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Listen to my interview with Pooja Agarwal ( transcript):

Sponsored by Raymond Geddes and Kids Discover

We've talked about retrieval practice two other times on this site: First in 2015, when we read the book Make it Stick. Then in 2016, I interviewed cognitive psychologists Megan Smith and Yana Weinstein about the Six Powerful Learning Strategies You Must Share with Students.

In both cases, I noticed that although we were discussing collections of techniques, retrieval practice was at the core of both groups. Because it's such a powerful technique, I would think that by now it would have really taken off, that I'd hear teachers talking about it and see the term crop up in lots of education spaces, but I don't see that happening.

So I wanted to give it one more push by carving out a designated spot for it here. My goal is to help retrieval practice become a regular part of classroom practice and part of our common vocabulary as teachers. To help with this cause, I interviewed Pooja Agarwal, Ph.D., cognitive scientist and founder of RetrievalPractice.org.

What is Retrieval Practice?

Retrieval practice is the act of trying to recall information without having it in front of you. Suppose you're studying the systems of the human body-skeletal, muscular, circulatory, and so on. You could do retrieval practice by attempting to name those systems without looking at the list. Once you've listed all you can remember, you'd open up your book or notes and check to see if you got them right.

You might be thinking, This is nothing new. The whole concept of flashcards is built on retrieval practice, and flashcards have been around forever, right?

What's new is the research: In recent years, cognitive psychologists have been comparing retrieval practice with other methods of studying-strategies like review lectures, study guides, and re-reading texts. And what they're finding is that nothing cements long-term learning as powerfully as retrieval practice.

The Research

Agarwal and her colleagues studied the effects of retrieval practice with students in a middle school social studies course (McDaniel, Agarwal, Huelser, McDermott, & Roediger, 2011). Over the course of a year and a half, while the teacher continued teaching as normal, students were regularly quizzed on the material with no-stakes quizzes, meaning they wouldn't count against their grades. These quizzes only covered about one-third of what was being taught. The teacher left the room for every quiz, so she had no knowledge of what was included in the quizzes.

On end-of-unit exams, students scored a full grade level higher on the material from the quizzes than on any of the other material. The other concepts had been taught and reviewed by the teacher as they normally would; the only difference was that some things also appeared on the no-stakes quizzes, and those were the concepts students retained more fully when tested on the exam.

The very act of being quizzed actually helped students learn better.

Here's what this means for teachers: When we teach something once, then want to do something else to help students learn it better, instead of just reviewing the content, we're much better off giving something like a quiz instead. In other words, if we do more asking students to pull concepts out of their brains, rather than continually trying to put concepts in, students will actually learn those concepts better.

To read about other studies on retrieval practice, click here. For now, let's look at some ways you can incorporate retrieval practice into your instruction.

Ways to Use Retrieval Practice in the Classroom

Think-Pair-Share
This quick, low-maintenance strategy can be used at any time to have students recall information, then share it with a partner. You can use think-pair-shares with single-answer questions, or make them more open-ended, like "Think of one thing you learned yesterday about cells." Be sure to have students think on their own before turning to a partner. "It's important for students to retrieve individually as much as possible," Agarwal advises. "If you jump right into pairs, then we all know as educators that some students are retrieving and some may not be." One way to make sure all students retrieve is to have them jot responses down on paper before sharing them with a partner.

Low-Stakes Quizzes
These can be given on paper, in a Google Form, with an individual response system like clickers, Plickers, or Poll Everywhere; or by using a game like Kahoot or Quizziz. It's important to note that these quizzes are a learning strategy: Ideally, students wouldn't get scores on them at all, but if you must give some points, make them an almost negligible part of students' overall class grade.

Brain Dumps
Have students get out a sheet of paper and, within a certain length of time, write down everything they know about a topic of study. This can be done at the beginning of a unit (similar to how you'd use a K-W-L Chart), partway through as a way to reinforce learning, or near the end of a unit. Once students have completed theirs, they can exchange them in a think-pair-share or use them to compile a whole-class brain dump. Then they can return to their texts to see what they missed or what needs correction.

Flashcards
These can be a powerful retrieval tool in class or at home, but students need to be taught to use them correctly:

Once a card has been mastered, keep it in the deck a while.
Research has shown that students tend to "drop" cards out of their decks too soon after they have mastered them (Karpicke, 2009). Ideally, a fact should be successfully retrieved three times before a student moves on from it.

