Lessons · Teaching · the forgetting curve

Forgetting is the normal case

Without being brought back, most of what is taught today is gone within days, so one good explanation is not teaching; it is the first of several appointments with the same idea.

Hone is a place to practise a career, one idea a day. This is one of its lessons, written out in full and free to read without an account.

What it is for

You taught it, they had it, you checked and they still had it. Three weeks later at the unit test a third of the room had nothing, and you were not imagining the lesson going well and they were not pretending. Memory does this to everybody. You have the other half of the evidence in your own hands: this site has asked you one question a day since you signed up, on things you met weeks ago, and that is the only reason they are still there. A plan that does not expect forgetting is surprised by it every single time.

How to think about it

Stop treating a lesson as a delivery and start treating it as the first of four or five appointments spread over weeks. Put the appointments into the plan on the day you teach it, not in the week before the test.

Worked example

Taught: 14 March

The first appointment. Nothing is finished here, and nothing about the lesson going well changes that.

Appointments: 15 March, 18 March, 25 March, 15 April

Written into the plan the same day, before the lesson is delivered.

Each appointment: 3 min, 2 questions, nothing marked

Small enough to survive a real week. An appointment you cannot keep is not in the plan.

Cost across the term: under a quarter of one lesson

To keep a lesson you already spent fifty minutes on.

Your turn

A lesson gets four appointments of three minutes each. Write the line that totals the time.

4 appointments × 3 min =  min

The trap

Reading a strong end-of-lesson check as proof that something is learned. It is proof that they have it now, on the desk, with the lesson still in the air. Learned means still there on a Tuesday three weeks later with no warm-up.

Practise the forgetting curve on HoneA question on it now, a real problem where there is one, and it is remembered for review. Free, no email needed.