Boost Your Test Prep with These 3 Retrieval Practice Activities [Episode 182]

Heidi  0:00

This is episode 182 of Teacher Approved.

 

Heidi  0:06

You’re listening to Teacher Approved, the podcast helping educators elevate what matters and simplify the rest. I’m Heidi.

 

Emily  0:13

And I’m Emily. We’re the creators behind Second Story Window, where we give research based and teacher approved strategies that make teaching less stressful and more effective. You can check out the show notes and resources from each episode at secondstorywindow.net.

 

Heidi  0:28

We’re so glad you’re tuning in today. Let’s get to the show.

 

Emily  0:36

Hey there. Thanks for joining us today. In today’s episode, we’re sharing three ways to use retrieval practice to boost your test prep, and sharing a teacher approved tip for think pair share.

 

Heidi  0:49

Let’s start with our new segment, Try It Tomorrow, where we share a quick idea that you can try in your classroom tomorrow. Emily, what is our try it tomorrow prompt this week?

 

Emily  0:59

Well, this week’s Try It Tomorrow is to introduce a mystery word to your students. All you do is choose a mystery word to share with your students tomorrow morning and challenge them to use it in their conversations or writing throughout the day. Choose an engaging, age appropriate word related to your current unit for an extra vocabulary boost.

 

Heidi  1:21

This reminds me, Emily you might be too young, Pee Wee’s Playhouse, and they’d always have the word of the day.

 

Emily  1:26

I’m not too young for Pee Wee. Come on.

 

Heidi  1:29

Obviously, I knew you were there when we were watching it, but I wasn’t sure if it was as formative for you.

 

Emily  1:35

I remember the word of the day, but I won’t do a Pee Wee impression.

 

Heidi  1:40

If you like this idea or anything else we share here on the podcast, would you take a second and give us a five star rating? Ratings and reviews are one way that new listeners can find us. So every rating and review really is a huge help to us.

 

Emily  1:54

So for the next three weeks, get excited. We’re going to be talking about everyone’s favorite topic, Test Prep.

 

Heidi  2:03

Boo. Throwing tomatoes.

 

Emily  2:06

I know it’s not everybody’s favorite topic, but let’s try a little reframe. Sure, none of us are excited about end of year testing, but what we are excited about is helping boost student learning and helping our students retain their knowledge for the future, and the way to do that is with retrieval practice.

 

Heidi  2:26

So that is what we are focusing on today. Now, as you prepare for testing season, you will hear a lot about the need for test review, right? We got to get all that review in for the test.

 

Emily  2:38

And sure, we are guilty of using that phrase sometimes too. But what we really mean when we say test review is giving kids lots of opportunities for retrieval practice.

 

Heidi  2:50

That is not as catchy as saying test review, though, like retrieval, that’s such a, it’s a mouthful. Well, let’s start with a quick definition of what is retrieval practice? It is hard to say. Now, retrieval practice sounds serious, but it just means working to recall information from your memory.

 

Emily  3:12

And not to get too brain nerdy on you, but what’s really cool is that retrieval practice actually strengthens the neuronal pathways in your brain that lead from your long term memory to your working memory.

 

Heidi  3:25

And that does sound cool, but why does that matter, Emily?

 

Emily  3:29

Well, the more often you have to draw that information from memory, the more deeply you carve the pathway in your brain. I kind of think of like pulling a wagon across a muddy road. The more you do it, you’re carving in that pathway, and that matters, because it means it becomes easier and easier to recall that information when you need it.

 

Heidi  3:49

So let’s talk about the difference between review and retrieval practice, because they might seem similar, but there are some very key differences.

 

Emily  3:57

Yeah, a typical review session about bar graphs, for example, might look like putting kids in groups and having them pull out their notes from three months ago. You ask a question, and then the groups have to work together to come up with the answer, using their memories and their notes if they get stuck.

 

Heidi  4:13

But let’s see how that could look different as a retrieval lesson. So instead of getting out notes, you display a bar graph for the students and have them write down everything they notice about the graph. It may have been a while since you’ve discussed bar graphs, so they’re going to have to retrieve that information from their memory. Then you can have a class discussion where they share what they know about the parts of the graph, and you know what information the graph gives them, and all of that.

 

Emily  4:37

The discussion is my favorite part. You could then have your students take turns trying to stump the class with questions that the bar graph can answer.

 

Heidi  4:46

And you can even let students make changes to the graph and then try to stump the class with another question about it. Then you would want to finish up with maybe a worksheet or a no-stakes quiz, just to check for understanding.

 

Emily  4:58

Quizzes are a really great tool for retrieval practice, but you do want to correct the quiz together so that you can correct misconceptions right away.

 

Heidi  5:07

Right. That’s so important, because the longer that misconceptions linger, the more they stick. And we definitely want to avoid that.

 

Emily  5:16

And that is an example of how a retrieval practice session might look. The big difference between those two lessons is that in the first, you are reminding students of the information, and in the second, the students are actively involved in reconstructing the previously learned information.

 

Heidi  5:33

Right. So with the review activity, you are providing lots of support for kids to get the right answers. It feels like that’s the right thing to do when you’re the teacher, right? You have the kids working as teams, they have their notes to refer to, and right? The kids are totally engaged in this activity, and they’re having fun reviewing the content. But it’s likely that the kids will leave that activity with the same level of understanding as they started with. The retrieval practice in the second activity requires much more mental effort, so it’s going to actually deepen students understanding.

 

Emily  6:07

Now, to be clear, there’s nothing wrong with the first lesson, but if your goal is to help your students solidify their knowledge and be able to keep it fresh for testing season, retrieval practice will give you the biggest bang for your time buck.

