Getting students on board with retrieval

Diagnosis

1. Have you experienced your students not taking retrieval as seriously as the core part of a lesson?
2. Have you taken any steps to address this?

Evidence

The problem with retrieval practice, whatever form it takes, is that it feels hard. As we have seen, retrieval practice is desirable, but it is also difficult. If students do not put in the required effort, it doesn’t matter how optimised our spacing schedule is or how carefully we’ve interwoven the content; they will not learn.

Explaining to students why we choose certain strategies is always important, but especially when we are purposefully making things difficult, and they see a dip in their performance.

Solution steps

Let’s look at some specific problems we may face, and some concrete strategies to address them:

Problem #1: Students do not appreciate the importance of retrieval practice

What is the problem?

I have a theory: Many students take revisiting things they have learned in the past less seriously than learning new ideas.

They may choose not to engage fully in a Do Now retrieval starter, saving their mental energy for when the lesson “begins properly.” They may copy their mates’ mixed-topic homework or leave out questions in a Low-Stakes Quiz, only answering the ones that come easily to them.

What is the solution?

One of the most effective ways I have found to encourage my students to take retrieval opportunities more seriously is to show them a diagram of the famous Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve:

 I accompany the diagram with dialogue along the lines of:

Okay, so I have some good news and some bad news about how our memories work. 

First, the bad news. As soon as you learn something new, you quickly forget it. Look at how steep this first curve is. So, even though you might have nailed it at the time, I am afraid that it will become harder and harder to remember it with each passing minute. This is perfectly normal. It is our brain’s way of deciding of all the things it encounters every second of every day, what is worth remembering? And if you have just thought about something once, then your brain does not have a lot to go off.

But here is the good news! If you try hard to retrieve that memory again in the future, you slow down this rate of forgetting. Why? Because you are telling your brain that this is important – I need to remember this! And each time you try hard to retrieve that memory in the future, that annoying curve gets flatter and flatter until eventually it is lodged in your brain for a long, long time. 

So, every time I ask you to do a Do Now, homework or Low-Stakes Quiz that contains something you have learned before, please try super hard to remember how to do it. Because each time you do, you are using the way your memory works to your advantage.

Problem #2: Students do not appreciate the limits of working memory

What is the problem?

We know working memory is limited. We know that for our students to have the best chance of understanding what we are trying to teach them they need to dedicate as much attention as possible to that key idea. We know, therefore, that anything else that catches their attention is going to reduce the attention they can dedicate to thinking about that big idea.

But we also know that many students will not pay us a blind bit of notice when we ask them to concentrate.

What is the solution?

One of my favourite demonstrations comes in two parts.

Part 1: Ask your students to remember things

Present students with a test to determine the limits of their working memories. I like this one, which starts off by asking them to recall 8 digits and increases from there.

When the numbers have stopped showing, ask students to write down the full string of numbers on their mini0whiteboards, hover, and show you in 3, 2, 1.

Keep increasing the number until only a few students are left.

Part 2: Ask your students to remember things… with distractions

Now the fun begins. Repeat the test, bu this time distract students. Here are some good ways to do that:

• Cold Call a few students
• Ask students to answer an unrelated question on their mini-whiteboards
• Ask students to turn to their partners and tell them the best thing they have watched in the last 6 months
• Play some music – something with plenty of lyrics. Oasis, Rock ‘n’ Roll Star, if you are interested – might as well give them a musical education whilst we are at it 
• Tell students a story.

Then ask students to write out the string of numbers.

Of course, what is happening here is that students’ limited working memory capacity is being filled with redundant tasks —they are of no help in remembering the list of times, and indeed, they are a hindrance as they steal students’ limited supply of attention.

When you ask students to write down the list now, you can guarantee fewer will be successful.

You can use this as a springboard to discuss the importance of concentrating, or even broaden this out to suggest not doing homework or revising with the TV on, singing along to Spotify, or working with a friend with whom you like to chat about other stuff with. All are unlikely to be the conditions most suited to learning. 

Problem #3: Students do not appreciate the importance of long-term memory

What is the problem?

Another thing teachers understand is that knowledge helps thinking. Our working memories have a finite capacity, but our long-term memories do not. So, if we can pull knowledge from our long-term memory into our working memory, then it can ease the burden of the information we are trying to process. Moreover, we can then do more sophisticated things with that information.

But, once again, it is one thing teachers knowing this…

What is the solution?

