Learning’s Repeat Champion

As we fill our instructional minds with thoughts of going deeper, going higher, and going across curricula, there is one tried and tested learning technique that stands out as the repeat champion of learning – repetition! Indeed, if we want to go deeper, we must also have wide knowledge. If we want our students to synthesize, they must have a firm grip on knowledge. If we want connections across curricula, learners must have knowledge across those curricula. As we strive for higher, deeper levels of learning, we must not leave out that base level of knowledge. As we have all learned when we wanted to remember a list of terms, the steps in a process, a telephone number, or even someone’s name, repetition reigns supreme. We say it over and over to ourselves so that we remember.

We use lots of tricks to remember, and they work for adults as well as for children. Songs, rhymes, and chants help us to recall information that could otherwise be inaccessible in our brains. For instance, how many of us can say the alphabet easily without singing it? What about the books of the New Testament? I’d never get past the Letter to the Romans if I wasn’t singing.

God calls us, in fact, to have lots of repetition to remember important things, especially in the Shema:
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.” Deuteronomy 6:4-9 (NIV) In other words, say it, read it, remember it over and over and over.

Repetition helps us to remember, and we must remember before we can connect or take knowledge deeper, higher, or across. Use this ancient wisdom and build opportunities for repetition into your courses. Here are a few tools to do so.

– “Turn to your neighbor and try to remember the names of these XNumber concepts.”
– Use an acronym for key terms.
– Have students recite a key phrase or concept with you, then to each other.
– Have students give each other mini-oral quizzes before transitioning to another concept.
– Prepare short mini-quizzes for students to take on mobile-devices on the material you have been covering.
– Have students make flash cards for an assignment to help them remember key terms.

When it comes to remembering, repetition is Learning’s Repeat Champion!