Make It Stick Flashcards
What works better than rereading?
Retrieval exercises like flash cards
Retrieval works even better when it’s…
Delayed
Massed practice (doing the same thing over and over) feels…
Productive, but it’s not as useful as varied and spaced practice
Blocked practice is ____ and is often confused for ____
cycling through exercises in the same sequence every time (and) varied practice
What questions are asked during “reflection?”
What happened?
What did I do?
How did it work out?
Taking a few moments to think about key concepts, examples, relating information to old ideas, etc. is called
Reflection
What is elaboration?
Connecting new ideas to what you already know (like an outline in law school).
Applying it to ideas beyond what’s explicitly covered and making it “workable” in new ways.
What is generation?
Rephrasing key ideas in your own words, or imagining what you might do differently next time
When reading a text, pause periodically to ask these questions…
What are the key ideas? What terms or ideas are new to me? How would I define them? How do the ideas relate to what I already know?
What’s a tool that can be used to more easily recover arbitrary information?
Mnemonic devices. Also, pausing to come up with images or other things that can help to solidify the idea helps.
Tips from the psychology class (Fellows)
1) Always do the reading before the class
2) Anticipate test questions and answers as you read
3) Answer lecture questions in your head as they’re given
4) Review study guides and learn terms you can’t recall or just don’t know
5) Copy bolded/important terms into a notebook and make sure to thoroughly understand them
6) Reorganize course information into a study guide of your own design (outline)
7) Write out important concepts and put them in a place where you can practice them
8) Use spaced testing
