What’s most important is that the explanation is simple, concise, and understandable by an elementary school student.
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Thus, most often I use the method independently.īut, it’s up to you to decide how to deliver the explanation. Personally, I focus the best when I’m by myself in a quiet environment where I can focus on the task and not be distracted by anything else. Some people benefit from having a real physical person listening to their explanation, while others prefer working alone and writing their topic explanation on paper or practicing in front of a mirror. The explaining process can be conducted in a variety of ways and group sizes. Your explanations need to be short and to the point, providing only what is necessary for a sixth-grader to understand. Your end goal should always be to develop a deeper understanding of a topic, but the path there involves shallow but thorough explanations. This step will help break down complex topics into their most basic parts. This requires you to meet the child at their level of understanding by using the simplest and most concise language possible. The second step is the heart of the Feynman Technique: explaining the topic simply enough to be understood by a sixth-grade student. Now that we know why you should use the method, let’s move right into the step-by-step process of how to use the Feynman Technique. Work well with already-learned concepts for the purposes of reviewing and reinforcing what’s already learned.Using the technique can help students rethink their thoughts on how they approach difficult subjects such as science or mathematics.Simplifying an explanation can improve the comprehension and memorization of the subject.Develops knowledge of the study topic and also public speaking skills if practiced with another person.Here are a few more reasons why the Feynman study technique is so effective: Unlike re-reading textbooks or reviewing notes, which are passive activities, engaging with new material through explaining and continuously simplifying forces the learner to be more actively engaged. Plus, the Feynman Technique is often more effective than traditional study methods because of its emphasis on active engagement. There are a wide range of reasons why the Feynman Technique has remained one of the most effective study strategies for decades.įor one, the Feynman Technique provides an opportunity for continual review and analysis, which can help to ensure understanding at a higher level than just memorizing information.įurthermore, it provides a way for students to engage with information in a meaningful and memorable way by connecting it to personally relevant experiences and simple concepts. It’s worth mentioning, though, that re-reading textbooks and notes are considered ineffective study strategies by most modern learning scientists. This study method can be used to memorize, understand difficult topics, and supplement other common study methods like re-reading textbooks or reviewing notes. The act of teaching is a cognitively demanding task, but that is also why the technique is so effective. Naturally, the average school student in sixth grade is not going to understand complicated terminology, so the person using the Feynman Technique has to emphasize simplicity and concision.Įffective usage of the method requires the learner to define all unobvious terms, and this means that the Feynman Technique requires considerably more mental energy than other methods such as rote learning. Then, they improve their explanations and go through the process again until they have mastered the topic. To use the technique, students choose a topic and then explain it in their own words as if teaching a sixth-grader. The Feynman Technique, developed by Richard Feynman, is a study method for students to learn through the act of teaching.