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
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Wk2
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Wk3
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Wk4
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Wk5
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etc.
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Y12 L1
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Y12 L2
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Y12 L3
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Y13 L1
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Y13 L2
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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
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Wk2
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Wk3
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Wk4
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Wk5
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etc.
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Y12 L1
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Y12 L2
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Y12 L3
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Y13 L1
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Y13 L2
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- 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
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Wk2
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Wk3
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Wk4
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Wk5
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etc.
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Y12 L1
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Y12 L2
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Y12 L3
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Y13 L1
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Y13 L2
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- 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
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Wk2
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Wk3
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Wk4
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Wk5
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etc.
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Y12 L1
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Y12 L2
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Y12 L3
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Y13 L1
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Y13 L2
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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
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
Excellent blog, thank you for sharing!
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