Sleep and memory retention

I did a little more looking around at links for different habits of highly successful students after I signed out of my blog yesterday.  I will provide the link that I found so that you have a reference, although most of what is said is a reiteration of what I read in the links in Francois’ blog, whether it be making your own study notes or practicing under test conditions.   

The biggest thing that jumped out for in this list of information that I found on essential elements in the learning process, was the importance of getting enough sleep.  The better you sleep the better you learn.    I had actually come across this concept in our text, Student Engagement Techniques, on page 23.  I mean we all know that sleep is important, but the text says, “The encoding process from short-term memory to retention in long-term memory takes time and usually occurs during sleep.”  If you want a memory to stick in your head so that it can be recalled for the future, then sleep is necessary.

As someone who has not gotten a decent nights sleep since my daughter was born, a light bulb went on for me!!  In fact, neither of my children really started sleeping through the night on a regular basis until they were around five years of age.   My daughter is now nine and my son just turned four.  When I was younger I used to love to get a solid eight hours of sleep.  Since the arrival of my children I have been lucky to have shots of 2-3 hours of sleep at a time.  Now even if I go away for the night my body is so used to waking during the night that I don’t often stay asleep the whole night long.  The reason I am sharing this is because I often joke around with my students about being the absent minded instructor and I didn’t ever really make the link between sleep deprivation and lack of retention in long term memory.

I guess what I’m saying is that not only should our students be reminded of the benefits of knowing the importance of tucking in for the night, but also we as teachers, if at all possible, need to take care to get enough sleep as well.