More tips from Kate Jones
Video transcript
let’s dive straight in kate what’s your first tip for us today well my tips are along the theme of retrieval practice something i’m interested in as i you my first tip is about knowing when not to do retrieval practice so when to do review instead so that might sound surprising to a few people that i’m saying there’s actually some points where we shouldn’t do retrieval practice wow you’ve hooked me straight in there right so tell me about this then okay well i think i’ll need to give a little bit of context and something that you and i have in common is that we are super fans of professors robert and elizabeth bjork so i’m going to just yeah draw on their work um so previously well actually in 1914 edward thorndike published the law of use and issues and this was accepted um in the in the community of academic field and memory and what thorndike said was that if you have information in long-term memory but if you don’t use it you lose it and i’m paraphrasing there no that’s not a direct quote so the idea is he was saying that it decays and it disappears and actually that seems to make sense and we can understand why it was accepted and most people believe that’s how memory works however and this is where the bjorks come along so they actually challenged thorndike’s law of disuse with the new theory of disuse and this was in the 90s but i can’t believe that it was in the 90s and i didn’t know about it when i was training to be a teacher in 2010 so the new theory of disuse for anyone not familiar with it um it doesn’t say that what thorndike says it doesn’t say that memories decay it actually has two measures of memory with storage strength and retrieval strength so the bjorks argue that if it has transferred to long-term memory that it will stay there it just becomes difficult to access so storage strength refers to how well embedded entrenched information is in long-term memory now storage strength can’t decline or rather the only way that it would decline would be with physical and quite extreme damage to the brain so in a classroom context because we’re not dealing with that in the classroom context we can be quite confident that storage strength doesn’t decline it can increase so if it’s transferred to long-term memory it will be there however and this is where people go why do i forget things well that’s because of retrieval strength and retrieval strength can and does fluctuate it can decrease and it can increase so and i see this all the time when i i’ve been observing lessons recently and a teacher asked a question and a student’s hand shot up in the air and they answered it correctly so quickly and i thought oh their retrieval strength is high because that’s what retrieval strength is when it’s high that you can recall information quickly correctly and confidently but when retrieval strength is low we’ve all experienced this students have experienced this it’s that frustrating feeling oh i know this and it takes a long time and it’s quite slow and difficult to recall or perhaps you don’t recall it in that moment and this is why i think it’s essential for teachers to know because we could be doing a retrieval task with students and they don’t recall the information and then an assumption is made that it wasn’t encoded it didn’t transfer to long-term memory was actually it’s probably there it’s just that the retrieval strength is low but don’t panic because we can boost and increase the retrieval strength and the way that we do that is either through review and a refresher or through more retrieval practice so the reason that i’m saying to teachers retrieval practice perhaps isn’t always the best option is because there will be points in the academic year or in terms of your teaching where retrieval strength will likely be very low so if we ask students to complete a retrieval practice task when retrieval strength is low they won’t do very well and that’s not good for them because they won’t have retrieval success it can be really demoralizing knock their confidence it probably won’t be that insightful for the teacher and the teacher could misunderstand that data and think i need to reteach it whereas actually if they’d have done a refresher over a review instead of a retrieval task that would have boosted their retrieval strength and then perhaps the following week they could do a retrieval task and they would do better so it’s really about understanding retrieval strength and storage strength and by me saying don’t do retrieval practice do retrieval practice it’s a it’s a great strategy but there are certain points where it’s not the best strategy to use so does that all make sense that’s brilliant kate um so the first thing to say there is that’s one of the best summaries i’ve heard of of the retrieval storage strength difference and the history from the bjork’s perspective was fascinating three things i want to dig into as a result of that if that’s okay so the first is the obvious question and that is how do we know how do we know when it’s a good time to do retrieval practice versus a bad time what what are some of the strategies and that we can employ to know whether it’s a good time to do retrieval practice well that’s a great question and we can actually know when the times are that we should use retrieval practice and we shouldn’t so i’m going to drop a few names here robert bjork dylan william and i co-authored an article and we wrote it in the august for teachers going back to school in september and that’s a classic example students i’ve had a long break of six weeks and we’ll assume they haven’t been studying like they would in school so we can assume retrieval strength is low so if you’ve got a year 11 class or year 13 class a class up from that you’re carrying on with it could be tempting to start the year what can you remember from last academic year and that won’t turn out well probably because of the retrieval strength being low so in terms of the academic calendar we can look at that we can look at points where there’s been a break in learning so after the easter holidays possibly although that does depend if you’ve taught something right on the edge and they’ve had two weeks then possibly you could do a retrieval practice task but if they don’t do as well as anticipated it could because retrieval strength is low another point to think about is when the content was last revisited or taught so you know who else must don’t need to know about this uh ofsted inspectors and i don’t know if they do but the reason i say this is because lots of primary school teachers have told me that offset inspectors are asking students questions about previously taught material but actually they really need to be aware of retrieval strength here because if they were to ask a year 6 student a question about something on the year 4 curriculum the year 6 student might just panic be blank and the retrieval strength could be low the best way for an offstead i know this is tips for teachers not tips for offset but this can be helpful for teachers to say in an inspection the best thing for an inspector to do would be able to talk to the classroom teacher and if for example the class in year six are studying plants and they studied that in year four then the often inspector can ask them questions about the curriculum