• Retrieval practice is certainly not the ​‘new kid on the block’ when it comes to teaching practices. Strategies to help students remember previously taught content have featured in our classrooms for many years. There are still opportunities though to refine and adapt these strategies to best support the long term learning of our students.’ (EEF blog: Not another quiz!) 

  Varied strategies need to be incorporated to refine retrieval practice in the classroom, including: using a range of question types, providing in the moment feedback, spacing practice sessions, using peer-to-peer quizzing and adapting to student needs. 

  ‘Teachers are often concerned with getting vital information into students’ heads, but it’s just as important to give students frequent opportunities to externalize and manipulate recently learned materials.’ (Getting retrieval practice right) 

  Top tips: 

  • Variety is key: Don’t rely on using only one or same type of retrieval practice activity all the time. 
  • Active recall is crucial: Encourage students to actively retrieve information from memory, not just passively recognize answers. 
  • Regular practice is essential: Incorporate retrieval practice throughout the learning process, not just at the end. 

  Strategies to refine practice: 

  • A range of question formats: multiple choice, short answer, open-ended, true/false, hinge questions, closed questions or fill in the blanks, brain dumps. 
  • Feedback: in the moment feedback, self-checking, peer review, formative assessments, teacher explanations, show-me whiteboards. 
  • Spaced practice: reviewing previous material regularly, interleaving concepts from different units to ensure deeper thinking. 
  • Peer-to-peer interactions: group discussions, partner quizzes, using talk partners, think-pair-share. 
  • Adapting to student need: differentiating questions, using scaffolds such as prompts or visual cues, using technology. 
  • ‘Desirable difficulty’: stimulating recall through challenge, monitoring student responses to adjust question difficulty as needed. 

  The Education Endowment Foundation advocates several core components to consider: 

  • Activities must engage the long-term memory.  
  • Balance challenge with opportunities for success. 
  • Retrieval should not be a single, separate learning activity.  
  • Provide some form of feedback. 

  ‘Retrieval becomes even more impactful when teachers keep considerations like mental agility and the spacing of materials in mind.’ (Getting retrieval practice right) 

  Retrieval practice activities: 

  • Quick Quizzes: Short, low-stakes quizzes to activate prior knowledge  
  • Diamond nine: statements are placed in order of importance in the shape of a diamond, the most important at the top and the least important at the bottom 
  • Think-Pair-Share: Students individually think, discuss with a partner, share with the class  
  • Flashcard Review: Use flashcards to practice key terms and definitions  
  • Brain dumps: students record everything they can remember about a topic 
  • Concept Mapping: Visually represent relationships between ideas by creating mind maps  
  • Close Procedure: Fill in missing words in a text passage to test comprehension  
  • Summarization: Have students write a summary of a topic without looking at their notes  
  • APPs: use engaging apps like Kahoot or Quizziz 
  • Two things: ask students to recall and write two things they learned today, last week, or within a unit of work 

  ‘Evidence shows that retrieval practice is especially effective at increasing longer-term retention and generally outperforms more common strategies such as repeated studying or even more elaborate ones like concept mapping (McDermott, 2021; Karpicke & Blunt, 2011; Roediger & Karpicke, 2006). Research in classrooms demonstrates that retrieval practice is an extremely robust strategy across age groups and subject domains (McDermott, 2021). Retrieval practice also aids in higher-order thinking; it’s not just for memorization. Students who use retrieval practice perform better on complex tasks and show improved metacognition (Pooja & Bain, 2019).’ (Using retrieval practice to increase student learning) 

 This blog was written by Bretta Townend-Jowitt, Education Consultant and Trainer.