Written by Lynda Fisher, Head of Primary School

Whenever I address parents at our Showcase events, I invite them to consider the importance of investing in Primary School education as opposed to taking a relaxed approach to the first phase of student learning and investing more heavily in the High School journey.  

Simply stated, the early years of education comprise the most critical phase of learning. It is during these years that neural pathways can be developed which set these little people up for academic and socio-emotional success, through their childhood and into their adulthood. If we were to capture an image of the brains of our young students through this time, we would notice that specific neural pathways form, depending on the quality and quantity of learning experiences offered. Such experiences also need to be delivered by educators who understand how the brains and the thinking of our children develop. They need to understand human cognitive structure.   

Before our students commence their journey through school, effective learning in the home and family involves stimulus and response, attachment to significant others and feedback, and a continuous loop of repeated modelling and imitation. Many of these learned experiences are committed to long-term memory, whether desirable or not, and provide the baseline off which the next phase of learning springboards. When young children enter the educational setting, effective teaching associated with learning involves two key elements: purposely building long-term memory and insightfully managing working memory. Long-term memory refers to the storage of information over extended periods (our library of learnt knowledge), while working memory is the cognitive system responsible for temporarily holding and manipulating information (new information we are accessing). 

For primary school children, this principle of developing cognitive function is crucial because it directly impacts their capacity and habit for lifelong learning and study. Across all grades at Moriah Primary School the educators demonstrate their belief that by focusing on building long-term memory, they can help students retain essential knowledge and skills over time. They do this using clearly identifiable strategies such as explicit instruction and ensuring they build context for the knowledge being imparted. This is achieved through repetition, retrieval practice, and spaced learning as it reinforces learning and ensures knowledge moves from short-term to long-term memory.  

The school day starts with half-an-hour of explicit teaching of small packages of knowledge (known as schema) and/or skill that ultimately contributes to an understanding of a bigger concept or idea. This package is delivered repeatedly over a single week, with the teacher dominating the talk on a Monday and the students building to sharing their own mastery of the knowledge by the Friday. During the school day, the same manageable piece of information being taught each morning is retrieved, revisited, and manipulated with the teacher or a peer. This serves to guide the student’s deeper understanding and application of their knowledge. Those who can retrieve and repeat the information accurately and meaningfully, move on to discovering new information. Those who cannot, relearn what was not previously understood. This shift in knowledge ownership is known as a gradual release of the responsibility for learning. It moves from the teacher instructing the student, through to teacher and student co-navigating the learning, and culminates in the student applying their knowledge and skill. The opportunity for creative or critical thinking to well understood foundational knowledge happens in the final phase of this gradual release.  

Research based on the works of cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham shows the importance of retrieving and reviewing concepts that are being learnt. If we don’t put learning into a meaningful context and complete the explicit teach, review, and retrieve process promptly and regularly after first meeting the knowledge to be acquired, it will not be transferred to long-term memory. This means that foundational learning does not happen successfully and working memory, which is needed for next steps in learning, is not freed up and ready to use. He also says that if students don’t experience this well-supported learning, it is likely that they will not enjoy school.  

Like our teachers, the students across the school have a clear understanding of how learning occurs in their brains and how they build packages of knowledge; schema. Complex concepts are broken into smaller, more manageable chunks and teachers help students better absorb and understand new material in a sequence of learning experiences.  They revisit and review what they have learnt in class, retrieve what they remember and understand, and identify the gaps in their knowledge so that they can return to the concept and relearn what has not been acquired. As smaller slices of knowledge are committed to long-term memory, working memory is freed to receive and manipulate new information. This avoids the overwhelm that can interfere with student progress. Management of working memory in this manner is vital for young learners as it influences their ability to process information effectively and they benefit from a compounding effect when building knowledge.  

This builds the students’ agency, so they own their personal learning and they set up a discussion in their brain about what they know and still need to learn. They don’t study blindly for exams but study by understanding how they learn, what they want to achieve and what steps they can take to fill gaps in their knowledge.  

Overall, by prioritising the understanding of human cognitive structure and implementing strategies to build long-term memory and manage working memory effectively, our educators foster a solid foundation for learning and study habits in primary school children, setting them up for academic success in the future. This approach to assisting students to recognise patterns in knowledge (familiar contexts and where information fits into the pattern), and chunk information for retention in long-term memory, has been shown to empower them to study successfully. We recognise that intelligence isn’t solely determined by genetics. Our students benefit from the educational processes that cultivate knowledge, skills, understanding, and ultimately, ability throughout our school. As we stroll through our school corridors, we witness our students learning efficiently and effectively, resulting in their enjoyment of school and the knowledge they acquire. We express gratitude to our dedicated educators and determined students.