Actually retrieve.
Karpicke's research also found that when students see a familiar prompt on a flashcard, they have a tendency to tell themselves they know it, then flip it over to see the answer, rather than taking a few extra seconds to actually recall the answer-and ideally, say it out loud-before flipping the card over. The difference in timing is subtle, but important: Students will not get the same benefits from flashcards unless they actually retrieve the answer before seeing it.

Shuffle the deck.
Keeping the cards in the same order makes them predictable. Once a deck has been gone through a few times, it should be shuffled to make it more challenging.

For more tips, take a look at College Info Geek's excellent post on effectively using flashcards.

Tips and Cautions

Retrieval practice is not the same thing as assessment.
Although some retrieval activities might allow you to formatively assess student understanding, remember that retrieval practice is a learning activity. Again, if you must assign points for practices, make sure they will have a very low impact on student grades.

Space your practice.
Retrieval practice is even more effective if it's done in short bursts over time, rather than in a single long session. This spacing causes students to forget some of the material, and the struggle involved in trying to recall it strengthens their long-term learning.

Include feedback.
If students retrieve the wrong information, the practice won't be much good unless they find out the right information, so be sure to give them feedback as they go. This can be as simple as providing the correct answer or letting students check their texts after they have attempted to retrieve. "Part of that isn't just so students know if they got their answer correct or incorrect," Agarwal says, "but it adjusts students' metacognition," helping them get "better at estimating or judging what they know and what they don't know."

Match your practice to your assessment.
If your summative assessment for a chunk of content will be basic recall of facts, then the retrieval practice can be that simple. But it you're going to include some higher-order questions as well, then be sure to ask those same types of questions in retrieval practice.

Does it Fit with Inquiry Learning?

If your classroom is built around more hands-on, inquiry-driven approaches to learning that don't prioritize retaining specific content-structures like Genius Hour and project-based learning -you might wonder whether retrieval practice is relevant to your teaching.

Consider this: Within any of those frameworks, students still have to learn and retain discrete information. Take, for example, a student who has decided to learn Arabic as his focus for Genius Hour, or students who are studying soil pH as part of a gardening project. Both students will need to study and remember concrete information in order to make progress, so even if your instruction isn't set up in a traditional way, understanding how retrieval practice works can help you help your students learn better.

A Little Goes a Long Way

Agarwal's final piece of advice is to start small. "If a student just writes down two things or one thing they learned, and then you move on, that's okay," she says. "You'll still get benefits of retrieval without spending five minutes in a classroom discussion."

It can be a bell-ringer. An exit slip. A sponge activity. Something you do while students stand in line for lunch. Don't overthink it. Agarwal advises teachers to ask themselves this: "What is one way we can flip from reviewing information to students retrieving information? What can we do tomorrow?"

What will you do tomorrow? ♦

Learn More

Dr. Agarwal and her colleagues have put together this comprehensive guide to using retrieval practice. Visit RetrievalPractice.org/download to get a free copy for yourself. And be sure to follow Retrieval Practice on Twitter at @RetrieveLearn.
References:
Karpicke, J. D. (2009). Metacognitive control and strategy selection: deciding to practice retrieval during learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 138(4), 469.

McDaniel, M. A., Agarwal, P. K., Huelser, B. J., McDermott, K. B., & Roediger III, H. L. (2011). Test-enhanced learning in a middle school science classroom: The effects of quiz frequency and placement. Journal of Educational Psychology, 103(2), 399.

There's a lot more where this came from.
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Retrieval Practice: The Most Powerful Learning Strategy You're Not Using

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Nothing cements long-term learning as powerfully as retrieval practice. Learn how to incorporate it into your classroom.

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TedTalks

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Knowing more than one language is great for your brain. But what's the best way to learn? TED's Open Translation Project volunteers share 7 tips:

1. Get real. Decide on a simple, attainable goal to start with so that you don't feel overwhelmed. German translator Judith Matz suggests: "Pick up 50 words of a language and start using them on people - and then slowly start picking up grammar."

2. Make language-learning a lifestyle change. Elisabeth Buffard has been teaching English for 27 years. She says that consistency is what separates the most successful students from the rest. Find a language habit that you can follow even when you're tired, sick or madly in love.

