Help your child learn better with self-explanation

WHAT’S GOING ON?

Self-explanation means explaining a concept back, in your own words. If, after reading this email, you were to explain the main points to your spouse, explaining why self-explanation works and how to implement it with your kids, you’d be doing self-explanation.

As you’ve probably experienced, taking that the extra step of explaining a concept to another person makes you internalize and understand it more deeply. Self-explanation:

improves understanding and comprehension, and help apply learning to new contexts
is more effective that simply hearing or reading an explanation from a teacher, parent, or book
is also more effective than time spent studying by taking notes, summarizing, or solving more problems
works for kids as young as pre-school
works across subjects, for both procedural as well as conceptual information

Self-explanation works because in order to explain a topic, children have to make connections about WHY something is the way that it is. And, in the process, they become aware of any gaps in their own understanding.

Self-explanation works best when it's at the growth edge of a child's knowledge and skills. It's been shown not to add much to a topic a child already knows well; nor to be appropriate for a topic on which they have no background knowledge - they won't be able to make up a complex topic out of thin air. But, as kids become proficient in a topic, giving them freedom to choose what they explain and how they do it will help keep them at that highly productive, challenging-but-doable growth edge.

Self-explanation can be done orally or in writing, and there can be a listener, or your child can simply explain to themself. Volunteering yourself to be the student whom they teach works best for younger kids, but as they get older, they may do more through writing or self-dialog.

An additional benefit of self-explanation is that it taps into children’s deep desires for autonomy and competence. While laboring to work though the steps of problem-solving may feel hard, it brings feelings of satisfaction and self-confidence of figuring it out. And, a child changes from being one to whom knowledge it given, to an agent of giving knowledge to other people.