Review the words, but not straight away
We quickly forget what we have just learnt, unless we see it again at the right time. What the psychology of memory has shown, and what Lexikit does with it.
Independent mode keeps each child's words to work on again. This choice rests on two findings of the psychology of memory, which the French Eduscol guide on preschool vocabulary takes up for the classroom.
The forgetting curve
We learn fast and forget fast: this is the forgetting curve. Each review slows down the next forgetting. The Eduscol guide on teaching vocabulary in preschool (2020) draws the conclusion: “Repeated learning at regular intervals improves memorisation” (page 30, translated from French).
Spacing out reviews
Reviewing a word ten times on the same day works less well than reviewing it as many times over several days. This is the spacing effect, or distributed practice. Émilie Gerbier and her colleagues published a review of it in French in 2015, in L'Année psychologique, and Stanislas Dehaene makes it one of the conditions of consolidation in Apprendre ! (2018). The right moment to review a word is when you start to forget it, because the effort to retrieve it fixes it more firmly.
Testing yourself
Trying to remember is more effective than rereading: this is the testing effect. Stanislas Dehaene (2018) explains it by active engagement, one of the pillars of learning, with attention, feedback on errors and consolidation. For a young child, this means naming the picture before hearing the word, or looking for the card from memory before turning it over. Memory games and activities where the child says the word play this role.
In practice
A bingo on Monday, a memory game on Wednesday and a worksheet on Friday work better than an hour of vocabulary on Monday. Coming back now and then to the words of three weeks ago is better than always moving on to the next ones. Lexikit keeps your old resources, ready to be played again.
