According to research.com, “Three quarters (75%) of American high schoolers and half of middle schoolers described themselves as “often or always feeling stressed” by schoolwork”. It’s an understatement to say that high school students procrastinate everything in their busy and stressful lives. Several high school students find it more effective to study by memorizing large chunks of knowledge in a short time rather than trying to learn and understand a concept. It’s also no surprise that students are constantly trying to find an effective way to study well in order to excel at school. “Spaced” practice might just be the technique they’ll need.
What is Distributed Practice?
Distributed practice is a learning strategy that breaks up concepts into smaller sections for review over a long period of time. This ensures less cramming and can aid students in remembering more information. Repeating the information over and over in one sitting can often lead to a student losing or forgetting the information due to a lack of understanding, but spaced practice can help students retain the information for a long period, even after a test. This method is also closely related to “divide and conquer” because you are able to plan out the sessions for better success for more concept based subjects such as physics and math.
Distributed Practice Techniques
The best way to follow this is to follow 4 simple steps.
- Initial Mastery – Being introduced to a new concept and understanding the foundations of the concept
- Spacing – Waiting for a few days or weeks before revisiting the curriculum.
- Retrieval – Recalling as much information as you remember in a new study session for the following concept, writing down the information you can recollect, and making sure to handwrite the notes because it will aid in familiarizing with the subject even more.
- Repetition – Repeating this process of studying the same matter over a long period of time with short period sessions.
How and Why is It Effective?
Distributed practice is a technique that has been researched for many years and there are several pieces of data that show the benefits of this method. Some of which are really important for high school students as they progress into the real world.
- Long Term Memory – When students cram study, they are likely to forget it right after the test but repeating the information and studying it over a period of time several times will ensure that they can recall this information in the future and remember it with ease.
- Complex thinking – Complex thinking is developed when a student is truly thorough with their material and by being able to remember the knowledge for a long period of time, teenagers are able to apply their analysis and interpretation skills more often in their daily lives. This would improve the quality of knowledge. They can also further their knowledge and have a better sense of understanding through critical thinking.
- Procedural Memory- Procedural memory, a type of long-term memory involved in the performance of different skills and actions, is developed when the student is repeating the same content several times so they are able to recall and perform certain tasks without conscious effort.
- Contextual differences – Contextual differences are when students study the same material in different environments, different times of the day , and from a variety of resources. This can allow students to better grasp the knowledge.
- Teaching – When a student is able to understand and apply the concept learned, they are likely to be able to spread their knowledge with their peers and teach other children in the future.
tl;dr
The key to success in school is being able to develop several techniques that will help you study and grasp lots of knowledge in a wide variety of subjects. Through one technique that has been proved to work, distributed practice, students can not only remember high school concepts for a test but even 5 years down the road. If you are struggling, try out this method. Just remember to hold yourself accountable and maybe even try it with friends who will always keep you motivated!