Many children revise by rereading their notes or highlighting a textbook. It feels productive, but research suggests it does little for long-term memory. A well-known 2013 review of learning techniques, by John Dunlosky and colleagues, rated rereading and highlighting as having low usefulness. Practice testing and spacing practice out came out on top. Here are five habits worth building at home, whatever your child's age.
1. Practise remembering (retrieval practice)
Pulling an answer out of memory strengthens it far more than reading it again. Quizzes, flashcards and "close the book and tell me what you remember" all work. Getting answers wrong is part of the process, as long as your child finds out the right answer straight afterwards.
2. Space it out
Ten minutes on four different days beats forty minutes in one go. Coming back to a topic just as it starts to fade is what makes it stick. A simple routine helps: a short review of last week's topic before starting something new.
3. Mix topics up
Practising one type of question over and over feels easy, and that's the problem. Mixing topics (fractions, then area, then percentages) makes children work out which method fits each question. That is exactly what exams ask them to do.
4. Learn from worked examples
When a topic is new, seeing a problem solved step by step and then trying a similar one is more efficient than struggling alone. As your child gets more confident, the steps can be taken away.
5. Fix mistakes, not just scores
The most useful part of any test is the questions your child got wrong. Go back to them a few days later and try them again. When they get a question right a second time, the learning has started to stick.
A two-minute weekly check-in
Children do best when someone notices their effort. Once a week, look at what they've done together. Praise one specific win: "9 out of 10 on fractions!" lands better than "well done". Then agree on one thing to practise next.
How Leverrs helps
Leverrs Academy is built around these ideas. Lessons are mostly doing rather than reading, a lesson only counts as mastered at 80%, and every mistake goes into a review bank so it comes back later. Miss Yasmin, the AI teacher, also suggests what to practise next based on your child's results. See what parents can follow.
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