Learning Blog

Start, stop, start, stop, start ….. “learning little and often” is one of the best learning strategies for your children

What is one of the very best learning strategies you can use in helping your children with their learning?

Were you ever in a lesson at school or a lecture at college in which the teacher or lecturer spoke and spoke and spoke and went on and on and on for hours on end? Did you learn anything?

I have been in just such a situation several times and I have to say trying to keep my attention was like torture. Did I do any learning? Did I retain anything? Not a bean! Such lessons to me where as useful as an asthmatic ant carrying heavy shopping to my house, no use at all! (Thank you for that line Blackadder).

Why are long continuous lessons such ineffective learning strategies?

Well, because as researchers and writers such as Eric Jensen have concluded “the brain learns best in the pattern of a pulse. Learning is best when focused, diffused, focused, diffused…..”.

So what are the best learning strategies?

The best learning strategies have activities based on a start, stop, start, stop approach.

Your children learn for a relatively short period of time and then take a break, doing something else in the break. After the break you start the learning once again.

This then gives the brain the best chance of remembering what you have learned.
Jensen says that if you are working with young learners that activities should be limited to 5 to 10 minutes, for adolescents 10 to 15 minutes and interestingly for adults 15 to 25 minutes.

The point is this; when you as a parent are helping your children with their learning, by far the best learning strategies are based on, as we say at The Learning Well, doing it “little and often”.

If you ask your children to carry out an activity or activities and follow the ‘little and often’ approach your children will be learning in the best way; they will be learning in the ‘pattern of a pulse’ and using one of the very best learning strategies.