There are two parts to this demonstration, and both are super quick:

1. How knowledge in long-term memory frees up working memory capacity

Ask students to remember the set of letters you are about to flash on the screen. Make them appear all at the same time for about 1 second before removing them:

A D E J F P O B D

Then ask students to write them down.

Almost all students will fail.

Now repeat the challenge but this time with these letters:

C R O C O D I L E

Most students can remember these letters. The question to pose to students is why? And the answer is that the second set of letters has meaning. They are not nine items that need remembering, they are one. Because students have knowledge of CROCODILE, those nine letters instead take up the capacity of one item, and so are much more easily processed. This is chunking.

2. How knowledge in long-term memory allows more sophisticated thinking

Next show students these 6 letters all at once for no more than 1 second:

O D H C M B

With the letters no longer visible, challenge students to write down the next letter in the alphabet for each – so, if a letter visible was an A, they would write down a B.

Most students struggle with this.

Next repeat the exercise with these 6 letters:

C Y P R U S

More students are successful. Why? Because once again knowledge in long-term memory has helped us chunk those six letters into one item, and this time we have used the working memory capacity this has freed up to do something sophisticated with that knowledge – something that was significantly more challenging than with knowledge that is not secure.

Knowing things makes thinking, learning new things and problem solving easier

I have also used these demonstrations to respond to the classic protest: why do I have to learn this, I can just Google it? The point is that to formulate a question to pose to a search engine and to then interpret the response, requires knowledge. 

Problem #4: Students do not appreciate the difference between familiarity and remembering

What is the problem?

This is a big one. 

Student: Sir, you will be dead proud of me. I did 3 hours maths revision last night!

Teacher: That is brilliant news, well done! What did you do?

Student: I watched a YouTube video, and read over my notes

Teacher: Oh…

One study (LINK TO METACOGNITIVE STRATEGIES IN STUDENT LEARNING – KAPRIKE) found that 1% of participants regarded retrieval practice as their best study strategy, and only 11% reported that they self-administered tests while studying.

Dunlosky’s Strengthening the Student Toolbox (LINK) ranks students’ most effective study methods. Right at the top of the list is practice testing. Intuitively, we know this. The best way to learn maths is to do maths, and I am sure that is true in other subjects. Much lower down Dunlosky’s list is re-reading – where students review material they have encountered before. The reason this is not as effective is that students are not actively trying to retrieve knowledge from their long-term memories and hence get the boost in storage and retrieval strength. But it sure feels nice. More specifically, reviewing feels familiar. As we read over those notes or watch that video, we convince ourselves that we know it. Perhaps we see certain cues that ring a bell – familiar phrases and steps – or perhaps we recall the positive feeling of understanding the subject matter at the time and confuse that with actually remembering how to do something. Either way, we are seduced by that familiarity. 

What is the solution?

I have two favourite demonstrations, both of which you can try now:

1. The Google challenge

Show students the following image and ask them to decide – without telling anyone else – which they think is the correct colour arrangement for the Google logo:

When you are ready, ask anyone who thinks it is A to raise their hand. Then B, then C and so on. 

I guarantee there will be a wide spread of responses.

2. The Apple challenge

Give students a blank piece of paper or a mini-whiteboard, and ensure no Apple products are in view (easier said than done these days). Then say to students: draw a sketch of the Apple logo.

When students have finished, ask:

• Hands up if you put the bite on the right? How about the left?
• Hands up if you had more than one leaf on top?
• Hands up who drew one leaf? Two? Three?

I will leave you to look up the answers.

The point of both of these quick demonstrations is that even though students have seen both logos thousands of times and thus are incredibly familiar with them, because they have not actively engaged with them, they do not know them as well as they may think. Whereas, if students were asked to select the correct Google logo or sketch the Apple logo every few months, they would complete these two challenges with ease. 

So what instead?

These two demonstrations should help students feel the need for more effective revision strategies. So now you could show them the table from the Dunlosky paper:

Then show students what effective practice testing looks like.

My favourite video on this is called How to Study Effectively for School or College [Top 6 Science-Based Study Skills] which is a collaboration between The Learning Scientists and Memorize Academy. The video describes six effective study strategies:

1. Retrieval practice
2. Spaced practice
3. Dual coding
4. Interleaving
5. Concrete examples
6. Elaboration

The video is great, but something even better lies in the comments: a free poster of the six strategies, and practical examples of how each can be used across different subjects. 

Of course, you could start by showing students this. But I think my two daft demonstrations help students feel the need for something more effective, and thus make them more receptive.

Implementation planning

Which of these four problems feels like the one you need to address first with your students?