School of Practice

Helping Students Overcome the Forgetting Curve

School of Practice

Show Notes

Have you ever delivered a lesson and felt your students were acing it, only to revisit the same information a week later and realize hardly any of the new content stuck? You just came up against the forgetting curve—and lost.

Our brains are hardwired to forget things unless we take active steps to remember. According to research, nearly half of new information—if not used right away—is forgotten within an hour of exposure. And if you wait a week, up to 90 percent fades into the mist.

But that’s not inevitable. In this critical episode of School of Practice, high school teacher Cathleen Beachboard shares her top three strategies to help students remember what she’s just taught them. We’ll ask her how she weaves these strategies directly into the learning process as she works to “flatten the forgetting curve.”

Related resources:

Learn more about this episode

3 Ways to Help Students Overcome the Forgetting Curve

How to Engage Elementary and Middle School Students’ Memory Processes to Improve Learning

Why Students Forget—and What You Can Do About It

Making Retrieval Practice a Classroom Routine (video)

Connecting Science to Problem-Solving in the Real World (video)

Finding the Retrieval ‘Sweet Spot’ for Students

Research: A New Look at Memory Retention and Forgetting

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