So you think you know how to study

My dad told me about an article in the NYT today that made him think of me.  Called Forget what you know about good study habits, the article discusses some of the common tips about studying and how they are wrong.  For example, a study found that students who studied the same content in two different rooms did better than students who studied that same content in one room.  So finding a single quiet place to study is not always the best idea.  Then another study discussed how students were taught 4 math principles together and given practice sets of mixed problems (some from principle 1, some from principle 2, etc) and did better than the group that was taught principle 1, then given problems on principle 1, then taught principle 2 and given problems on only principle 2, etc.  Which goes to show that you should study mixed content rather than focusing in depth on one big topic.  All of this got me thinking about methods and how to help students learn the best in my classroom.  From the room study I want to try changing the arrangement of the classroom and the decor every-so often to provide students with a "new" place to learn. From the concept tip, I want to have exams with multiple contents so that they don't focus on one topic but learn them together in connection to each other.  Then in the article there was another study about how students who studied 12 artists all mixed up together learned better than those that studied each artist individually.  So rather than examining all Picasso and then moving to Renoir, study them together and find the comparisons, how are they different, how are they similar.  That makes me think about teaching topics based on themes, so instead of teaching about the facts, names and dates of the invention of the printing press, you teach the concept of information literacy and information revolution within the context of the printing press (1440s, everyone mad about the invention, less control of government with people able to read, etc) and then have students compare it to other information revolutions.  To connect it to their lives, ask them whether the internet is an information revolution.  That connects the printing press to something that they know about (the internet) through the theme of information revolutions.

Someone give me my own classroom!  (World History please!)