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Easy, quick and effective retrieval practice? You can bank on it.


OK, I admit it. I am a retrieval practice evangelist.

I’ve always been a mini whiteboard lover, but my retrieval conversion moment truly came one sunny evening when reading the excellent book Understanding How We Learn: A Visual Guide by Yana Weinstein and Megan Sumeracki with Oliver Caviglioli. Their passage on the reconstructive nature of memory stays with me and, frankly, I have told anyone who would listen about it since! I’m now on a mission to find new, creative and efficient ways to incorporate and implement retrieval practice techniques into my lessons, across my school and beyond!



Retrieval Grids & Question Banks

Retrieval grids caught my eye on Twitter. To be completely honest they didn’t entice me initially (I think it’s all those jazzy colours!). However, having read further on the topic in the brilliant book Love to Teach by Kate Jones, I was inspired and decided I should give them a go. Retrieval grids are essentially tables (often 4x3) which contain questions to prompt students to attempt retrieval of content previously covered in order to build memory. You will easily locate examples on Twitter if you search the term ‘retrieval grid’.

I am very passionate about saving time and increasing efficiency though (it’s the economist in me I think!), so my own contribution here is in trying to optimise grid creation and keep workload to a minimum! This is done by creating a question bank. My suggestion is that you create a very simple spreadsheet with week numbers and year groups/lessons that you teach.

Example Spreadsheet Layout for Year 12 and 13 Teaching

This teacher has Year 12 three times a week and Year 13 twice a week.
Wk1
Wk2
Wk3
Wk4
Wk5
etc.
Y12 L1






Y12 L2






Y12 L3






Y13 L1






Y13 L2







All you need to do then is simply type one question into this sheet every lesson. Once you have a few weeks in the bank, then you can begin copying and pasting question blocks to create your retrieval grids in minutes. Here are some examples:

-        In week 6 for Year 12 I could copy the 3 questions I wrote in week 1 and the 3 I wrote last week. Instant 6 question grid.

Wk1
Wk2
Wk3
Wk4
Wk5
etc.
Y12 L1
Q
Q
Q
Q
Q

Y12 L2
Q
Q
Q
Q
Q

Y12 L3
Q
Q
Q
Q
Q

Y13 L1
Q
Q
Q
Q
Q

Y13 L2
Q
Q
Q
Q
Q


Q
Q
Q
Q
Q
Q

-        In week 6 for Year 13 I could copy 2 questions from Year 12 week 5, 2 from Year 13 week 1 and 2 from Year 13 week 5. Instant 6 question grid.
Wk1
Wk2
Wk3
Wk4
Wk5
etc.
Y12 L1
Q
Q
Q
Q
Q

Y12 L2
Q
Q
Q
Q
Q

Y12 L3
Q
Q
Q
Q
Q

Y13 L1
Q
Q
Q
Q
Q

Y13 L2
Q
Q
Q
Q
Q


Q
Q
Q
Q
Q
Q

-       Or maybe for some revision for either class across the weeks (if I’d not done it for a while), copy 2 lesson rows of Year 12 questions. Instant 10 question grid.     

Wk1
Wk2
Wk3
Wk4
Wk5
etc.
Y12 L1
Q
Q
Q
Q
Q

Y12 L2
Q
Q
Q
Q
Q

Y12 L3
Q
Q
Q
Q
Q

Y13 L1
Q
Q
Q
Q
Q

Y13 L2
Q
Q
Q
Q
Q


Q
Q
Q
Q
Q
Q
Q
Q
Q
Q

I began ‘catching up’ by writing 1 question per lesson (or thereabouts) for the previous 7 weeks of this academic year. This wasn’t especially onerous and I am confident I can keep up with adding at least one question per lesson (it’s a maximum of 5 questions a day for a 5 period timetable, or less if you teach duplicate classes in a year group!). I may even have students suggest the question/s at the end of the lesson and we’ll type them in there as a plenary activity!


I then proceeded to copy and paste selections. I initially paste into another sheet on the spreadsheet (to create the grid) and then I copy and paste the grid into a slide for display. I simply needed to increase the text size and align, you could format as you wish of course.  


           
 

Within a matter of a few minutes I had 3 different grids ready to go.


To Score or Not to Score?

If you wanted to add points for scoring then you could spend more time on this stage. I am currently steering away from this as I personally find that scoring can detract from the activity. I choose to allocate just one point per question, or even not to score at all, so students can simply measure their level of completion/retention without too much complexity. You may feel scoring is important to reflect the degree of challenge in certain questions though (read on about challenge grid use below for example).

Workload Saver

I believe this ‘little and often’ question creation approach will work, although you can ‘binge-write’ questions all in one go if you prefer of course! And the payoff will continue in future years as you can add further questions per lesson to build the bank, or just revert to your past stock. The workload involved in creating any number of different grids and adapting/formatting them is then very minimal.

