On The Ball
Research into the way the brain lays down memories has been used by a British school to teach a complete GCSE module in 90 minutes rather than the usual four months. And for a third of that time the students were playing basket ball or juggling!
Monkseaton High School in Tyne and Wear in the North-east of England, which has a history of pioneering developments in education, experimented with a class of 13 and 14 year-olds teaching them a GCSE science module a year earlier than normal.
For the exercise the pupils watched a 20-minute PowerPoint presentation of 70 slides covering the entire module, narrated by the teacher and then had a ten minute break, playing basket ball or juggling.
This was followed by two more 20 minute sessions – each followed by 10 minutes of exercise – but in each of these sessions the pupils were questioned increasingly closely on the contents of the PowerPoint presentation.
Three days later they were given a multiple choice test on the content they had learned which covered evolution, adaptation, genetics and genetic engineering. Four out of five of the 46 pupils got at least a D grade in the module; two in five got at least a C and some children got A grades. The following year they were taught the module traditionally over a four month period and more than a quarter of the pupils scored worse than they did after the experimental session.
Paul Kelley, the headteacher of Monkseaton said the technique, called ‘spaced learning’, was based on research into how the brain creates memories, which says that breaks are needed to allow lessons to filter from the short-term to the long-term memory.
"Nobody got less than 40%,” he said. “We were amazed. We know spaced learning works, we knew it was effective for revision. But these are not easy exams - it's hardcore theory. For teachers and educationists this is stunning."
The school is using the technique in history, science and media teaching and, after trials involving academics from Manchester University, is extending it from revision lessons to initial classes as well. It indicates that it would be possible for students to pass an entire GCSE in a few days, Kelley said. GCSEs have on average four to six modules each.
Whether the content of the lessons is laid down to long term memory is still open to question. The fact that some of the students did worse a year later will leave education experts suggesting that the system is good for passing tests but not for deeper learning.
© GEMS Education
