman stories, etc. They all come together to form one story. History.

 

As far as goals, I had no idea it would turn out this way. This is not how I learned the miniscule bits of history I had. I was taught history like I was taught science ... memorize this, recite that. Nothing in my schooling prepared me for this. There was no way I could have 'taught' it. I could only stand back and let them go.

 

So I guess I would say just trust your kids. Give them the encouragement, guide them towards excellent resources, make the time for them to study, and watch them go. And, hopefully, you'll be able to keep up with them. ;)

 

FWIW

[Greta]

 

I struggle, though, with subjects that are more informational. To what extent do you teach history with the intent that your children will store the information in their long-term memory, and to what extent do you accept that you are studying and reading things that will not be within your child's "working knowledge" capacity a year from now?

 

For example, two years after you cover Ancient Greece, what do you expect your children will really remember? And if you can identify what it is you expect them to remember, why are you teaching the things you DON'T expect them to remember?

 

Personally, I think that a big part of the reason many of us fail to remember these things is because of the incredibly dull way it is presented. Nothing sucks the life out of history like a history textbook. We focus on living books, biographies, and related hands-on activities since my dd loves that, to bring these subjects more to life. Of course, I don't expect 100% retention, but I expect that she will retain this knowledge far better than I did.

 

Also, I expect that she will *enjoy* these subjects, and retain some curiosity about them. Because of the way history was taught in the public school I attended, I thought it was the most boring subject in the world. Now I find it absolutely fascinating. But I wish I had realized that sooner. I am trying to help my dd realize that now.

[KJB]

My kids have loved studying philosophy this year. It has lent itself well to weaving in topics we've studied in the past in both history and science.

 

Holding our own little "Great Conversation" at dinner time (or in the car, shopping, while living) about things we've learned and weaving in things we studied awhile ago to topics we're currently studying aids in retention more than anything else we do. After all, the reason retention is important is to be able to apply knowledge learned to new situations and ideas.

 

Retention is also a main reason I add dates to our memory work.

 

We have a stack of note cards for each subject. When we learn something that lends itself to memory work (a date for example) we'll add it both to our timeline and our memory work. Then, the memory work gets reviewed and old topics we've studied revisited.

 

So, my theory, is keep talking with them about everything you study. Don't just study and move on, but relate new topics to old and go out of your way to illustrate connections.

[love2read]

I don't know the ages of your children, but over the years I've developed an approach that works well. This was after having seen the older children study Ancient Greece and other subjects in depth only to forget most of it 4 years later.

For history and science, starting in 2nd grade, the student learns about one person, event, thing, etc. very well. He may listen to us read many books, will read books himself, but there is only one point that he is expected to know inside and out. By the time junior high starts they know over 200 chunks of information about key people, events and objects.

I choose the "thing" on Monday or Tuesday when going over material with him or her. At one point I had created a long list of must know things, but it's just as easy to do it this way even with or perhaps especially with, a big family.

For example, last week my almost 8 year old memorized the 5 or 6 main parts of a flower and how they work. She colored, labeled and explained it to me. I'll ask her to tell me the parts and how they work once a week for the next few weeks. This week she was to memorize some information about Benjamin Franklin, but when I told her that she grimaced and I realized she had already done that last year. So this week she'll memorize the when, where and why of Lexington and concord. It will only be a few sentences and will be a natural extension of what we are reading. Her older sister will focus on the dates of and decisions from the first and second continental congress along with who was there and Patrick Henry.

 

It's very simple to do it casually like this and makes life so much easier. Just explain something in more detail from their book and have them repeat it back to you. Tell them about it again and have them tell you again. Ask them a few more times that day and review the rest of the week. This is just as easy to do with science as history.

 

We also memorize the catechism and some poetry, but that's unrelated to the science and history which is more of a natural retelling with facts.

Have you seen memoria press books for Greek Myths, FM and Christian Studies? They do a fine job of tellling what to memorize each weeks. It's just enough.