Challenge Grids

Jones (2018) writes about the retrieval grid concept as a development from ‘challenge grids’ which provide questions in a grid of different levels of difficulty to ensure all students in the room are sufficiently challenged. This can, of course, be included in your question collection approach. You may wish to collect multiple questions each lesson (say 3 or 4 for different difficulty levels) or you may find that some lessons cover more simple content and others are more challenging, so this happens naturally in your question collection. Alternatively you can tweak command words in your final grids to create challenge.

I certainly do not wish in this blog to ‘downgrade’ Retrieval Challenge grids to a more simplistic and one-dimensional level, but I am keen for you to be inspired to act and to be convinced this is possible in a busy working week. If this means you use a simple one-question collection per lesson approach to start with, then so be it! Rome wasn’t built in a day and I hope you will continue to develop your approach, as I also intend to!

Providing challenge is undoubtedly important, but there is also a balance. Ensuring A* A level students know the precise definitions of week 1, Year 1 key terms is important in securing sound exam marks, in addition to developing their higher level analytical, application and evaluation skills. The tricky part will always be knowing exactly where the gaps are for your students and exactly which concepts need a boost to ensure sound recall. Indeed, Weinstein and Sumeracki (2019) note that ‘teachers will need to monitor the students’ overall success while retrieving and try to adjust the difficulty of the activity accordingly’. But don’t always assume that simple questions do not involve retrieval challenge. Sometimes the devil is in the detail and retrieval practice can be used to support refinement of simple content in order to develop expert knowledge and precision. Also, as Jones (2018) alludes to, it is the differing lengths of time between concept coverage and retrieval opportunity that creates differing levels of challenge.     

Example

Consumer surplus in economics is a relatively simple concept. Imagine you are willing and able to pay £3.00 for a caramel latte. But you only need to pay £2.80 in the shop you have arrived at because that is the price there- you have a ‘consumer surplus’ of 20p. It is the difference between the price consumers are willing and able to pay and the market price they actually pay. So simple is this idea to remember, that top students can overlook specific revision of it and fail to provide an exact definition. Worse still, so can the teacher! I will not forget writing the following definition on the board one day:

Consumer Surplus: the difference between what consumers are willing and able to pay and what they actually pay.

Seems the same, right? Well, it’s not. It’s missing a key word – price! I have substituted the word ‘what’ twice for the words ‘the price’ and 'the market price'. This shows lack of precision in my definition and might be important if I am to take this concept further. Obviously the word ‘pay’ implies it is price that I am talking about, and I would likely get away with this, nevertheless this was an important lesson for me and one I now highlight to students. Everyone needs to be aware of precision in language use when defining technical concepts and strengthening long-term memory in this area is useful for students and teachers alike! Needless to say, I have not repeated this slip and I deliberately include questions on this definition in my retrieval tasks!  

Alternative Ways to Spend from your Bank 

You can of course mix things up a bit as you wish because a question bank is a useful and adaptable resource in itself! Variety and a rotation of activities can help to keep things fresh.
  •           Present the questions as a numbered list instead of grid format (copy and paste direct from the cell to a word processor).
  •           Read out the questions instead of displaying them.
  •           Use as a ‘back of your book’ written quiz, as a mini-whiteboard exercise or provide students blank grid sheets to write onto.
  •           Send the questions to your students at the end of the module so they can use them to test themselves/create flashscards. 

Believe

Retrieval practice, as a way to build long-term memory, has received strong support from research studies (please see sources for further details). It is without doubt worth your time in reading further about this if you have not done so already. I hope you will become a believer too! These grids also enable you to ‘space’ the practice students get on a topic, spaced practice being another key idea which receives lots of support in research of course, and also well worth your reading time! Further reading provided below.   

I have definitely been inspired by The Learning Scientists and by Kate Jones in creating this resource and this blog (thank you to all!). Hopefully you have been inspired now too! Do share your thoughts, ideas, examples and comments with me here or via Twitter @JonesLearnUK.

Happy Quizzing!

Further Reading and Sources

Weinstein, Y., Sumeraki, M., & Caviglioli, O. (2019). Understanding How We Learn: A Visual Guide.
Excellent introduction to cognitive psychological science and key ideas that all teachers should know about. This book will introduce you to the concepts of retrieval practice, spaced practice and 4 other effective strategies for learning with research evidence provided to support each. 

@AceThatTest
www.learningscientists.org

Jones, K. (2018). Love to Teach.
Brilliant book filled with practical, research-informed ideas for teachers. Retrieval challenge grids are introduced here, along with commentary and research sources relating to retrieval practice and spacing.

@87History
www.lovetoteach87.com

  



Comments

  1. Anonymous28 June 2021 at 07:26

    Excellent blog, thank you for sharing!

    ReplyDelete

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