Methods for Retrieval?Practice
I would suggest that there are some key principles for retrieval practice:
- Involve all students : Good strategy is to involve all students checking their knowledge, not just a few and not just one at a time as you might do when questioning.
- Make checking easy: It should be possible for all students to discover what they got right and wrong, what they know well and where they have gaps. A note here that every technique involves students testing their knowledge and then checking their work for accuracy and completeness. (This is not the same as giving students extended mark schemes to mark longer assessments which, for me goes beyond a simple retrieval practice activity)
- Appropriate knowledge: Where befitting, it’s better if students know the set of knowledge any retrieval will be based on, so they can study, prepare and self-check. I can’t believe I am saying this but tt must be possible for students to check their own answers which has implications for the way the knowledge requirements are laid out.
- Keep it explorative: No matter how but students need to explore their memory to check what they know and understand; this means removing cue-cards, prompts, scaffolds and cheat-sheets; it means closing the books and thinking for themselves.
- Time efficient: By the way the idea of each technique is that they can be used repeatedly in an efficient manner without dominating whole lessons.
- Workload Efficiency : As a teacher none of these methods involve the teacher checking the students’ answers, creating unsustainable workload. A teacher might choose to check the occasional test but that’s no use for routine practice.
Quick Fire Quiz Strategy:
Well everyone know this one but it can still be done well or badly: Teacher reads out the question or presents them via slides or an audio tape (eg in MFL). It happens that the questions can be spontaneously generated or prepared. Make sure that questions are simple factual recall, mental maths or multiple choice;
Okay so all students write down their answers. I say this that the teacher reveals the answers, one by one or all at once. Students check which they got right. Swapping answers to check is an option but it can be a faff and takes away from the message that students need to be evaluating the depth of their own learning. You will feel much more comfortable if you’ve prepared this in advance, it is much more time efficient if students can see the answers all at once to check rather than wait for each to be read out.
It’s often better that the teacher discusses common wrong answers – which is one of the main functions. If you can do lots of confidence-building questions quickly (rather than deliberately hard ones) – you can get a great buzz of enjoyment. Knowing things is fun!
Techniques forPaper Quiz
On the day everyone gets a copy of the questions and writes down answers at their own pace within a time limit. This is much less teacher-directed. No matter what but it frees the teacher up to circulate and spot common errors as they emerge. It allows for a wider range of question types and makes it easier to engage in with worded questions that can be hard to read from a slide.
It happens that the checking process is much better done with pre-prepared answers rather than reading out answers one by one. Why? Because it is quicker, allows for more detail in the answers, it allows students to focus on things they got wrong and helps to build their capacity for self-assessment.
Techniques for Silent Self-Quiz
Try this. Which ones do you know? (Answer provided)
Well here you have a test like this, students can generate answers and then check if they were right, silently and privately. Perhaps they can repeat this multiple times. For retrieval any number of resources can be used – blanked diagrams, cue cards with answers on the back, maths questions with answers kept separately. This process keeps the outcome of the assessment with the student – the most important place! I suggest that they learn what they know and don’t know. Needless to say you can then discuss common errors and problems. It saves a good deal of time with asking questions and marking them – all of that is done mentally by the students.
Paired Quiz.
Here, we start using Dylan Wiliam’s excellent strategy:Activating students as resources for one another. No matter how in order to maximise the extent of retrieval practice that goes on, it is fantastic to get students to quiz each other in pairs. It is tempting to know that one student has the material – questions, answers, cue cards, knowledge organiser, text – and asks the other student questions. “Test me” – it’s a well-used technique and can be harnessed in lessons. Don’t be afraid to give a time limit and then get them to swap around. You get a room full of students checking their knowledge. You will see this done in superbly well in languages where the teacher circulated to check for accent issues and common errors listening in to the multiple paired quizzing dialogues.
Silent Self Quiz
If you feel beyond simple recall, ask students to explain something to themselves. Don’t be hesitant to give students a few silent moments to complete a mental task. In this strategy they have to generate a version of what they understand that they can either then self-check or write down or use to respond to further question. You have to be careful of the process of mental rehearsal is important.. making this explicit helps to train those who don’t do it spontaneously.
What is the story of Henry VIII’s Six Wives? Run through it… then check.
Demonstrative Knowledge
You may have seen that LOTS of knowledge isn’t simply quiz-able declarative knowledge. Its a wonderful idea to ask students to show what they know: a procedure; a technique; a routine. Have you learned it? Show me… Of course as a student shows what they can do to a teacher, they are showing themselves what they can do. This is important. You will need to know that the intensity and frequency can be amplified by getting students to show each other in pairs rather than one-by-one with the teacher, as long as they have the tools to evaluate success. Many times this is common in practical areas and performance areas – sport, music, art – but it also has a role in science, maths, English where the modelling process could be framed as ‘teaching’. eg teaching the class how to answer a maths problem.
Interrogative quiz
No matter how a form of quizzing that can be done in pairs or as a silent private process, is elaborative interrogation. It is important to know that this is where students explore their schema by answering How and Why questions.
Why does this happen? How does it work? Why does it work? Why did she say that? Why do you use that structure? Why is that the most important reason? How do you know?
Well if you train students to use some of these question stems and give them resources that help them to verify the answers, this makes for a deep retrieval practice exercise
Telling the story; rehearse the explanation
One can say that lots of knowledge forms a narrative structure – a series of events, a process, cause and effect. While we are talking the retrieval practice can be formed as ‘telling the story’ to someone else who can play the role of verifier. I know that any explanation can then be improved and rehearsed. You can get better at telling a story in more detail.
Here are some examples. Tell the story of a water molecule as if follows the water cycle: (with or without key words provided)
Too often this material can be used for self-explanation in the first instance.
Summary
It is tempting to know that this is a useful recall process although it is less precise in terms of checking – because every summary can be different. A retrieval process can be something like:
Last week we looked at renewable energy. Summarise the main advantages and disadvantages of a wind farm: Go! .
Then show your definitive response for checking:
Map and Compare
I think this method is where you want to check students’ capacity to make links. Well then you can ask them to make a memory map of the key aspects of a topic… eg: Reactions of Metals OR Themes in Hamlet OR Generating Electricity. These things can be much tighter sections of knowledge too: Types of radiation; the key events and figures in the Cuban Missile Crisis.
tudents then make mind-maps in a quick, memory -dump style before checking against a good resource – their knowledge organiser, exercise book or a teacher-completed version: What did you get right? What did you miss out completely?
Trial by Ordeal? What can you remember? Go…..