Over Spring Break, I read Make it Stick: the Science of Successful Learning, which does what it says on the tin: teach you how to learn or teach anything more successfully.
Clearly, that is something really useful to my life. While there are lots of principles from the book I'll be implementing, I've been focusing on one strategy that they say is very clearly tied to moving information from short to long term memory: retrieval practice.
The concept, in its most basic form, is self-quizzing. The way most people study is they go over a list of topics, and run through them once or twice. Maybe you make flashcards. And as soon as you've gotten them right at least once, you figure out know them and move on.
But that's not knowledge. That's the illusion of mastery.
So how do you know if you really know something? By simulating testing conditions and forcing yourself to work harder to pull the information from memory. Practically, that means closing the book or the laptop and going back through the concept and asking yourself questions to test understanding instead of basic recall.
That is such a powerful concept that I decided I was going to implement it immediately with my 6th graders.
The problem that immediately surfaced is that I run a student-centred PBL constructivist classroom. There isn't direct instruction. There isn't lots of factual information.
Or so I thought.
Clearly, that is something really useful to my life. While there are lots of principles from the book I'll be implementing, I've been focusing on one strategy that they say is very clearly tied to moving information from short to long term memory: retrieval practice.
The concept, in its most basic form, is self-quizzing. The way most people study is they go over a list of topics, and run through them once or twice. Maybe you make flashcards. And as soon as you've gotten them right at least once, you figure out know them and move on.
But that's not knowledge. That's the illusion of mastery.
So how do you know if you really know something? By simulating testing conditions and forcing yourself to work harder to pull the information from memory. Practically, that means closing the book or the laptop and going back through the concept and asking yourself questions to test understanding instead of basic recall.
That is such a powerful concept that I decided I was going to implement it immediately with my 6th graders.
The problem that immediately surfaced is that I run a student-centred PBL constructivist classroom. There isn't direct instruction. There isn't lots of factual information.
Or so I thought.
I wrote a previous post about my unit on world religions and how I was teaching Buddhism to my students. But I kept running into the same problem - students knew things ABOUT Buddhism, but they lacked a conceptual understanding of what really makes someone Buddhist. I think I actually did them a disservice by not giving them a straight-forward definition near the beginning. It didn't have to be lecture, but they needed the content expert in the room to direct them to information that was clear, presented in a way they understood.
Another thing I've written about is the 8 pARTS lessons that help my students learn the parts of speech in a fun, visual way. It's a lesson I stole from Jon Corippo.
Finally, my students all scored at mastery level so we could move on to the next step: Sentence Parts. For this, they would have to learn the types of sentences (imperative, interrogative, declarative, exclamation), dialogue punctuation, possessive, there/their/they're, capitalising titles, appositives, semi-colons, and the difference between a compound and complex sentence.
On the first day, I guided them through each box in the chart. Here it is:
Another thing I've written about is the 8 pARTS lessons that help my students learn the parts of speech in a fun, visual way. It's a lesson I stole from Jon Corippo.
Finally, my students all scored at mastery level so we could move on to the next step: Sentence Parts. For this, they would have to learn the types of sentences (imperative, interrogative, declarative, exclamation), dialogue punctuation, possessive, there/their/they're, capitalising titles, appositives, semi-colons, and the difference between a compound and complex sentence.
On the first day, I guided them through each box in the chart. Here it is:
Well, as it turns out, there ARE facts and specific factual questions I can ask them about what they are learning. So I took those boxes and made them into a quiz on Kahoot. Here are the questions I used.
Turns out the kids really like playing Kahoot. They seriously ask me to play it over again immediately after we finish.
That's one form of retrieval practice.
Today, I gave them the opportunity to experience another form. I asked them to fill in everything they could remember without talking to anyone, and without googling. I was as surprised as they were when 80% of my class filled nearly every box.
Then they had 3-4 minutes to talk to their group and get the rest of the answers, or google and find them. That left them with just needing to check that they had done the appositive and the compound/complex sentences correctly.
I asked them how many were surprised by how much they remember. Almost everyone raised their hand. They also scored better on the Kahoot we did at the end of class today. Here are the questions:
That's one form of retrieval practice.
Today, I gave them the opportunity to experience another form. I asked them to fill in everything they could remember without talking to anyone, and without googling. I was as surprised as they were when 80% of my class filled nearly every box.
Then they had 3-4 minutes to talk to their group and get the rest of the answers, or google and find them. That left them with just needing to check that they had done the appositive and the compound/complex sentences correctly.
I asked them how many were surprised by how much they remember. Almost everyone raised their hand. They also scored better on the Kahoot we did at the end of class today. Here are the questions:
Other than some trigger happy mistakes, my students did really well.
We are already at the point where they understand the content; to get to this point with 8 pARTs, it took two weeks. It's been two days.
This really does work.
So I challenge you: start quizzing your kids more! Help them learn that the only way to break the illusion of mastery is in quiz conditions. I use Kahoot because it's FUN and they are still testing the depths of their knowledge. They aren't cheating on it because they know that they get more points for fast responses, and they can find the answer faster than someone can shout it out.
And let them test their knowledge on something WAY earlier than you thought they would get it. You (and they) might be surprised.
Also, if you would like to be part of our 8 pARTS teacher group in the fall, please contact me via Twitter or in this site's contact form! We already have about a dozen people, and we'd love to get more!
We are already at the point where they understand the content; to get to this point with 8 pARTs, it took two weeks. It's been two days.
This really does work.
So I challenge you: start quizzing your kids more! Help them learn that the only way to break the illusion of mastery is in quiz conditions. I use Kahoot because it's FUN and they are still testing the depths of their knowledge. They aren't cheating on it because they know that they get more points for fast responses, and they can find the answer faster than someone can shout it out.
And let them test their knowledge on something WAY earlier than you thought they would get it. You (and they) might be surprised.
Also, if you would like to be part of our 8 pARTS teacher group in the fall, please contact me via Twitter or in this site's contact form! We already have about a dozen people, and we'd love to get more!
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