Retrieval Practice: Research & Resources for every classroom: Resources and research for every classroom

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Going to be using this a lot as an opening slide in LIVE lessons, whilst students join the meeting. Will also be used as a challenging activity for students to generate their own questions and answers. I designed the retrieval practice challenge grid to help you purposefully revisit subject knowledge and content previously studied. There are, however, aspects that you might not be aware of. For example, Hungarian researchers tested whether or not retrieval practice could help mitigate the debilitating cognitive effects of being in a high stress environment.

Creating flash cards that cover the content of a two-year exam course at GCSE or A-Level can be overwhelming. Students should consider creating flash cards from the beginning of the academic year and continue as the course progresses. Eventually, they will have created a collection of useful flash cards and as the exams approach they will be so pleased that they did so that they can dedicate their time and efforts to the retrieval process. No doubt, you would probably feel quite proud of yourself. You would start to feel competent in whatever subject you had decided to really commit to.Over the course of the six weeks, continue to cover the same five to eight concepts, theories or terms in your questions, but pose the questions in different ways. Teacher and author Kate Jones explains how to use her retrieval practice challenge grid at the start of your lesson... Finally, information can have both high retrieval and high storage strength. An example might be the name of your current best friend. The problem we now have is some schools (not my school and certainly not all schools) are adopting a different and perhaps extreme type of culture that has an inflexible approach to classroom planning and taking the autonomy away from teachers. This can be seen here in this tweet below: Try throwing in some questions where the answer is already correct (ie where something is the same in both dimensions) and see if they notice! Memorise this…

If teachers feel they do not have time for retrieval practice in their lessons I would encourage them to think very carefully about the structure of their lessons. Is there anything that could be removed and replaced with retrieval practice? For example, the plenary task was often used at the end of a lesson to find out what students had learned in that lesson but now we have a greater awareness of the difference between performance and learning. Learning takes time. An option would be to take the plenary task from one lesson and use it in the future as a retrieval task once some forgetting has taken place. It might seem difficult fitting retrieval practice into lessons and a tightly planned curriculum but it is certainly worth it. Myth number 5: “Why do students need to be able to recall information when we have Google?” New information which is not linked to anything else stored in your long-term memory will have a low retrieval strength, as well as a low storage strength. Retrieval Grids include interleaving: Many grids include similar concepts (e.g., names for different historical figures) that require students to discriminate. Later this week my second book will be published with John Catt Education, Retrieval Practice: Research and Resources for every classroom . I am really excited for teachers to read it and I hope they find it very informative and useful. Through conversations with educators, both online and offline, it has been interesting to find out different perspectives and opinions when it comes to retrieval practice. Generally, the attitude is very positive (although I’m aware that the fact I’ve authored a book about retrieval practice may influence the conversations I have with other teachers!). Explain that the students will be given time to look at the first slide and store the information in their minds, without writing anything down.

This concept can be applied to the classroom with a twist, focusing on daily review of five a day to promote healthy retrieval. It could simply be five quiz questions to start the lesson. Blended Learning and Decolonising the Higher Education Classroom: Learning from Putting into Practice Theories of Digital Transformation – A Summary Learners can select the correct answer from memory (higher challenge). Alternatively, you can scaffold the activity by making it multiple choice. In my first book Love To Teach , the first chapter was entitled “ The best way to start a lesson … ” and I did write about using retrieval practice as part of a classroom routine to begin lessons. I stand by this as I do think it is generally the best way to start a lesson but I didn’t state that every lesson should start that way. I also added that “Although, I will be recommending starting lessons with regular retrieval, research does not explicitly state this is the most appropriate time in the lesson to carry out retrieval practice. It is an effective strategy that can be used at any point during a lesson”. Participants in a study used either re-reading or retrieval practice to learn material, but in varying amounts. After they had a set amount of time with these techniques, they were asked to predict how well they thought they would recall that information in a week or so’s time.

In this session, Kate Jones, author of Love To Teach, Retrieval Practice and Retrieval Practice 2 will be sharing the research behind this effective teaching and learning strategy as well as top tips as to how this can be implemented in the classroom. This will cover a combination of evidence and experience, both of which Kate believes need to be combined to successfully implement and embed retrieval practice in the classroom. Kate will share practical tried and tested examples. There will also be the opportunity to ask Kate questions too. Don’t make questions on flash cards too ambitious. I am not implying that flash cards questions should be easy, but a long essay style question is obviously not suitable. Extended questions should be used for practice essays or essay planning; flash cards should be used as one method, not the only method of revision. Keep flash cards concise and clear. Our job is to interrupt this forgetting, by using effective strategies to prompt children to retrieve information from memory. Embed multiple-choice quizzes into your classroom practiceThe problem with adding in these silly options is that they distract children from what you actually want them to remember (that “there were no more worlds to conquer”). If you’re teaching a mixed-ability class, try and include some questions that all students should be able to answer. You can also include some more challenging ones that require more in-depth answers. First, always begin a lesson with retrieval practice – a short quiz, including five, multiple-choice questions of previously learnt material. This, of course, is what we are aiming for in what we teach. And based on what we know about how memory works, we think that the testing effect is an indispensable tool to achieve it.