While in school, students learn multiple subjects, concepts, facts, and ideas. However, they are not taught different learning strategies and instead are left to their own devices. Educators must equip students with functional study habits so that they’re able to make sense of different concepts. Once they’re able to grasp what’s being taught in school, they’ll easily succeed in school. Here are two common evidence-based strategies that are easy to incorporate in the classroom.

Spaced Strategy

This is a method of studying that gives students days or even weeks to study a single concept repeatedly. Focusing on one idea for such an extended duration allows the student to draw meaningful connections that make it easy to recall the concept later on. 

Spaced learning usually involves intervals between different learning programs. These breaks give the student an opportunity to forget and later recall what they had previously learned. 

An example of a spaced strategy:

1. Set aside a couple of weeks to go over the study material. You can extend this time to a month or two if you are dealing with a deep concept.
2. Give each concept a maximum of 15 minutes as the daily study time.
3. Carry out active studying for two days, take a three-day break and resume for a further two days.
4. Start off with the dated resources before moving on to the newer stuff.
5. Create a summary of what you learned during the session. Remember not to refer to the material but rather recall from your memory.

Retrieval Method

Students carrying out this strategy will read several words in a list and then retrieve them. Repeatedly doing so allows you to store the information permanently in your brain. This method will work on any subject that involves a lot of reading.

The method is similar to memorizing a song as students will first go over a piece of information until they’re satisfied that they’ve understood everything. After that, they’ll record everything they can remember about what they read. Once they repeated the process a second time, they were more likely to understand the concept better.

Successive Relearning

If you study a concept for the first time, there’s a high chance that you won’t fully grasp every detail. However, successive repetitions allow you to better understand the subject and master it. In successive relearning, a student will practice multiple times until they master the subject. Usually, the strategy involves going over several questions and attempting them over and over until they get a perfect score.

Even as all these strategies are beneficial to a student, you are likely to get better results if you combine two methods. Researchers found out that pairing spaced and retrieval methods guarantee maximum results.