: Activating Prior Knowledge and Retrieval Practice Activating prior knowledge is a fundamental factor in the success of new learning.

When we consider how children learn and therefore how we teach, we often consider skills such as explaining, modelling and demonstrating. All of these elements are primarily targeted towards the transfer of knowledge from the expert (the teacher) to the novice (the student) and adding knowledge to students’ long term memories. However, we need to ensure that the same focus and planning is given to the transfer of knowledge back out of our students’ long term memory (retrieval) and realising that this is just as important as the initial learning itself. Consistent research has shown that retrieval practice can benefit pupils’ learning. The evidence that underpins retrieval practice, highlights its potential to support pupil learning.

Activating prior knowledge is a fundamental factor in the success of new learning. For learning to take place and ​‘stick’ it has to be constructed upon existing knowledge within the long term memory. One way of doing this is the ​‘braindump’ – get children to write down everything they can remember about a topic before the lesson begins. This is a great way to see what children know and can be used to base new learning on. If new learning has nothing to connect with, it will not be stored in the long term memory no matter how effective a teacher’s initial instruction is.
New learning equals new connections.