When I was in college, I remember sitting down for a science test and creating flashcards to study the information. Why did I do that? Because repetition helps us remember new ideas. The way the word is situated on the page, the color, the picture associated. All of these details help us remember the word, answer to the question, or solve the math equation.
Flashcards are an integral part of the learning experience for kids. They are a way to practice new information, and kids are inundated with new facts and ideas every day.
In my special education classroom, I use flashcards for a variety of lessons, including high-frequency word introduction, numbers, and letters. Still, flashcards, like any tool, need to be used correctly to achieve maximum bang for your buck (or learning for the time spent).
Here are some suggestions for making your flashcard time effective.
Flashcards are most effective when they are used to review and practice new material.
When a child is introduced to a new piece of information, they need ongoing repetition of the information for it to stick with them long term. Remember that their brains have to decode the information presented. It may take several repetitions to understand the information, and several more to memorize it.
Flashcards are best when used multiple times.
If you consider a child learning a new word (or even their name), they may start to recognize the general look of their name very quickly. When my son was in daycare, he could “read” every name on the cubby boxes. Was he actually reading them? No. He memorized the look of the names, maybe even the first letter, and associated the image with another student in the class. He was able to identify his name from a list very quickly, but it took a lot more repetitions before he was able to spell it, or even realize his name is made up of individual letters.
You want to shuffle the cards and not use them in the exact same order every time.
Kids are masters at memorization. Since their minds don’t necessarily notice all the details (individual letters or numbers), they sometimes appear to be learning more than they are because they have learned to ‘cheat’ the system through pattern memorization.
Have you ever watched a child navigate a phone? They seem to know which buttons to push and can get themselves into a game or to a youtube video without any help, but do they know how to navigate the phone? Probably not, they have learned the pattern that it takes to access the parts of the phone they want to access; they have not learned to problem solve if something is in a different place or if the picture of the app changes. If they end up on a page they don’t recognize, they sometimes push the wrong buttons. The same is true with flashcards. If the flashcards are presented in the same order all the time, the child can appear to be proficient with the words, but they are only truly skilled when they can still recognize the words when the terms are presented at random.
BONUS: Flashcards are great for on-the-go!
I recently worked on high-frequency sight words with a 5-year-old. We were repeating the same five words over maybe five minutes, and for the next half-hour, this child was a five-word reading machine, but the next day, he was back to guessing at the words. Why? Because he needs ongoing exposure to the terms over time.
One thing I appreciate about flashcards is that they are easily accessible, and I can take them with me anywhere. My child can flip through them in the car, we can practice them as we wait for a movie to start, or we can do a round while sitting at a restaurant. They are easy to transport, and since kids need ongoing repetition, the ability to carry the lesson with us is super important! Learning can’t happen in a vacuum!
As we continue to work on new words with kids, flashcards are going to be one of our main go-to’s. That is why I decided to add flashcards to my new High-Frequency Word Bundles, which cover 800 HFWs with eight activities to help learn each word. If you want to see what the activities are like for words 1-10, you can get that in my TPT store, or just click here!