Sustainable Learning

A child who scores well on a test at the end of a unit and then forgets everything by the following month has not learned sustainably. Sustainable learning means knowledge and skills that are retained, transferred, and applied — months and years later, in contexts the teacher never anticipated.

Retrieval practice

The single most evidence-backed strategy for long-term retention is retrieval practice: regularly asking children to recall information without looking it up. This is more effective than re-reading or summarising, even though it feels harder. The difficulty is the point — the effort of retrieval is what strengthens the memory.

Spaced repetition

Learning is more durable when it is distributed over time. A topic visited briefly, then revisited two weeks later, then again a month after that, is better retained than a topic covered intensively in one week. Design curricula and review schedules with spacing in mind.

Transfer

Knowledge is only truly learned when it can be applied in a new context. Ask children to use what they know in unfamiliar situations: a grammar concept applied to a different text, a maths strategy applied to a real-world problem. If they can only do it in the context where they learned it, the learning is shallow.

Metacognition

Children who know how they learn retain information better than those who don't. Teaching metacognition — helping children identify which strategies work for them, what confuses them, and when they are ready to move on — is one of the most sustainable investments a teacher can make. Metacognitive children continue to improve their own learning long after any specific lesson is over.

Low stakes, high frequency

Frequent, low-stakes checking — exit tickets, quick oral reviews, think-pair-share — produces more durable learning than infrequent high-stakes testing. Children who are regularly asked what they know and don't know develop accurate self-assessment and are less anxious about formal evaluation.