I began this chapter by pointing out that there are two obvious reasons to practice: to gain minimum competence (as when a teenager practices driving with a manual shift until he can reliably use it) and to gain proficiency (as when a golfer practices putts to improve her accuracy). I then suggested a third reason to continue practicing mental skills, even when there are not obvious improvements in our abilities. Such practice yields three benefits: (1) it can help the mental process become automatic and thereby enable further learning; (2) it makes memory long lasting; and (3) it increases the likelihood that learning will transfer to new situations.
The downside of this sort of practice is probably obvious: It is pretty boring to practice something if we're not getting any better at it! Here are some ideas about how we can reap some of the benefits of practice while minimizing the costs.
What Should Be Practiced?
Not everything can be practiced extensively. There simply isn't time, but fortunately not everything needs to be practiced. The benefits that I've said will accrue from practice provide some direction as to what sorts of things should be practiced. If practice makes mental processes automatic, we can then ask, Which processes need to become automatic? Retrieving number facts from memory seems to be a good candidate, as does retrieving letter sounds from memory. A science teacher may decide that his students need to have at their fingertips basic facts about elements. In general, the processes that need to become automatic are probably the building blocks of skills that will provide the most benefit if they are automatized. Building blocks are the things one does again and again in a subject area, and they are the prerequisites for more advanced work.
Space Out the Practice
There is no reason that all of the practice with a particular concept needs to occur within a short span of time or even within a particular unit. In fact, there is good reason to space out practice. As noted earlier, memory is more enduring when practice is spaced out, and practicing the same skills again and again is bound to be boring. It is better to offer some change. An additional benefit of spacing may be that students will get more practice in thinking through how to apply what they know. If all of the practice of a skill is bunched together, students will know that every problem they encounter must be a variant of the skill they are practicing. But if material from a week or a month or three months ago is sometimes included, students must think more carefully about how to tackle the problem, and about what knowledge and skills they have that might apply. Then too, remember that you are not the only teacher your students will encounter. An English teacher might think it's very important for her students to understand the use of imagery in poetry, but the knowledge and skills necessary to appreciate imagery will be acquired over years of instruction.
Fold Practice into More Advanced Skills
You may target a basic skill as one that needs to be practiced to the point of mastery, but that doesn't mean that students can't also practice it in the context of more advanced skills. For example, students may need to practice retrieving sounds in response to printed letters, but why not put that practice into the context of interesting reading, insofar as possible? A competent bridge player needs to be able to count the points in a hand as a guide to bidding, but if I were a bridge instructor I wouldn't have my students do nothing but count points until they could do so automatically. Automaticity takes lots of practice. The smart way to go is to distribute practice not only across time but also across activities. Think of as many creative ways as you can to practice the really crucial skills, but remember that students can still get practice in the basics while they are working on more advanced skills.
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