We tend to think of thinking as something super solitary–but as Annie Murphy Paul observes in the Brilliant Report, cognition is a two-way street.
How so?
“Students enlisted to tutor others,” Paul reports, “work harder to understand the material, recall it more accurately and apply it more effectively.”
The result is a phenomenon called the protege effect: students who teach their study material to others perform better on tests than kids learning for the sake of learning.
Realizing that, innovative educators are setting up situation where students can teach young students, the most awesome of which may be happening at the University of Pennsylvania–a “cascading mentoring program” in which college undergrads teach computer science to high schoolers who teach CS to middle schoolers.
via Why Teaching Makes You Smarter | Fast Company | Business + Innovation
This is why it makes sense for students to learn in the morning and teach in the afternoon.