Prior learning gives your children a big head start in school education and improved results
We are going to let you into a little secret. This secret is a learning technique, a key to your children getting ahead and improving results in their school education and at the same time makes their learning so much easier.
After we have told you the secret we are also going to tell you how you can use this knowledge to help your children and give them one of the best chances you can for their education and learning. To explain, the first thing we are going to give you is the results of some brilliant research.
Many researchers have reached a very clear and stark conclusion when it comes to education and learning. Their brilliant insight is that experience of facts, information, or ideas prior to formal learning makes learning quicker and easier and formal education performance much better.
Bower and Mann found that learning and recollection improved when learning material was put into a pattern and given to learners prior to their formal learning of that material.
Well and Murphy in the Encyclopedia of Educational Research say that prior experience of subject matter is a very powerful factor in improving learners subsequent learning and education.
The basic point is this; to help your children to improve results at school as you can get them to learn the subject matter outside of school before they do the subject in school.
But isn’t this difficult, doesn’t this take masses of time?
The answer to both of these questions is no, it can take just a little time when you use the right technique to help your children!
The technique to use to help your children learn quickly and easily, and which gives them the prior experience argued for by the researchers, and that will help them get ahead is Memory Mapping.
As seen above, researchers advocate a pattern being used to help prior learning and Memory Mapping provides just such a pattern.
Memory Mapping is a really clear way to take ideas and facts off a page and put them in an easy to remember form.
Your children will see how ideas all connect together in the pattern and they will remember them.
By taking facts and ideas from books and putting them into a Memory Map your children will learn and remember. As an example see below a completed Memory Map that we use to explain about Memory Mapping. This Map has printed words and images which you can also do for your maps or if you wish you or your children can create your memory maps by hand:
You and your children can use Memory Mapping for prior learning just about anything that will be part of their future school work.
The great thing about Memory Maps is that there does not need to be a great deal of writing which takes up lots of time. The Memory Map uses only a few words, images, color, and location to help your children remember.
The Memory Map then helps your children speak about a subject. If they can speak about it, then they know it, and they will have gained the early experience of the subjects they will be learning later in school. This will give them that vital head start making their formal education activities so much easier for them.
