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برچسب: Practice

  • Ben Katcher: Exam Review & Partner Retrieval Practice

    Ben Katcher: Exam Review & Partner Retrieval Practice


    Actually, please do try this at home…

     

    Ben Katcher was a Teach Like A Champion Fellow from 2023-24. For his final project, he focused on developing a knowledge-rich AP US History curriculum. Ben discussed knowledge organizers with Doug on the Sweat the Technique podcast (here). Sign up for his free newsletter about how to apply the science of learning in the classroom here. He can be reached at KnowledgeFirstHistory@gmail.com. He reflects here on teaching students to be more effective in using retrieval practice to review for exams.

     

    In my AP US History class, it’s vital that my students develop study skills that can help them learn and use a lot of content knowledge. Research tells us that most people (including adults!) are not very good at studying, spending too much time reviewing information and too little time retrieving information. Information becomes far more durable and better encoded in our long-term memory when we are quizzed on it, or when we quiz ourselves on it. With this in mind, partner quizzing has become an important system for retrieval practice in my classroom.

     

    Partner quizzing can be a powerful way to help students speak and listen to each other, develop their ideas, and prepare to participate in whole-group discussions or construct thoughtful ideas in writing. But partner work can suffer from some common pitfalls, including:

    • One partner dominating the discussion
    • Students struggling to identify the resources they need to participate fully
    • The teacher struggling to monitor multiple, simultaneous conversations, leaving misconceptions unaddressed

     

    I am excited to share one activity I use in my classroom that maximizes the benefits and minimizes the risks of partner work.

     

    This activity is a partner Retrieval Practice drill. I use this activity toward the end of a unit of study, before students take a quiz on key terms and dates associated with that unit. The goals of this activity are to help students encode knowledge, practice effective study techniques in advance of the quiz, and self-assess their understanding. 

     

    To prepare for the activity in the video below, I took all of the key terms and dates from my Unit 8 Knowledge Organizer and turned them into question form, placing a checkbox next to each question (see a portion of both my Unit 8 Knowledge Organizer and partner quiz below). 

     

    As you can see in the video, I begin the activity by reviewing the expectations. I instruct Partner #1 to ask Partner #2 each retrieval practice question. I instruct Partner #2 to attempt to answer each question without their knowledge organizer. If Partner #2 is able to answer the question, then Partner #1 will place a check next to the term on the handout that belongs to Partner #2. If Partner #2 is unable to answer the question, then they are expected to look at their Knowledge Organizer and read the answer. In that case, Partner #1 will not place a check next to the term.

     

    As students begin asking and answering the questions, I circulate throughout the class with a copy of the student handout on my clipboard. As I circulate, I listen to student conversations, but this only gets me a limited amount of information. I only have the opportunity to hear each student ask and answer 1-2 questions. Therefore, my main focus is looking at the students’ handouts to note which terms have check marks next to them, indicating that they have been answered correctly. I then tally the terms that do not have check marks. By the end of the seven minutes, I have reliable, student-generated data that indicates the most common gaps in knowledge.

     

    After seven minutes, the timer goes off, indicating that it is time for students’ to switch roles. But before we do that, I take the opportunity to review common misconceptions. During this lesson, my formative assessment data indicated that common misconceptions included the Truman Doctrine and the Military-Industrial Complex, so I reviewed these terms with all students.

     

    By the end of the activity, students have generated for themselves a personalized study guide that indicates which terms they know well and which terms they need to study in more depth before the assessment. I instruct students to focus their study time on the terms that their partner did not check off for them. And I instruct them to study in exactly the way they did in class; ask themselves the questions and see if they can answer without the Knowledge Organizer. If they can, then check off the answer for themselves. 

     

    Through this activity, my students have practiced a more effective study method than simply rereading information and prepared to study effectively on their own.

     



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  • A district practice that breaks hearts and squashes teacher morale

    A district practice that breaks hearts and squashes teacher morale


    You’re being excessed.

    Those three little words uttered by my principal at the first staff meeting, my first day back at work, three days before the start of the school year. Excessed. Numbly, I stumble out of the meeting and make my way back to my classroom. I sit in the new green chair I had just purchased to match the decor for my universal transitional kindergarten class. I sit and stare at my classroom, trying to process what has just happened. Excessed. I have to pack my personal belongings and supplies. Excessed. I have to take everything off the walls. Excessed. Where am I going to put all these boxes? What school and grade will I be moving to, and when? Excessed.

    Excessing, also known as involuntary transfer, occurs when schools have a lower number of enrolled students than were projected, and now there are too many teachers at one site. Districts move teachers between schools to fill vacancies that can open, partially due to higher/lower than expected enrollment, funding shifts, teacher retirement, etc. Excessing a teacher from their site usually happens in the spring, at the end of the school year.

    Fall excessing, or being transferred to a new school/grade in the time after the new school year has begun, is rarely voluntary. It is a heartbreaker and destroys a teacher’s spirit due to the emotional investment that teachers put into their classrooms and their future students at the start of each new school year.