3. Play house with the language. The more you invite a foreign language into your daily life, the more your brain will consider it something worth remembering. "Use every opportunity to get exposed to the new language," says Russian translator Olga Dmitrochenkova. For example, you might label objects in your house in the language, read kids' books written in it, or watch subtitled TED-Ed Originals.

4. Let technology help you out. Dmitrochenkova has a great idea: "A funny thing like resetting the language on your phone can help you learn new words right away," she says. Ditto for changing the language on your browser. Or you can seek out more structured learning opportunities online. Dutch translator Els De Keyser recommends Duolinguo for its approach to grammar, and Anki for memorizing vocabulary with its "intelligent" flashcards.

5. Think about language-learning as a gateway to new experiences. To Spanish translator Sebastián Betti, learning a language has always been about focusing on the experiences that the new language would open up, from "visiting theme parks, to enjoying cowboy poetry and folk-rock festivals, to learning about photo-essay techniques." In other words, he thinks of fun things that he wanted to do anyway, and makes them into a language-learning opportunity. Many of our translators shared this advice. For example, Italian and French translator Anna Minoli learned English by watching undubbed versions of her favorite movies, while Croatian translator Ivan Stamenković suddenly realized he could speak English in fifth grade, after years of watching the Cartoon Network without subtitles. So the next time you need a vegan carrot cake recipe, find one in the language you're trying to learn.

6. Make new friends. Interacting in the new language is key - it will teach you to intuitively express your thoughts, instead of mentally translating each sentence before you say it. Find native speakers near you. Or search for foreign penpals or set up a language tandem online, where two volunteers help one another practice their respective languages.

7. Do not worry about making mistakes. One of the most common barriers to conversing in a new language is the fear of making mistakes. But native speakers are like doting parents: any attempt from you to communicate in their language is objective proof that you are a gifted genius. They'll appreciate your effort and even help you. Nervous about holding a conversation with a peer? Try testing your language skills with someone a little younger. "I was stoked when I was chatting with an Italian toddler and realized we had the same level of Italian," recalls German translator Judith Matz. And be patient. The more you speak, the closer you'll get to the elusive ideal of "native-like fluency." And to talking to people your own age.

This article was adapted for TED-Ed from a TED Blog post. For more great articles, subscribe to the TED-Ed Newsletter.

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How to learn a new language: 7 tips from TED Translators

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Knowing more than one language is great for your brain. But what's the best way to learn? TED's Open Translation Project volunteers share 7 tips: Get real. Decide on a simple, attainable goal to start with so that you don't feel overwhelmed.

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Teachers have long known that rote memorization can lead to a superficial grasp of material that is quickly forgotten. But new research in the field of neuroscience is starting to shed light on the ways that brains are wired to forget-highlighting the importance of strategies to retain knowledge and make learning stick.

In a recent article published in the journal Neuron, neurobiologists Blake Richards and Paul Frankland challenge the predominant view of memory, which holds that forgetting is a process of loss-the gradual washing away of critical information despite our best efforts to retain it. According to Richards and Frankland, the goal of memory is not just to store information accurately but to "optimize decision-making" in chaotic, quickly changing environments. In this model of cognition, forgetting is an evolutionary strategy, a purposeful process that runs in the background of memory, evaluating and discarding information that doesn't promote the survival of the species.

"From this perspective, forgetting is not necessarily a failure of memory," explain Richards and Frankland in the study. "Rather, it may represent an investment in a more optimal mnemonic strategy."

The Forgetting Curve

We often think of memories as books in a library, filed away and accessed when needed. But they're actually more like spiderwebs, strands of recollection distributed across millions of connected neurons. When we learn something new-when a teacher delivers a fresh lesson to a student, for example-the material is encoded across these neural networks, converting the experience into a memory.

Forgetting is almost immediately the nemesis of memory, as psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus discovered in the 1880s. Ebbinghaus pioneered landmark research in the field of retention and learning, observing what he called the forgetting curve, a measure of how much we forget over time. In his experiments, he discovered that without any reinforcement or connections to prior knowledge, information is quickly forgotten-roughly 56 percent in one hour, 66 percent after a day, and 75 percent after six days.

