It used to be that if we hadn’t played chess in a while, my ten-year-old would usually lose when we played a game. But when we are playing games daily, we’re evenly matched or he has a slight advantage.
This morning, we played our first game in at least a month, and he beat me. Handily.
I think the reason for this shift is that when we’re building skills, they’re incredibly sensitive to consistency. That is, we need to be consistent if we want to lock skills in. A rest period of even a few days is enough to diminish a brand-new skill.
When skills are more established, they are much more impervious to gaps in practice – they are deeply locked into our brains. That’s why I stayed the same and his skills diminished – because my skills were built long ago.
As you begin the school year, it’s important to assess which students are going to be struggling, having lost their skills over a summer break, and who have reinforced their skills to the point where they didn’t diminish. You have to teach them differently, expect different things from them, and offer different learning opportunities to them.
Can you pick back up where you left off? For some students, yes. For others, you’ll have to almost start over. But they’ll accelerate quickly into skills they’re relearning.