    I explained fall excessing to my husband, a retired school bus driver, like this: “Imagine someone tells you that they have too many bus drivers and they need you to now drive a dump truck in a brand-new city. You know how to drive, you’ve been doing it for ages, and you are well trained to drive vehicles. However, you’ve never driven a dump truck before, and you’ve never driven in this new city. There is no new training for driving a dump truck, and you are expected to master the new vehicle, new city and its rules within two days.”

    Sounds great, right?

    In the spring of 2024 my union, San Diego Education Association, and my district came to an agreement to “minimize fall staffing movement.” This signed and approved contract agreement is supposed to encourage the district to sort out their enrollment numbers well before the start of the school year. The idea behind the agreement is to reduce the chances of a teacher being moved after school has already started. But it wasn’t enough to keep me from being excessed.

    So I call for reinforcements. A teacher friend whose district hasn’t started yet gets busy packing up my old classroom. My husband loads my new green chair into his truck and takes it home. Eight hours later, my personal classroom items are making their way onto two pallets, headed to the school’s multipurpose room, while a stunned teacher who has been moved down two grade levels is making his way into the classroom to now teach transitional kindergarten.

    My former classroom looks like it’s been pillaged, with leftover boxes, rolls of tape and a steady stream of boxes from the new teacher. The once sunny and bright room looks sad and forlorn, like she’s having trouble letting me go, as I am struggling to let her go as well.

    I grapple with the hopes and dreams I had for these new students, whose names were already written on their tables, and etched on my heart. The students will be fine, they will only know one teacher, the one taking my place, three days before the official start of school. But I will always know that they were mine first.

    The next few days are a blur of packing the last few boxes, crying, showing the new teacher the curriculum, crying and talking to union reps and the human resources department at my district. I feel crushed, unimportant, deflated. I am dismayed to hear that I have to stay on my campus for, a minimum of three weeks, but likely more like six or seven weeks. As a newly excessed teacher, I have to wait until the official fall excess date, typically the third or fourth Friday of September, before I know where the district will place me. In the meantime, I will remain on my campus as a support teacher. It is a painful reminder of who I am to the school district. A body, an ID number. A bus driver who can be told to drive a dump truck.

    In an ironic plot twist, only half of the district’s excessed teachers were moved to new school sites. The other half, myself included, were allowed to stay at our current schools. To reduce the number of combo classes, I was directed to teach a newly created first grade class. At this point, I felt like a pawn in a mysterious chess game, with the rules only known to the upper administration.

    I’m just a teacher who was excited to get ready for going back to school, but instead was delivered a big dose of fall excessing. I took my green chair with me to my new classroom, but it wasn’t the same. I left a little piece of me in that former classroom and with those students who were supposed to be mine.

    •••

     Kelly Gonzales is a primary grade teacher at a Title 1 school in San Diego, and a teacher leader with the California Reading and Literature Project.

    The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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  • A Great Example of Retrieval Practice from Kerrie Tinson’s classroom

    A Great Example of Retrieval Practice from Kerrie Tinson’s classroom


    03.07.25A Great Example of Retrieval Practice from Kerrie Tinson’s classroom

     

    We love to share examples of great teaching on the TLAC blog–especially great teaching that demonstrates core principles of cognitive psychology in action. If you follow the learning science at all you’re probably familiar with the importance of Retrieval Practice: how critical it is to bring previous content back into working memory so students remember it.

    We’ve recently added this beautiful example of Retrieval Practice to our library. It’s from Kerrie Tinson’s English classroom at Windsor High School and Sixth Form in Halesowen, England.

    Kerrie’s students are reading Macbeth and she starts her lesson with a Smart Start that focuses on Retrieval Practice… a series of questions that asks students to review and reflect on things they learned in the first scenes of the play.

     We love how Kerrie asks students to write the answers to her questions–this causes all students to answer–universalizing the retrieval.  We also love how familiar students are with the routine of starting with retrieval. This not not only makes the Retrieval Practice more efficient and easier to use but it socializes them to conceptualize Retrieval Practice as a great way to study on their own.

    As students answer questions, Kerrie circulates and takes careful notes. This allows her both understand what students know and don’t know–you can see that she’s added one question to address a common misunderstanding–and also to Cold Call students to give good answers, which expedites the retrieval, making it efficient and pace-y.

    But Kerrie doesn’t just rely on simple retrieval. She often asks students to “elaborate”: to connect what they are thinking about to other details from the play. For example, when a student recalls that Macbeth was a traitor, she asks “Why was that important?” The connections that come from elaboration build–schema–stronger connected memories that cause student’s knowledge to be connected and meaningful.

    We also love the way she ends the session–by pointing out a couple of key concepts–that Macbeth is Impatient and eager– that are especially important and that everyone should have in their notes.

    All in all its great stuff and we are grateful to Kerri and Windsor High School for sharing the footage with us!

     

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