Retrieval Practice: What is it? Part Two

Here are seven easy and effective Retrieval Practice methods for outstanding revision in any subject…

The first thing to recognise is that your teaching style doesn't drastically have to change. What will change is how you get students to practise the taught information, namely: little, often and using active Retrieval Practice strategies!

No. 1 Quizzes

Quizzes are a great way to get students to recall information from past lessons. (In fact, many schools use quizzes as the starter or pre-starter activity for every lesson!) You can create independent quizzes (either on paper or displayed on the board), or you can create class or group quizzes. Independent quizzes are helpful if you want to challenge each student or gauge individual progress, whereas group quizzes can be better for mixed ability classes, or if you have a lot of student absences that have caused gaps in learning.

In a teaching nutshell, group work is useful if you need built in peer-support. (Although, don't make the groups too big… unless you want some of your students to sit back and do nothing!) You can also utilise online quiz platforms, such as Kahoot, Educake, Seneca, GCSE Pod and BBC Bitesize.

No. 2 Flash Cards

These are great for students studying alone (for example as a homework task), or for your class to test each other in pairs or group work. How many times have you seen your students buy those A5 or A6 sized revision flash cards (and then try to write the entire text book on to them!) This can (for obvious reasons) be pretty fruitless as a revision method; nothing more than a longwinded handwriting exercise.

However, some of the best practice I’ve seen is where flash cards are used with only one word or phrase per card. For example, Chemistry’s cards could be: ‘Alkali Metals’, ‘Compounds’, ‘Conduction’, ‘Gases’, ’Particle Theory’, etc. And you could divide them up into unit topics too! My favourite activity for using these cards goes like this…

• Student A picks a card at random and has one minute to verbally recall everything they can remember about this word or phrase to their partner (Student B).

• Student B assigns a mark for Student A’s efforts (0 = no knowledge, 1= some knowledge, 2= detailed knowledge). Students should tally their partner’s marks as they go.

• Rinse and repeat this process with Student A and Student B taking turns until all the cards have been used.

• Top Tip 1: I ask my students to place any cards that earned them ’0’ marks in to a separate pile that can be photographed at the end of the lesson and will become revision prompts for their homework.

• Top Tip 2: Have the flashcards printed on card and laminated so they can be re-used for multiple lessons and classes.

In 10 years, I’ve never met a class that doesn’t enjoy this revision game. More importantly, this is a great activity for getting students to engage with content they feel less confident with… otherwise they tend to hover around things they already know well! If used wisely, flash cards are an effective way to revise key concepts for your subject.

No. 3 Concept Maps

The days of spider diagrams are behind us! Mind maps, collating key words, flow diagrams, Venn diagrams, timelines and tables all constitute as effective ways to concept map a certain topic or idea. When we ask students to use one of these maps we are asking them not just to recall information, but also to organise and process connections between it (schema building).

Think of a mind map as the new and improved spider diagram. I find the best way to create a good mind map is similar to the design of a tree. At the trunk you tend to start with a key concept with ideas branching off in different directions. Each of these branches gets additional smaller branches with key information relevant to its attaching branch. Finally, you can have smaller scale key information shooting off the smaller branches like leaves.

A flow diagram will help students recognise processes and outcomes, whilst a timeline will benefit their understanding of cause and effect by remembering events in chronological order e.g. event = WW2, cause = decimated society, effect = Labour landslide/ introduction of the NHS.

A Venn diagram will benefit any kind of comparison work where students recall information and then organise it into similarities and differences. Great for comparing materials, methods, literary characters, or key events. I once saw an excellent lesson where students were asked to use a Venn diagram to plot the similarities and differences between The Guardian and The Sun newspaper... (safe to say there weren't many similarities!)

Collating key words and tables can be used to categorise recalled information about a certain topic or idea. Asking students to write down the different types of metals would be an example of collating key words. To challenge students further, you could ask them to recall the types of metals, plus their melting points, how they are formed, examples of what they can be used for... and then place all this information in to a table format.

No. 4 Writing Prompts

Often referred to as ‘sentence starters’, writing prompts provide students with a starting point for recapping and consolidating new information. You can create tasks where students finish the sentences with an answer, or provide students with a sentence start that will help them write a paragraph about something in particular. These are really helpful as scaffolding for lower ability students too.

No. 5 Cloze passages

These are great for lower years, lower ability students, or those who are new to a topic. They recall information with the help of learning scaffolding! They are also really handy as an instant gratification test which works well with all students, and boys in particular. In essence, a cloze passage provides students with information, such as timelines, plots, summaries, definitions etc., and some of the key words are removed. These key words are usually at the bottom of the sheet or on the teacher’s board for students to insert into the gaps. Dates, names and subject specific terminology are just some of the information that can be recapped quickly and effectively with cloze passages. And for the best effect you want to remove KEY words, rather than random words. Why not try creating one as a starter activity to recap last lesson’s new learned content?

No. 6 One-minute Tests

These are fantastic as a quick recap or a plenary task! After teaching a unit or practice question, give students ONE minute to write down all the words and ideas that they believe should go into a good response e.g. ‘Which key words should be included in an essay about how Shakespeare presents the character of Macbeth? And, students would mostly likely write a list containing the following: ‘Brave, noble, ambition, Divine Right of Kings, natural order, greed, tragic hero, etc…’

Top Tip: These one-minute tests can also be completed on post-it notes and placed on the teacher board to create a “plenary wall”. You can then store and reuse them as discussion points for a future lesson.

No. 7 Doodling

You’ve probably spent a lot of time telling students not to doodle on their work, but drawing out concepts and seeing them in a visual and expressive way can be really helpful for certain types of learners. Also turning written information into another format, such as images, is a great way for our brains to sort and consolidate new ideas.

Ask students to draw their understanding of a volcano, or how they envisage Elizabeth I, and see what they come up with and the links they make between the words you give them and the images they create. This can also create opportunities for rich class discussions! For an added challenge, ask students to produce their overall thoughts in doodle form with a time limit. The online stopwatch is great for this: https://www.online-stopwatch.com

Retrieval Practice: The Number One Rule

The key is to provide regular Retrieval Practice opportunities after the content has been taught. The optimum wait time to start is 48 hours later. This is so students have had the opportunity to either 'store' or 'forget' the new information and you can, therefore, see what has been retained by their long term memory… and what has been forgotten! However, this will give you areas to pinpoint and recap in future lessons!

So there you have it, seven ways to embrace Retrieval Practice! If you'd like some large scale Retrieval Practice strategies that could be used for an entire revision lesson, check out our selection of Retrieval Practice blogs.

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