Retrieval Practice
What does retrieval practice mean to you?
Retrieval practice – Fill in form
Give me an example of how you have used retrieval practice in your lessons so far this week. Include which lesson and be reflective on how you planned for this and the outcomes (if any) from the activity and how this was implemented within your lesson.
Examples of retrieval practice from own teaching practice – Fill in form
Retrieval practice is not a new concept. As early as 1885, it was proposed that retention of knoweldge decreases exponentially over time.
We know that retention of knowledge for our children is challenging. Many of our children do not have the foundational knowledge to link concepts that we teach them within the curricula. Our own knowledge is supported by our experiences and because of this, it is easier for us to link concepts, or schema, together to enhance our learning and also to make sense of new knowledge. Children naturally have less experience compared to adults. They may not yet be able to link their new knowledge to previous knowledge or experiences. This means that it is harder for their brain to form meaningful and strong connections, which in turn makes it difficult for the children to remember what you taught them yesterday let alone last term or last year! This means that our children may be limitied in their achievement if they cannot retrieval knowledge to help them make sense of unfamiliar problems. As a school, we need to make sure that we address this. The embedding of retrieval practice therefore becomes esstential if we are to address the lack of retention of knowledge, especially within the foundation subjects.
Scenario
Meghan sits down to watch the newest episode of her favourite show on a Sunday evening with a Harry who has never seen the show before. As the show begins, the usual recap of what has previously happened rolls on. Not only is the recap showing what happened last week but also shows some details from a previous season, flagging this information as important for what will come next.
How does this scenario relate to what we experience in the classroom?
The classroom illusion
•In our lessons, we often find that children recognise content when it is in front of them, but cannot reconstruct it when it counts.
•Retrieval practice makes memory visible. Used appropriately, frequently and embedded into our every day routines as low stakes testing/practice, neural pathways can be strengthened which will significantly boost long-term retention, and reduces forgetting.
•When retrieval becomes routine, it sharpens teaching decisions (what to revisit, when, and for whom) and reduces wasted re-teaching. If it remains as an occasional starter it becomes performative rather than powerful.
How does retrieval interact with the processes of memory?
The encoding process is the initial learning which takes place in our classrooms during the input when we are introducung the new knowledge. Our working memory is a function of our brain that temporarily holds and processes information. It allows us to work or carry out something at the time, so it will allow children to answer questions in the class straight after children have received the new knowledge from our teaching input. For children to remember their learning after the initial lesson, the information must be transferred from working memory to the long term memory. Information can stay in the long term memory from hours to a whole lifetime. The transferral process from working memory into long term memory requires active engagement, including attention, elaboration, spaced repetition and retrieval practice. We can see that the encoding process helps to store the knowledge being learned in the long-term memory and that retrieval helps to bring knowledge back into the working memory.
Research suggests that engaging in this process can improve the retrieval strength of the information. Through the act of trying to remember, we identify to the brain that the information is important and so it must store the information better as it was not readily available. So, by practicing retrieval, we can make it easier to remember that knowledge at a later date.
But the benefits are not limited to the remembering. Roediger and colleagues suggest that retrieval practice can “increase both category clustering and subjective organization of materials” (Roediger et al. 2011), so retrieval practice can also aid the encoding process resulting in improved storage strength.
Strategies to improve storage strength:
- Retrieval Practice: Actively recalling information (e.g., using flashcards or low stakes testing) strengthens memory traces more effectively than passive reviewing.
- Spaced repetition: Reviewing material at increasing intervals (e.g., the 2-7-30 rule: review after 2 days, 7 days, 30 days) reduces forgetting.
When should retrieval practice happen?
Retrieval practice strategies for primary teaching – focusing on foundation subjects
Examples
| Quick Fire Quiz Questions can be simple factual recall, or multiple choice. Teacher reads out the questions, children write down the answers. Can be used any time in the lesson. | Paper Quiz Everyone gets a copy of the questions and writes down answers at their own pace within a time limit. Teacher circulates, purposefully. Answers are prepared so marking is quick. |
| Silent Self-Quiz Any number of resources can be used – blanked diagrams, cue cards with answers on the back, questions with answers kept separately. In a ‘test’ like this, children can generate answers and then check if they were right, silently and privately. They can repeat this multiple times. | Paired Quiz. One child has the material – questions, answers, cue cards, knowledge organiser, text – and asks the other child questions. “Test me” – it’s a well-used technique and can be harnessed in lessons. Give a time limit and then get them to swap around. |
| Self-Explanation Beyond simple recall, ask children to explain something to themselves. You simply give children a few silent moments to complete a mental task. They have to generate a version of what they understand that they can either then self-check or write down or use to respond to further questions. | Demonstration and Performance You can ask children to show what they know: a procedure; a technique; a routine. Have you learned it? Show me… Of course as a child shows what they can do to a teacher, they are showing themselves what they can do. This is common in practical areas and performance areas – sport, music and art. |
| Paired or individual elaborative-interrogation This is where children explore their schema by answering How and Why questions. Why does this happen? How does it work? Why does it work? Why did she say that? Why do you use that structure? Why is that the most important reason? How do you know? | Tell the story; rehearse the explanation Lots of knowledge forms a narrative structure – a series of events, a process, cause and effect. So, the retrieval practice can be formed as ‘telling the story’ to someone else |
| Summarising This is a useful recall process although it is less precise in terms of checking – because every summary can be different. A retrieval process can be something like: Last week we looked at renewable energy. Summarise the main advantages and disadvantages of a wind farm: Go! . Have pre-prepared materials for children to check their answers against | Map and Compare This method is where you want to check children’s capacity to make links. Ask them to make a memory map of the key aspects of a topic. Picture prompts of worded scaffolded grids can be used. |
Resources
In the above file, there are lots of templates for you to create a retrieval practice activity.
Activity
Adapt one of these ideas into a retrieval practice activity that you will use in one of your foundation lessons next week or the week after. Please upload this here Retrieval practice activities
