Why making your child forget their notes can actually help them learn

There is a slightly strange idea at the heart of effective revision: sometimes, the best thing you can do is take the information away. That might sound odd. Surely if your child is trying to learn something, the information needs to be in front of them? They need to read it, look at it and go over it again and again. But there is an important difference between seeing information and being able to remember it.

This is one of the reasons a very simple technique called ‘Look, Cover, Write, Check’ has been used by generations of children. The name isn't particularly exciting, but the idea behind it is really useful.

The bit that matters most is the covering

The first step is exactly what you'd expect. Your child looks at a piece of information they want to learn. They might be learning a definition, a formula, some key dates or the main points from a particular topic. They read it carefully and make sure they understand what it means. Then comes the important bit. They cover it up. Instead of continuing to look at the information, they have to try to remember it. They might write down everything they can recall, say it out loud or explain it to somebody else. Only then do they uncover the original information and check how much they got right.

It sounds almost too simple, but something important has happened. Your child has had to retrieve the information from memory rather than simply recognise it on the page. And that is a much more useful test of whether they actually know something.

Think about learning a song

Imagine you're trying to learn the words to a new song. If you listen to the song five times, the words will start to feel familiar. You might even find yourself singing along quite confidently while the music is playing. But what happens when someone asks you to sing the whole thing without the music? That's much harder. The music was providing lots of clues and reminders. Once those disappeared, you had to produce the words yourself.

Revision works in a similar way. When the notes are sitting in front of your child, they provide lots of reminders. Your child can recognise the information and follow along with it. Cover the notes and suddenly the brain has to do more of the work. That extra effort is useful when it comes to learning.

Why getting things wrong can be a good thing

One of the things parents sometimes worry about is their child getting answers wrong. We naturally want to help children get things right, particularly when they're revising for an important exam. But getting something wrong while revising isn't necessarily a problem. In fact, it can be extremely useful because it shows your child exactly what they don't know yet.

Imagine your child covers their notes and tries to write down everything they can remember about photosynthesis. They remember most of it but forget one important part. When they uncover the notes and check their answer, they immediately discover the gap. That's much more useful than reading the same paragraph for the fifth time and feeling as though it looks familiar.

Good revision isn't about proving that you already know everything. It's about finding the things you don't know yet.

That is why retrieval can sometimes feel uncomfortable. Your child might find themselves sitting in front of a blank piece of paper thinking, "I know this. Why can't I remember it?" But that moment of struggle is giving them valuable information about what needs more attention.

You don't have to use the technique exactly as it sounds

Although ‘Look, Cover, Write, Check’ is a useful way of remembering the process, your child doesn't have to sit down and work through every piece of revision using those four steps. The same principle can be used in lots of different ways. They could read a section of their notes, close the book and explain the main points out loud. They could use a flashcard, cover the answer and try to recall it before turning the card over. They could read a definition and then try to write it from memory. They could answer a practice question before looking at the model answer. The method doesn't really matter.

What matters is that your child has to retrieve the information before they see it again.

Parents can make this really simple

You don't need to sit beside your child and supervise their revision. In fact, one of the best things you can do is simply encourage them to test themselves. If your child tells you they've just spent 20 minutes reading about a particular topic, ask them to close the book and explain what they've learned. If they've been learning key vocabulary, ask them to tell you what the words mean without looking. If they're revising a topic for an exam, ask them to tell you the three or four most important things they need to remember.

You don't even need to know anything about the subject yourself. Your job isn't to decide whether their answer is perfect. You're simply helping them discover whether they can produce the information without having it in front of them. And if they can't, that's fine. They now know what they need to revisit.

Make the page disappear

There is a temptation during revision to keep the information in front of us because it makes learning feel easier. But sometimes making things a little harder is exactly what helps. So the next time your child is revising, encourage them to put the notes away for a moment. Cover the page. Close the book. Turn the flashcard over. Then ask them to see what they can remember.

Because when it comes to learning, the real test isn't whether your child recognises the answer when they see it. It's whether they can produce the answer when they can't.