content from year four because the teacher should have revisited that quiz that built on that and the retrieval strength will be high so it’s so important for this in terms of understanding learning and especially making judgments as well so the things that we need to consider are when there’s been breaks and gaps with learning but also if you haven’t revisited something in a very long time and i’m talking here months so it could even be years then retrieval strength could likely be very low but there are lots of variables with that how well that information was taught how thorough for example because you could ask a student a multiplication question that they’ve done years ago but that would be really strongly embedded and entrenched meaning that the retrieval strength is still high and accessible but i often see there’s a version of my retrieval grid and my retrieval grid i created in history but i think it works best in maths you know where it’s last lesson last week last term and so on and sometimes there’s a last year question and my only concern about that last year question is have you revisited that since a year ago because if not be very mindful the retrieval strength could be low this is fascinating this kate my my second question for this and this may be a really silly question so please forgive me what’s the difference between a retrieval kind of opportunity or task versus a review task yes and it’s not a silly question honestly you ask all the great questions and i’ve felt like that before when i’ve reached out to people like robert bjork i said sorry um but that’s a good question and i’ll give you an example of a view of refresher so we’re coming back to school after a long break why don’t you review a knowledge organizer get it up on the board have a question and answer discussion talk about it in pairs or do um a refresher task which could be comprehension based reading the textbook answering questions the main difference is that there is support there and that they have the knowledge organizer the class notes the textbook they can talk about it they can confer the teacher can answer it and ask questions in contrast to retrieval where you would take away that support so that answer your question that does yeah and i think you alluded to this earlier so it is a good idea if something hasn’t been revisited in a long time do one of these review or refresher tasks but then maybe a week later or something then you follow it up with the appropriate retrieval task is that right yes and i would tell my students that and i would be really explicit and say you haven’t done this in a very long time so i’m not going to quiz you because i know that it will take you a long time and i had a student a sixth form student come to me and say miss i tried one of your brain dumps without my the idea i write everything down from memory and i i really struggled i couldn’t write much i said well what were you writing about and he was starting at the beginning of the course something from a year ago and that’s i said that’s where you’re going wrong you should have read the textbook again perhaps made some notes and wrote some questions then waited and then that would boost your knowledge and your confidence and he did that and it worked honestly can you imagine go to a quiz with me craig and i say i know it it’s just my retrieval strength is low that’s it that’s how i see the world now [Laughter] it’s brilliant this game well that leads me to just a couple more follow-ups on this if this is all right you’ve touched upon one there that’s how much do you think it’s important that the kids are aware of this because i’m of the opinion these days that for many years i’ve made the mistake of almost kind of keeping the kids in in the dark of some of the ideas and strategies i’ve been trying but this this feels like something really useful for for kids to be aware of this difference between retrieval strength story strengthen and not to panic if they think they’ve forgotten something would that be something you’d share with the kids absolutely essential i’ve shared it with my students with parents parents and carers really need to know this because even when they know that retrieval practice is more effective than highlighting and underlining they can still panic when their child forgets and can’t recall information and that’s where they need to have that deeper understanding of forgetting that actually it’s there it’s just not accessible at that moment in time but don’t worry we can do something about that and actually it’s really powerful when you know that and it’s really powerful when you know where the gaps are in your knowledge because you can do something about that so all the students that i’ve taught in recent years and their families retrieval practice is just part of the language of learning and i do use the term retrieval practice and i will say retrieval strength as well and i try and use it at every opportunity in in lessons on reports and parents evenings i mean obviously i’m the woman who wrote a book about retrieval practice but i it’s really important that it comes from everyone that all teachers and school leaders are all singing from the same retrieval practice hymn sheet and sharing that with students and i’m working with primaries and they’re doing a great job of child-friendly explanations and i just think they’re younger that they can understand this the better final question on on this this tip and this may be a terrible question and again kate how do we know whether retrieval practice is just really low versus that just kids just don’t know it it’s kind of just not in there at all because you could almost feel as a teacher all right they didn’t they didn’t get they don’t know the answer to that oh it’s okay it’s just because retrieval practice is low versus actually they just don’t have a clue what’s going on how do we how do we make that distinction yeah again great question and there’s also other things about how do we know if they’re just not trying because retrieval practice is low stakes or no stakes so there are things that we can do and i do think first of all retrieval practice should have some level of accountability so that if a student isn’t trying isn’t investing effort the teacher can have that conversation and say i’ve noticed this and now in terms of whether they they just don’t know it and they never got it the first time around or retrieval strength is is low what we can do and this is where retrieval practice is also brilliant um and i’ll talk about this in another tip as well about retrieval cues is that we can increase the retrieval cues and prompts and if that is still not helping students to reach the correct information then that is a real clear indicator that it’s it’s worth revisiting going over in that review and that refresher and and that you’ve recognized this this gap in knowledge but if they can get it so teachers are so good at this uh without realizing they’ll be walking around the class and they’ll see a student struggling and they’ll just give a verbal prompt or just a little hint to get them going and they go oh that’s what i meant to be writing about and then they do that but still after that verbal prompt blank they’re struggling that’s when we know as a teacher okay this is this is something i need to revisit