When I pick up Izzy, a Kindergarten granddaughter, at her school to take her home and she is buckled in, I begin. “What is the letter of the week, Izz?” Yesterday she said, “P, Gramps.”
“Izz, please tell me five words that begin with P.” She did.
“Izz, please tell me five words that end with P.” She did.
“Izz, please think of words that have two Ps in their spelling. Can you tell me any of these words?” She did.
And, so it goes.
“Izz, tell me again what the letter of the week was last week.” “O, Gramps.” And, she began telling me words that begin, end with and contain the letter O.
Once in a while, I use my phone to record the way she tells me these words. She has great five-year old attitude. But, more than attitude she is learning language. She begins rhyming, finding patterns and creating word families. She sing-songs the words. She stops and looks out the windows for a while and then erupts with new words. Because I make up words sometimes to fit into a story I am telling her, she also makes up words with the letter of interest.
“Izz, tell me a story about some jalapeño peppered popcorn placed in a packet inside a pumpkin that was painted purple.” She is used to my nonsense and humors us with a short story that shows imagination and fantasy, but is laced with P-words.
Practice (another P-word) theory pervades much that Izzy and I do together. The story goes that when a musician asked how to get from his hotel to Carnegie Hall, he was told “practice, practice and more practice.” The way to grow a child’s learning always includes practice. Whether Izzy is learning to ride a bike, play her keyboard, do a cartwheel, name the variety of trees in her front yard, manipulate her favorite games on an IPad or learn how to satisfy her Gramps, practice is part and parcel to her success.
The principles pertaining to practice are simple.
How much? Practice the smallest amount that has meaning and build on that practice.
How long? Start with several short practices that are long enough in duration to cause learning; too long leads to lost interest and too short to nothing being accomplished.
How often? Begin with frequent sessions as newly acquired learning can be forgotten easily. Seven to eight times for short-term memory and 16 to 18 times for longer term retention. Then, repeat in a staggered manner over time.
How well? Smaller amounts in smaller time increments can lead accurate and correct learning. Seeking more complex and complicated responses and transferring the desired responses to other settings adds memory muscle. Be careful; incorrect responses require clarification and reteaching.
It is difficult to think of any learning that we want a child to do that is not related to and strengthened by practice theory. No, it is difficult to think of any learning period that does not require practice theories if it is to be learned for life.