Why We Bring Words Back Just Before They Fade

Most of what we learn once, we forget. The psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus measured this in the 1880s, and the shape he found — a steep drop in the first days, then a slower slide — has been confirmed many times since. A child who meets a new Setswana word on Monday and never sees it again will very likely have lost it by the following week.

The cure is just as well established: review, spread out over time. Each time a memory is recalled just as it starts to fade, it lasts longer before it fades again. That is spaced repetition, and it is how Mzansi Academy Kids decides what your child practises.

We use a version of SM-2, a scheduling method first published in 1987 and still used by many flashcard tools. Every word, number idea and coding idea your child learns gets its own schedule. Answer correctly and the next review moves further out — a day, then several days, then weeks. Answer incorrectly and it comes back soon, with no penalty and no scolding.

You can see this in two places. Ready to Review lists what is due now, with whatever has waited longest first. Skill Mastery is deliberately strict: something only counts as remembered long-term once your child has recalled it correctly across a gap of about three weeks. That is why the figure starts low and climbs slowly — it measures what has stuck, not what has been seen.

One thing we got wrong, and want to be open about. Until September 2026, a bug meant language words were never actually put on a review schedule, so the review list and mastery figures for language stayed empty however many lessons a child finished. It is fixed, and those figures now fill in as your child learns. If you noticed them stuck before, that was us, not your child.

The practical advice is short: little and often beats long and rare. Ten minutes a day gives the schedule something to work with. And when Ready to Review has items marked due, those are the most valuable few minutes your child can spend.