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

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These results have since been repeated in multiple contexts and under a huge variety of conditions. Finally, information can have both high retrieval and high storage strength. An example might be the name of your current best friend. Science teacher Adam Boxer explains that while retrieval practice isn’t the easiest way to revise, it’s definitely the most effective… Participants who had done the least amount of retrieval practice thought that they would recall the most. Participants who had done the most amount of retrieval practice thought they would recall the least. Instead, we’re replacing these with powerful teaching strategies such as frequent retrieval practice and low-stakes quizzing on core material.

These changes are possible because of how well-researched retrieval practice is. Cognitive scientists have spent decades investigating its use as a memory technique. Though nothing in science is ever beyond question, the positive results across a vast number of studies certainly seem to suggest it’s an effective method. New discoveriesWhen I first began using test-enhanced learning I made a few mistakes that reduced the effectiveness of retrieval practice.

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. Instead, we’re moving towards a system where we remove the revision lesson and replace it with frequent opportunities for retrieval practice built in to the main sequence of lessons. 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. Since I very much consider myself to be an as yet undiscovered comedian of world-class talent (who is, frankly, wasted on primary school children), I can’t resist popping in a humorous answer to elicit a giggle.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. Guilty of delivering lots of new content in lessons but rarely asking students to recall that knowledge? This Kate Jones retrieval practice template will help you break the habit. In fact a paradigm shift is occurring around revision itself. We’ve moving away from a system where we teach a sequence of lessons, have a revision lesson and then a test. If your pupils struggle to recall yesterday’s lesson, prompt them to retrieve information from memory by embedding regular quizzes into your curriculum design, with these ideas from Jon Hutchinson, director of training and development at the Reach Foundation…

I think the best way to explain this finding is by thinking about the relative difficulty of the two tasks. In this episode of The Cult of Pedagogy podcast, Jennifer Gonzalez speaks to Pooja Agarwal about what retrieval practice is and how you can start incorporating it into your classroom right away. This retrieval practice grid doesn’t include multiple choice options. This is because, according to Professor John Dunlosky, “students will benefit most from tests that require recall from memory and not from tests that merely ask them to recognise the correct answer”. How to use the gridsOver 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. As teachers across the UK become more and more evidence-informed, we’re learning to ditch revision games, posters, highlighting, re-reading and mnemonics. By the end of the week, the retrieval strength of your hotel room number will have increased, by regularly having to recall it. However, the storage strength is likely to remain low; you probably won’t be able to recall it in a year or two. A few minutes later, I’ll switch to the next slide which has all of the correct answers on, and pupils can self-mark, correcting anything they got wrong. 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 practice