Pupils must learn to learn!

Learning correctly so that knowledge is stored and retrievable can be learned - if pupils are taught the right learning techniques as early as possible and practise them with them. "Our new education and curricula now focus on many areas of competence. But pupils' learning skills should come before all others as a basic skill," says teacher Angelika Joachimsthaler.

The teacher at the Schloss-Schule Kirchberg in Baden-Württemberg is referring to the ability of pupils to independently plan and regulate efficient learning processes and working methods. She believes that schools and teachers are primarily responsible for this ability. Although learning and working methods are now anchored in the curriculum in many places, integrating them into lessons is not always easy for teachers in view of full timetables and new additional tasks.

Angelika Joachimsthaler emphasizes that this makes it all the more important to take the pressure off teachers' lessons, for example through methods, learning strategy or class teacher lessons, as is the case at her school. "Methods " is the name of the grade-free, one-hour weekly subject in which Breitner has been addressing the topic of "learning to learn" in grades 5 to 9 at Schloss-Schule Kirchberg for six years. In the basic course in year 5, the pupils already focus on initial digital research techniques, practise concentration exercises to avoid distractions and explore the question of what type of learner they are so that they can build on this methodically later. "In addition to visual and auditory learners, most of them are kinetic-motor types," says Joachimsthaler. In other words, those who are best actively involved in learning the subject matter themselves and are good at learning in motion. He also explains to pupils from the outset how they should plan their learning and working times and why stubborn memorization over hours is not very effective.

"We teachers are the ones who set the example for structured learning, implemented with every lesson preparation and every structured exercise book entry," says Angelika Joachimsthaler. This approach to problem solving must be passed on to the pupils. Especially as experience has shown that pupils appreciate being given methods for a systematic approach in the face of today's rather unstructured flood of information and media. And, Joachimsthaler adds, the advice of a teacher is still more likely to be accepted than that of parents.

Whether for schoolwork or homework: "Creating learning structures is worthwhile and, in my experience, also leads to learning success for the pupils," says the German and art teacher at Schloss-Schule. As a basis for homework and daily preparation for the next school day, pupils at the Schloss-Schule are encouraged to set themselves fixed study times, to work in a quiet, distraction-free workplace without smartphones or other media and with structured learning plans. Other tips include:

It is best not to start straight after lunch, but after a short break, and also not to study too late in the evening or even at night.

• Work from the easier to the more difficult in order to take the motivation of what has already been done with you (Post-Its with the note "done" provide additional motivation by visualizing what has already been done).
• Avoid cross-memorizing, e.g. do not learn English and French in succession, as the foreign languages will otherwise overlap in your memory.
• Plan learning blocks of no more than 30 minutes, then take a short break and continue working on another topic.
• Take a longer break after 2 hours of learning at the latest, if possible a break for exercise without media or computer game consumption (because strong, emotionalizing stimuli displace what has been learned from the memory).

Why does hours of cramming not help? Most pupils are not aware of the connections between learning and memory research. It should therefore be explained to them, perhaps also in biology lessons, that memory inhibition can occur after more than 2 hours without a break. Material that is learned too quickly and too much in succession overlaps with what has been learned beforehand. "If there is a lot of material to learn, e.g. for school assignments, my colleagues and I therefore advise pupils to divide the learning content into smaller portions by drawing up learning or weekly plans in good time," says Angelika Joachimsthaler. The students are instructed to enter in the plan when free periods are available, to get an overview of the subject blocks that should be learned and to distribute the learning units and the repetition of what has already been learned over the free periods.

And: learning techniques such as drawing up learning or weekly plans should be taken up again, preferably at the beginning of the school year, and repeated in lessons. In any case, repeating and linking new and existing knowledge is the most efficient learning technique of all.

Students can also be encouraged to brainstorm and create mind maps in order to activate links to familiar content and establish connections. "With learning sheets, posters or mind maps, topics are structured at the same time, can be supplemented with additional information and made visually memorable with color markings," explains the learning expert at the Schloss-Schule.

In general, the following applies to learning: the more senses are activated, the better the learning content is memorized. "That's why I always advise pupils to visualize whenever possible," says Angelika Joachimsthaler. Learning material that is difficult to internalize can be written on learning posters or post-it notes and placed in prominent places in the student's room so that it can be read again and again as they pass by.

Mind maps and summaries using learning posters are techniques that can also be used across subjects for word processing. Pupils learn to underline or filter out important key words and structure them using categorization. Asking their own W-questions before reading a text in detail is also considered helpful for text comprehension. "Who?", "When?" and "What?" can be supplemented in particular by the questions "What do I already know about the topic?" and "What new knowledge do I gain from the text?". The aim is to read a text more attentively and to grasp the essentials more quickly.

"Experience has shown that the integration of such learning strategies is often incorporated into German lessons," says Angelika Joachimsthaler. However, it should be borne in mind that learning skills and independent preparation of topics or information also become increasingly important across subjects as the year progresses, e.g. for presentations or group work. The teachers at Schloss-Schule Kirchberg therefore regularly discuss in the methods curriculum how content from the methods course can be integrated into the respective subject. Because it is also clear that the more teacher colleagues at a school pull together, make use of established learning techniques and apply them in lessons, the better the methods will be remembered by the pupils. Ultimately, students should not only use the appropriate learning techniques at school, but also at home and benefit from the training of goal-oriented learning and preparation of various topics for their future lives.