I often write about research studies from various field and how they can be applied to the classroom. I write individual posts about ones that I think are especially significant, and will continue to do so. However, so many studies are published that it’s hard to keep up. So I’ve started writing a “round-up” of some of them each week or every other week as a regular feature:

A Better Way to Remember reports on a study that provides evidence that if you “cram,” most knowledge will be forgotten quickly, while if you “space” your learning, it will move into long-term memory. The experiments were done with mice, but it sounds like researchers are pretty confident it can be applied to humans, too:

While learning gains in mice that had undergone one hour of massed training were eliminated, those in mice that had undergone the same amount of training spaced out over a four hour period were unaffected….This final discovery suggests that proteins produced during training play a key role in the formation of long-term memories, providing for the first time a neurological explanation for the well-known benefits of spaced learning — as well as a great excuse to take more breaks.

This comes from Dr Kathie Nunley’s Educator’s Newsletter: “…task persistence in young adolescents
is extremely predictive of their income and occupational levels as adults. In males, it’s actually more predictive than even intelligence. Researchers
measured task persistence in 13 year olds and found that high task persistence predicted higher grades throughout high school and higher educational
attainment in adulthood. Andersson, H. & Bergman, L. (20100). “The role of task persistence in young adolescence for successful educational and
occupational attainment in middle adulthood.” Developmental Psychology, May 30, preview (no pagination specified).” I have a lesson on the idea of “grit” in my book, and you can read more about it at The Best Resources For Learning About The Importance Of “Grit”.

I’ve previously posted about the positive effect that plants in the classroom can have in boosting student attention span. Now another study says it can also increase student creativity.

You Say Potato, Scale Says Uh-Oh is a Wall Street Journal report on a study that “quantifies how much weight a person is likely to gain or lose over four years based on one additional daily serving of a range of specific foods.” This article is particularly useful to English Language Learners because it contains a very accessible infographic. I’m adding it to The Best Sites For Learning About Nutrition & Food Safety.