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Hello, you are listening to Call to Homeschool episode #286 Learning versus Memorizing Friends.
You're here with Meg, your home school coach, and I am excited to have you back here for another week.
I'm recording this episode after my son has started his mission.
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He was the son, Josh, that I had on in the podcast in March that kind of gave his view of homeschool and what it was like to be homeschooled his whole life.
So really great perspective on that.
I always interview my kids as they graduate from homeschool.
And so he is on to the next chapter of life.
0:39
And I realized that I mentioned him mission often and I have a lot of people of different faiths and different things on the podcast.
And so I wanted to do a very quick overview of what that actually means.
And then I'm going to dive into today's topic.
So I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
0:56
And they asked the all boys once they're 18 and I can't remember the age, goes up to like 18 to 25 to serve a mission for the church.
And you can do a mission where you are out teaching people about Jesus or you can do a mission, a service mission.
One of my sons did that.
1:13
And so they just want you to go and do a mission.
So for boys, they ask you to serve for 24 months.
And it is optional for girls.
And if a girl chooses to go, she goes out and serves for 18 months.
You actually do not get to pick where you go, which would actually be kind of cool, but you don't get to pick where you go.
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You fill out an application, a mission package.
You meet with your Bishop, which is your local church leader.
You also meet with the state president, which is just a higher up church leader.
And you fill out this information about your health history, your strengths, anything else that they may need to know.
1:46
And then after all the application process is done, you are receiving receive a, an e-mail, which we often call your mission call and that tells you where you are assigned to go and serve and when you will start your service.
So my Josh, I think he got his mission call.
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Oh geez, in May or June, I cannot even remember now.
And so he started his mission October 28th and he started, they have you do a missionary training center and for some missionaries that is in person and some missionaries that is online.
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So he's starting his at home and for about 10 days and then to the day that this audio comes out, we are actually then dropping him off at the Provo MTC, the Provo Missionary Training Center, and dropping him off.
So super exciting stuff.
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My daughter is currently still serving in the Houston, TX area and she comes home in March.
So super excited about that.
And my son, after the missionary training center, he will be there till December.
I can't remember when in December, like the first or second week of December.
2:54
And then he will be going to El Salvador, San Salvador.
So he will be there learning to be a better missionary, but also to learn Spanish.
So that's just a quick update because I have lots of people asking me about missions.
So there you go.
So if you see me today in real life and I'm a little teary eyed the day that this episode comes out, just know I just dropped my kid off and I won't see him for two years.
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So I'm always a bittersweet day because I'm so, so proud of him and so excited for him, but also it completely changes our family dynamic and culture.
So a little bit hard on my Mama heart.
All right, back to today's topic.
3:31
I'm really excited about this learning versus memorizing.
I saw this post on Instagram from Homeschool Hippo, and I don't know who runs that Instagram, Instagram account, but they have some pretty good stuff on there.
And this one happened to come up and I loved it so much that I wanted to actually just do a full podcast episode about it, of talking about it.
3:54
I loved some of their points with it.
So this is a social media post on from October 29th.
And so I'm going to read their post and then just add in some of my insights along the way.
So it says we often mistake memorization or learning, but they are not the same thing.
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Here is why.
Memorization is a short term solution.
It's like filling up a bucket.
You can store a lot of information quickly, but it's not going to stick around for long.
True learning is different.
It's about connecting ideas and applying them.
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Real learning is like planting a seed.
Research backs this.
Cognitive science doctor Robert Bjork talks about the illusion of knowledge.
We often think we've learned something just because we can repeat it.
But that's surface level.
Without deeper engagement, it fades quickly, like a child memorizing dates for a history quiz without understanding their significance.
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Real learning means your child can ask questions, make connections, apply knowledge in different situations.
A study published in the American Educational Research Journal found that students who engage in active learnings methods such as discussion and problem solving demonstrated improved skills and implying knowledge compared to those using traditional passive learning approaches.
5:09
Isn't that interesting that they call memorizing a way of passive learning, right?
Because it doesn't really even stick.
And you can think about this from your own educational experience, especially if you went to public school, even private schools, right, in charter schools that it is being able to pass a test.
So you have to memorize these so you can pass a test and then you can just let your brain forget about all of it.
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So super interesting that it doesn't really work that you can get great at passing a test, but then you don't really remember those things long term.
So I love that.
But the study published, I'm going to repeat this, an American educational research journal, found that the students who engaged in active learning methods such as discussion and problem solving demonstrated improved skills in implying knowledge compared to those using traditional passive learning approaches.
5:59
So kids that did it in this way of learning, they didn't just memorize facts, they understood them.
So here are some of the things that they had on here.
They have 4, but I feel like two of them are the same, but I will read them out.
But I'll just kind of give you some of the thoughts.
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So this is how to move beyond memorization.
And I just I love this list.
So encourage your child to ask why instead of just memorizing the what?
So you can think about this with the wars, right?
With like, OK, On this date this was done and On this date this was done.
And On this date this was done.
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But when you start getting curious of like, why, why did this happen?
We loved with our deep dive study, we did World War One and World War 2.
And when we got so curious of why these things were happening and why, like certain people hated certain people and why were you willing to do these types of things?
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And really getting in and diving into those questions.
It's fascinating to me the level of understanding my kids had, the level of understanding I had.
And then when my daughter and I got to go back to Germany and got to see these things and experience it like that was some of the best learning that we had at that time.
7:06
It was so absolutely amazing.
So being willing to ask why and as of to the moms listening here, right?
And dads that they were listening to, sometimes it feels annoying when a kids like, why, why is this that way?
Why is the sky blue?
