What does the Science of your brain tell

What does the Science of your brain tell us about revision? “Spot” revised how to whistle I don’t hear him whistling I said he revised, I didn’t say he’d learnt how to whistle

Memorise this number 13922460531

How do we know something has been learnt? Change in long term memory Retention over time Endured thoughts What isn't learning? • Repeating something you were taught/read 5 mins to 2 weeks ago Short term performance is a very poor predictor of learning

Can we cram and learn? • Can your brain cram enough? • Lets have some brain science………………

Proff Bjork: Memory – 2 aspects work together. 1. storage strength 2. retrieval strength So we need to ensure its stored well (Strong links: deep learning) We need to ensure its easily recalled (frequent spaced retreival)

Memorise this number 1392 246 0 531 Area code for Even Odd numbers Exeter numbers going down going up

What revision activities are we doing/planning? • •

You can intensively engaged in relevant revision activities with little or no resulting change in LT memory

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Desirable difficulties • For your brain to commit something to LT memory it has to be difficult for your brain. • • • Testing Mixing up content Making mistakes Force forgetting Challenging activities

Testing alone improves how powerful your memory is.

Making mistakes and being corrected improves memory

Sadly – what doesn’t work • • • Writing out your exam TT lots of times Reading and re-reading notes or revision guides Writing out pretty flash cards Re-writing / Highlighting notes Drawing lots of spider diagrams These make you feel like you are revising, but they don’t help you remember and learn stuff

So how can we structure revision that will help? Practising retrieval – regularly Force forgetting – leave space between learning and revision Create desirable difficulties – make it hard for your brain Interleave– mix your revision up Don’t confuse ST performance with learning Write tests and get friends and family to test you

How about that number? 13922460531 How long will you remember it for?