The principle of exercise states that those things most often repeated are best remembered. It is the basis of drill and practice. It has been proven that students learn best and retain information longer when they have meaningful practice and repetition. The key here is that the practice must be meaningful. It is clear that practice leads to improvement only when it is followed by positive feedback.
The human memory is fallible. The mind can rarely retain, evaluate, and apply new concepts or practices after a single exposure. Students do not learn complex tasks in a single session. They learn by applying what they have been told and shown. Every time practice occurs, learning continues. These include student recall, review and summary, and manual drill and physical applications. All of these serve to create learning habits. The instructor must repeat important items of subject matter at reasonable intervals, and provide opportunities for students to practice while making sure that this process is directed toward a goal.
Read more about this topic: Principles Of Learning
Famous quotes containing the word exercise:
“The division between the useful arts and the fine arts must not be understood in too absolute a manner. In the humblest work of the craftsmen, if art is there, there is a concern for beauty, through a kind of indirect repercussion that the requirements of the creativity of the spirit exercise upon the production of an object to serve human needs.”
—Jacques Maritain (1882–1973)
“What exercise is to the body, employment is to the mind and morals.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I would not that death should take me asleep. I would not have him meerly seise me, and onely declare me to be dead, but win me, and overcome me. When I must shipwrack, I would do it in a sea, where mine impotencie might have some excuse; not in a sullen weedy lake, where I could not have so much as exercise for my swimming.”
—John Donne (c. 1572–1631)