Why is the grass green?
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Why, why are you wearing that?
Why are we eating this?
Why are we doing that right?
And sometimes you're like, Oh my gosh, just do it right.
But like those questions of why and being willing to answer them or if you don't know the answer of like, you should look that up.
Oh, where could we find a book on that and start showing them and teaching them how to understand their whys and looking it up like, I may not know all the answers.
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I know I don't know all the answers, but when I can teach them to find the answers to all their why so I can keep that curiosity going, that excitement for learning and teaching them how to look at that why and being OK when they ask you a million why questions, right?
Or give me a second right?
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So that can look like a lot of discussions narrating right, of just really talking about these things and getting an understanding.
And I actually even love reading both sides of something.
We read when we were doing World War 2, we read a book called The German Wife.
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And it was a very interesting book because it was this German family who got stuck in Germany during World War 2 and her husband ends up working with the Nazis even though he doesn't want to, but it's a kind of save his family's life.
And eventually they escaped to the United States.
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And like the people that were so mean, I think they went to Alabama and the people in Alabama were just like, you are a horrible human.
You killed and murdered all these people.
And she she, she actually talked about that them and Alabama about segregation.
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And she said, did you stand up for the people that were being segregated against?
Did you do something?
And it was so interesting because it's so easy to look at somebody when we're not involved in something.
I've just been like, you should have done something.
You should have thought you should have been willing to die.
But then she put it back onto them and was like, did you do something?
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Like that's also an injustice to people That was also wrong.
That what segregation was also wrong.
Just like what was happening over in World War 2 is wrong.
So like those wise and like really diving in and having those discussions are so fantastic for learning and really understanding something.
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So the second one they said talked about from going from just memorization to learning is get them involved in activities that help make connections.
And to me, I think Charlotte Mason has the term scaffolding, where you build scaffolding so that things can start making sense.
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And so as I was thinking about like, how does that actually work, right.
So I thought about living books that are like, and maybe that's an activity that's going to help make connections of like, oh, that's where I'm from.
So this is starting to make sense because now I read this and, and this was this, right?
9:53
So now I'm starting to connect those blocks, visiting locations.
How amazing.
I, like I said, my daughter and I, when we went to Germany, we went to a concentration camp and that is a humbling experience.
Oh my gosh.
There it felt like sacred grounds and people were not loud and did not talk and we're not laughing or silly or anything.
10:12
And it was very, very solemn grounds.
And it was so interesting to actually visit that location to make those connections of what these poor people had gone through.
And we went through a lot of places.
We went through a lot of places with when Russia came in for the Cold War, right where the stasis and, and Checkpoint Charlie and all of those things and really getting to experience it and making a lot of connections of like, oh, I read about this.
10:39
Oh, how scary.
And my brother was living in Berlin and was a big history buff.
And so he would take us like this is a bridge with where they would exchange prisoners.
And this was this place where this happened.
And this was this place where this happened.
So starting to make connections if you can visit locations of it, cross reference, referencing topics, right?
10:58
Just really making connections of how this all works together.
And then there's three and four.
I will say what they have, but I think that's the basically the same idea.
If they're learning fractions, let them measure ingredients while cooking.
And then their 4th 1 is if they're studying science, go on a nature walk to find examples of what they're learning about South.
11:16
To me, it's saying like actually having practical application with these things, right?
So instead of like, OK, so 1/4 divided in half isn't 1/2, right?
Like 1/2 is actually bigger than 1/4.
It actually goes down to 1 eighth.
And so when we are doing that and measuring that, that makes a lot, a lot of cents.
11:33
So we can do that with that's one example with math.
Another example with math could be at the grocery store, right?
So maybe taking the calculator with you or just using your cell phone of adding things up, of seeing how much things cost of like, oh, This is why math is super helpful.
This is how much grocery cost, OK, how much is tax?
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How do you find the tax?
You times it by this amount, right?
If you have a coupon.
Now we can work in all of these types of things with math, with science, nature walks, so easy to do, museums, videos, other things that are just getting them excited about learning because we're real world.
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Applications make learning stick.
Memorization might get them through a test, but it won't spark their curiosity or foster real understanding.
And isn't that the truth, that just being able to memorize something doesn't mean that you actually understand it?
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Sometimes it just means you're really good at taking tests but helping your child to move from surface learning to deep learning by encouraging exploration and curiosity.
Learning is not just about acing a test.
I actually think learning is not even about a test at all.
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And it's so funny because as soon as we leave school, even like if that was Graduate School, college, anything like that, we're not really tested, right?
Like we just learn things because we want to learn them or we need to know how to do these things.
And so learning is really not about testing at all.
12:59
It's about growing and discovering new ways to engage with the world.
So I want to challenge you to focus on learning instead of just memorizing facts that feel useless and will soon be forgotten.
I'm putting in a lot of work to teach my kids, and I don't want it to be completely in vain, right?
13:17
I want these things to stick and have fun with them.
Playing games is also a phenomenal way to really learn something versus just memorizing a fact.
Another idea is also to music.
My big kids can still sing songs of the States and the capitals and the presidents and the bones in the body because it was the songs and it sparked a lot of conversation and a lot of learning that they wanted to know more because of some of these silly songs.
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So a lot of ways to actually help them to learn things.
So asking questions of why real world applications, getting them involved in activities, nature walks, games, songs, all of these fun things so that learning feels more applicable and that they're actually learning and not just memorizing facts.
14:02
So you can check it off the box and then they can forget it within the next week or two, the next month, or even the next year.
But become a lifelong learner because you've inspired them to do so.
Friends have an amazing week and I will talk to you next time.
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