So what can be done to preserve the hard work of teaching? After all, evolutionary imperatives-which prune our memories of extraneous information-don't always neatly align with the requirements of curriculum or the demands of the Information Age. Learning the times tables doesn't avail when running from lions, in other words, but in the modern world that knowledge has more than proved its mettle.

The Persistence of Memory

The same neural circuitry appears to be involved in forgetting and remembering. If that is properly understood, students and teachers can adopt strategies to reduce memory leaks and reinforce learning.

MIT neuroscientists, led by Richard Cho, explain the mechanisms for synaptic strengthening in a 2015 article, also published in Neuron. When neurons are frequently fired, synaptic connections are strengthened; the opposite is true for neurons that are rarely fired. Known as synaptic plasticity, this explains why some memories persist while others fade away. Repeatedly accessing a stored but fading memory-like a rule of geometry or a crucial historical fact-rekindles the neural network that contains the memory and encodes it more deeply.

Researchers have also learned that not all new memories are created equal. For example, here are two sets of letters to remember:

For readers of English, the second set of letters is more memorable-the more connections neurons have to other neurons, the stronger the memory. The seven letters in NPFXOSK appear random and disjointed, while ORANGES benefits from its existing, deeply encoded linguistic context. The word oranges also invokes sensory memory, from the image of an orange to its smell, and perhaps even conjures other memories of oranges in your kitchen or growing on a tree. You remember by layering new memories on the crumbling foundations of older ones.

5 Teacher Strategies

When students learn a new piece of information, they make new synaptic connections. Two scientifically based ways to help them retain learning is by making as many connections as possible-typically to other concepts, thus widening the "spiderweb" of neural connections-but also by accessing the memory repeatedly over time.

Which explains why the following learning strategies, all tied to research conducted within the past five years, are so effective:

1. Peer-to-peer explanations: When students explain what they've learned to peers, fading memories are reactivated, strengthened, and consolidated. This strategy not only increases retention but also encourages active learning (Sekeres et al., 2016).

2. The spacing effect: Instead of covering a topic and then moving on, revisit key ideas throughout the school year. Research shows that students perform better academically when given multiple opportunities to review learned material. For example, teachers can quickly incorporate a brief review of what was covered several weeks earlier into ongoing lessons, or use homework to re-expose students to previous concepts (Carpenter et al., 2012; Kang, 2016).

3. Frequent practice tests: Akin to regularly reviewing material, giving frequent practice tests can boost long-term retention and, as a bonus, help protect against stress, which often impairs memory performance. Practice tests can be low stakes and ungraded, such as a quick pop quiz at the start of a lesson or a trivia quiz on Kahoot, a popular online game-based learning platform. Breaking down one large high-stakes test into smaller tests over several months is an effective approach (Adesope, Trevisan, & Sundararajan, 2017; Butler, 2010; Karpicke, 2016).

4. Interleave concepts: Instead of grouping similar problems together, mix them up. Solving problems involves identifying the correct strategy to use and then executing the strategy. When similar problems are grouped together, students don't have to think about what strategies to use-they automatically apply the same solution over and over. Interleaving forces students to think on their feet, and encodes learning more deeply (Rohrer, 2012; Rohrer, Dedrick, & Stershic, 2015).

5. Combine text with images: It's often easier to remember information that's been presented in different ways, especially if visual aids can help organize information. For example, pairing a list of countries occupied by German forces during World War II with a map of German military expansion can reinforce that lesson. It's easier to remember what's been read and seen, instead of either one alone (Carney & Levin, 2002; Bui & McDaniel, 2015).

So even though forgetting starts as soon as learning happens-as Ebbinghaus's experiments demonstrate-research shows that there are simple and effective strategies to help make learning stick.

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Why Students Forget-and What You Can Do About It

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Teachers have long known that rote memorization can lead to a superficial grasp of material that is quickly forgotten. But new research in the field of neuroscience is starting to shed light on the ways that brains are wired to forget-highlighting the importance of strategies to retain knowledge and make learning stick.

