How to Teach So Students Remember

Memory is inextricable from learning; there’s little sense in teaching students something new if they can’t recall it later. Ensuring that the knowledge teachers impart is appropriately stored in the brain and easily retrieved when necessary is a vital component of instruction. In How to Teach So Students Remember, author Marilee Sprenger provides you with a proven, research-based, easy-to-follow framework for doing just that.

This second edition of Sprenger’s celebrated book, updated to include recent research and developments in the fields of memory and teaching, offers seven concrete, actionable steps to help students use what they’ve learned when they need it. Step by step, you will discover how to:

• Actively engage your students with new learning.
• Teach students to reflect on new knowledge in a meaningful way.
• Train students to recode new concepts in their own words to clarify understanding.
• Use feedback to ensure that relevant information is binding to necessary neural pathways.
• Incorporate multiple rehearsal strategies to secure new knowledge in both working and long-term memory.
• Design lesson reviews that help students retain information beyond the test.
• Align instruction, review, and assessment to help students more easily retrieve information.

The practical strategies and suggestions in this book, carefully followed and appropriately differentiated, will revolutionise the way you teach and immeasurably improve student achievement. Remember: By consciously crafting lessons for maximum “stickiness,” we can equip all students to remember what’s important when it matters.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction to the Second Edition 1

1. Step 1: Reach and Teach 7
2. Step 2: Reflect 37
3. Step 3: Recode 60
4. Step 4: Reinforce 81
5. Step 5: Rehearse 103
6. Step 6: Review 127
7. Step 7: Retrieve 148
8. Realizaion 168

Appendices

• Appendix A Brain Briefing 180
• Appendix B Graphic Organizers 194

References 201

Index 211

About the Author 218