3-Read Friday #33

Suvivroship bias, memorisation, and retreival buy-in

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Here are three blog posts that I found interesting this week.

1. Do You Know Where Your Holes Are? by Craig Latimir

Craig takes the concept of survivorship bias (using the classic example of WW2 planes) and applies it to the word of education. We are all survivors, so our views on what is effective may be guided by our own experiences. As students, we were never taught how to revise effectively, and we did okay, so our students will be fine. As teachers, we were never taught how to plan lessons, and we did okay, so why do we need to support other teachers in doing so? There are some really important questions to reflect upon here.

2. Good Memorization, Bad Memorization by Dylan Kane

As Dylan points out at the top of this post, the word “memorisation” is polarising for teachers. Dylan goes on to distinguish between the kinds of things we do want our students to memorise and the kind of things that aren’t suited to memorisation in this way.

3. Retrieval buy-in by Peps Mccrea

In his usual short, snappy way, Peps describes a key issue students face when revising - the techniques they use may not be effective. I love the link to the study that suggests 45% of students rely predominantly on rereading and note-taking when we know these are not as effective as practice testing and other retrieval strategies. This is a good one to share with students in these last few weeks before exams!

If you found this edition of 3-Read Friday useful, feel free to share it with colleagues. Also, you can check out all the back issues of my Eedi newsletter and Tips for Teachers newsletter here. But, most importantly of all, have a great weekend.

Craig