We remember what we love.

It’s not even difficult, is it?

It’s so easy to remember stories we read as children, so easy to remember lessons we enjoyed, so easy to remember teachers who inspired us. And that’s the difference it makes.

Memory is what gives us access to education. I’ll bet that we’ve all taught classes only to come back next lesson and everything is gone, vacant stares and zombie faces as we pleadingly beg for an answer to what we thought was simple recollection.

My experience is that top sets (whatever your opinion of setting) remember. It just sticks! Somewhere in their massive brains they retain all sorts of snippets of knowledge and they make it look easy.

So what can we do for those who forget more quickly than the proverbial goldfish?

The answer doesn’t lie with me, sorry! What I have been trialing, however, is visuals. What if we could say to students, “Do you remember that sheet with the big splat on it?” and the whole lesson came zooming back into focus?

Like the lovely Demeter here…

Or what if we could refer back to the colours or patterns of the worksheets, just to give them the little nudge needed to build on what we covered last lesson, rather than starting again from scratch? Even placement on the page might help:

“Remember that big blue box in the bottom corner from last week? What skill were we learning then? What did we have to do?”

 

And, if nothing else, isn’t it a HOOK?

How much more excited would you be to look into Shakespeare and research him with a worksheet like this than a whole page of text?

 

Take a look!

Let me know what you think…