Nothing new, Just Review
Retrieval Practice
Retrieval Practice is becoming deeply embedded in the lexicon of teaching and is beginning to be a term that we share with our students. In fact, i've been sharing it with my own students for quite some time now. Explaining to them why we use it and how to use it, slowly getting their buy-in.
This got me thinking about how much it has translated into our curriculum plans, other than simply being a starter quiz to kick off a lesson. Which, to some degree, is a result of a misunderstanding of meaningful retrieval as it should be considered carefully for multiple points in the learning process (fixed point quizzing, homework, during practice and questioning to name a few). It is more than a starter task, it is an incredibly efficient and effective teaching and study technique. So much so that John Dunlosky listed it as number one in his research into effective study strategies.
What we need to be doing is considering carefully where, when and how often we will revisit the content of our curriculum. This is because we now know that as soon as we teach our students something it begins to decay and decompose through the very natural process of forgetting. This rate of decay is dependant on each individual student but it is an alarmingly quick process.
If we teach something in a lesson, we must then appreciate that we have a fight on our hands against the process of forgetting and we can overcome this by revisiting the knowledge periodically. For this we need to build a culture of retrieval (i’ll write more on this at a later date but in the meantime you MUST check out Adam Boxers’ ‘Teaching Secondary Science’ book, it is exceptional)
Pause Lesson
One approach that I have been using to fight back against forgetting is the idea of a pause lesson. I came across this during my work when piecing together meaningful CPD sessions for online learning and I have transferred this into my day-to-day teaching. I planned to have one pause lesson a month to review the content covered that month.
In my pause lessons I don’t teach any new content and instead use a few strategies to review work. If we consider that at its root retrieval practice in its simplest form is asking student questions, then armed with a whiteboard, visualiser and a pen you can conduct a pretty darn good pause lesson. However, I go a little bit further. My pause lessons have a few key features:
Question Set
I start with ten questions from previous lessons over the past month, these are short form answers of one word, a number or a short sentence. The students work through these silently and independently so that I can gather data on what they know and don’t know. While students are completing these questions I circulate with a clipboard so that I can note down any questions that the students are getting wrong (I have a route of five students I go to first which gives me a good gauge of student learning as this route encompasses a high-attainer, mid-attainer and a low-attainer). When the students are done I display the answer on the board and have them self mark. If there is a common mistake I will reteach this content immediately and check for understanding through quick fire questions during my reteach. I might even put a few more practice questions on the board for the students to work through on mini-whiteboards.
Mini-Whiteboard Work
After this question set I conduct a fifteen to twenty question review quiz using mini-whiteboards (MWB) as the means of participation for the students. This allows me to ask even more questions using a different format which changes the pace of the lesson. We work quick-fire for some questions that I know the students will get right, for this I will ask the questions give twenty to thirty seconds thinking (and writing) time and then my command of ‘3,2,1 show me’. For other questions I will use a write-show-discuss-rewrite strategy. Here the students write out their initial answer on the MWB and then on my command show me their boards. I expect there to be a little confusion on these questions so I instruct the students to put their boards down and embark on a turn and talk with their partner. While the students talk I hover around a group I think will have an interesting exchange and if they do I then whisper that I will call on them to share. Before this I give the students time to rewrite their response on their MWB before they show me again. At this point I will call on students to share their responses, why they did or didn’t change their minds. Recently, I have been known to ask students to come up to the board or visualiser to share their thinking a little further.
Independent Practice
After this the students dive into independent practice where they will complete a larger question set with questions from the previous months work in various forms: faded worked examples, interleaved sets (where appropriate) where the students have to select the appropriate strategy and harder questions where they need to choose the correct strategy and information to answer the question. During this time I curiculate regularly, watching the students tackle the problem and intervening where necessary. I may need to provide a few more worked examples for a student and I do this by writing on their desk with a highlighter, for example.
After this independent practice we review the answers. I have not yet got this section correct and could do more to ensure there is a high ratio of thinking and participation amongst the students. One area I could get better at is using the responses of students as a springboard for further questioning and elaboration. Maintaining a high ratio during this phase can be hard by I am thinking hard about how I could get better at this.
Next Session
Next session I plan to incorporate these pause lessons again and instead of teaching anything new, I will just review what we have already covered. As Mary Myatt says, I am trying to do fewer things in greater depth. My aim is for students to really understand what I teach them and develop a strong long-term memory for the knowledge that we cover.
Do you review learning in such away? Do you have any tips of advice for me to make this even better?