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Inquiry based language learning in the PYP - International School Utrecht : International School Utrecht

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Inquiry based language learning in the PYP - International School Utrecht : International School Utrecht

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The PYP curriculum is built around inquiry learning; learning by questioning, exploring and experimenting. From the very day we are born we start learning language in precisely the same way. So why should we do it otherwise in school?
By Sara D'Orazio, Language Coordinator, English
The language curriculum at ISUtrecht has been developed around the same principles of inquiry. With this as our premise, we also recognise that among our multilingual community there is a wide range of language abilities and needs. To cater for this, we have worked on our language teaching strategies, and developed a procedure that allows for inquiry, while at the same time offering a more structured approach that enables students to focus on the particular language features they must develop.

For each unit, class teachers develop a language component that will culminate with the production of a written text:

This language component will be in line with a text type, with a specific purpose and audience: a scientific experiment report (writing to inform), a debate (writing to persuade), a recipe (writing to instruct), etc.

Over the course of the unit, students will read and explore models of the text type they will themselves produce.

In the process, they will study the language and structural features needed to produce that text, which include grammar, vocabulary, sentence structure, etc. In this way, students have the opportunity to develop their language knowledge in context and put this into practice in writing, which will consolidate their learning.

The writing itself will follow the writing process, ie. a system of drafting and re-drafting until they reach the final publishable version of the text. This allows students to reflect and improve on their language use by experimenting with the language structures explored in the lessons.

Are you an inquirer yourself?
Do you like going deeper? Check out the following publication for some language developed research ad theory: P. Gibbons (2002) Teaching Second Language Learners in the Mainstream Classroom (Portsmouth: Heinemmann) - Chapter 4, in particular. The title of the book focuses on ELA learners, however the language teaching framework described has proven effective for the whole classroom. You will find electronic copies online, just by typing the title and author. Happy reading!
While engaging in this linguistic inquiry, students work with peers that share similar language needs. They work collaboratively to develop their language knowledge at the level that suits their development stage. In this way, teachers are able to plan more explicitly for differentiation and allow for the various needs of our language learners.

But how does all this theory work in practice?

A typical PYP unit will center on a transdisciplinary theme. This establishes the area of inquiry, ie. the topic and the leaning direction for that unit. For instance, one of grade 5's recent units was under the theme 'How We Express ourselves'. It's central idea being that 'We choose the medium and materials to communicate a message'. The teacher then selects a number of lines of inquiry to guide the students.

One of the lines of inquiry the students followed was the creative cycle: what is the creative cycle, and how does it look for artists in different fields. Since we learn more effectively by doing, what better experience than going through the creative process themselves? For students to do this, the class teacher developed the language component of the unit around creative writing, and in particular writing to entertain.

Mr. Gouk was pleased to see that 'this 5 draft approach revealed an incredible contrast between their 'have a go' first attempt and their final draft'. The completed pieces showed how much the students had learned about language use in the process. At the same time, Mr Gouk continued, 'this whole process closely resembled what [students] were exploring during their unit inquiry'.

Interactive Language Lesson

You can imagine the language exploration section of this process to be organised around different language features, each few lessons a different one. These features are selected by the teacher according to what is appropriate for that particular text type, his/her pre-assessment of what the students need, and questions that the students themselves might have come up with. Students will typically tackle their language study in groups, each group exploring the aspect in question from a different angle or a different level depending on their language needs.

This procedure makes for a dynamic and interactive language lesson, which is always geared towards applying what you learn to realistic scenarios. I like to think that it helps us to see language in action. As the students work in their groups, the teacher is able to monitor their understanding and learning and adjust their future teaching to it.
Interestingly, we have not been alone in developing this type of language teaching. Here is what a teacher at The International School Tokyo had to say. We are on the same track!
Here is some of the work, the grade 5 students created:

Interested in knowing more? Here you can access some of the resources we have adopted to guide us in planning our inquiry based, differentiated language lessons - The First Steps Writing Resource Book in particular.

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Inquiry based language learning in the PYP

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The PYP curriculum is built around inquiry learning; learning by questioning, exploring and experimenting. From the very day we are born we start learning language in precisely the same way. So why should we do it otherwise in school? By Sara D'Orazio, Language Coordinator, English The language curriculum at ISUtrecht has been developed around the same principles of inquiry.

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How Do We Plan Language on a PYP Planner? - Christopher Frost

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How Do We Plan Language on a PYP Planner? - Christopher Frost

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Can students inquire in a foreign language? | Inquire Within

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Can students inquire in a foreign language? | Inquire Within