 

Heidi  6:21

Oh, I want a time buck.

 

Heidi  6:24

Retrieval practice does not have to be a 45 minute session with long discussions and quizzes every time. Sure, obviously a more involved lesson like the one we mentioned is powerful, and as we get closer to testing, you might want to replace one math lesson a week with a retrieval practice session.

 

Emily  6:43

But there are lots of easy and quick ways to add retrieval practice to your school day as we prepare for testing season. So let’s talk about three ways to use retrieval practice in your daily schedule for test prep.

 

Heidi  6:55

The first retrieval practice activity that you can do for test prep is cumulative review. It’s so important to give students opportunities to retrieve information they learned months ago and maybe haven’t used much since then. Cumulative review is the perfect way to do that.

 

Emily  7:12

Cumulative review means everything is on the table. Ask questions from yesterday’s lesson and last week’s lesson and the lessons you taught in September. The farther back the lesson was taught, the more students have to work to retrieve the information from their memories, and that effort is what will help make the content stick.

 

Heidi  7:31

Now, our favorite way to do a cumulative review is what we call an around the room activity. We just post questions on sheets of paper and hang them up around the room. Very analog. Kids grab a clipboard with an answer sheet on it, and then they just move around the room answering questions. Easy peasy.

 

Emily  7:48

This is always a student favorite activity too, because they love being able to move around the room. Isn’t it funny how changing the location of your activity can make the whole activity feel different and more engaging.

 

Heidi  8:00

And bonus, this activity is great for getting out any you know, spring fever wiggles that might creep in.

 

Emily  8:06

Students also love working at their own pace on this activity, but just make sure you have a fast finisher activity ready to go for those kids who are going to blaze through all the questions super quick, you know, the ones.

 

Heidi  8:17

Yes, they will take this as a personal challenge.

 

Heidi  8:21

After your students have answered all of the posted questions, or, you know, if you’ve run out of time and you have a few stragglers that don’t quite finish, it’s okay. Just make sure to reserve time for going over the answers together. Remember, we’re trying to avoid any lingering misconceptions.

 

Emily  8:36

If this sounds like a fun activity, we have some ready to go cumulative review questions that you can use for an around the room activity like this. We have a math set and an ELA set for both first grade and second grade. Each set has 128 editable questions for eight different topics, like place value and time and more.

 

Heidi  8:57

Now, obviously, don’t use all of those questions at once.

 

Emily  9:00

Oh, you would break them, the poor children.

 

Heidi  9:04

I would go with maybe like four questions of each of the eight topics, if that makes sense. So you have a total of 32 questions max. But that means you could do 32 questions and do the activity four different times, and have different questions every time.

 

Emily  9:20

And we also include a google slides presentation that has the answers, so you can go over all the answers together.

 

Heidi  9:26

Plus, after you have printed out all these questions, it’s so easy to use them next year, you just file it away and you can grab it out so that next year, this is a total no prep activity.

 

Emily  9:36

Let’s move on to our second retrieval practice activity that you can use for test prep, and that is brain dumps. I recently heard this called Brain Download, if you prefer that term.

 

Heidi  9:47

That is a little nicer.

 

Emily  9:48

Yes, or you can call it show what you know.

 

Heidi  9:52

Oh, that’s fun with a little rhyme. So a brain dump or a show what you know is when you ask your students to free recall everything they know and remember about a topic without any prompts or using their notes.

 

Emily  10:03

Research shows that brain dumps boost students learning of past and future content, their organization of knowledge and their inferential reasoning. Impressive, right?

 

Heidi  10:15

Yeah, you wouldn’t expect that for something called a brain dump. I love using brain dumps with students, because they are a powerful tool, but you don’t have to do any prep to use them. You just give students the topic, set a short time limit, and let them write, and then they are all engaged because they’re each working on retrieving their individual knowledge.

 

Heidi  10:37

Adding

 

Emily  10:37

Adding a brain dump to your plans can be as simple as pausing a lesson, giving students a few minutes to write and then moving on.

 

Heidi  10:43

Now, we would suggest keeping a time limit to just a few minutes, or giving a specific task, like asking students to write three things they know about the topic.

 

Emily  10:52

And keep the stakes low. Here, if you absolutely must take a grade, make it a low part of the grade. But it’s even better if this exercise can be free of any pressure. You can definitely use their brain dumps as a way to informally assess their understanding though.

 

Heidi  11:08

The book Powerful Teaching: Unleash the Science of Learning, has a great section on brain dumps, like they have a whole chapter on it, and they include several variations that are simple to use and effective for learners. And we will put a link to the book in the show notes if you are interested in more information.

 

Emily  11:25

And now for our third and final retrieval practice activity that you can use for test prep, low stakes quizzes.

 

Heidi  11:32

Did you know that testing actually increases learning? That doesn’t have to mean, you know, pulling out the number two pencils and the bubble sheets.

 

Emily  11:41

Wait, does anybody use those bubble sheets for tests anymore?

 

Heidi  11:46

They were doing it on Abbott Elementary few weeks ago. Janine was having her second graders do tests practice on these bubble sheets. You wouldn’t ever do this with second graders!

 

Heidi  11:59

No,

 

Emily  11:59

No, our age is showing with that reference,

 

Heidi  12:04

But the point is, a test is any situation that requires that students recall learned information or skills, and because it’s such a powerful strategy, you can really help your students by giving them low stakes quizzes frequently, even though they won’t think it’s helping them.

 

Emily  12:22

A retrieval practice test differs from a traditional test in its purpose. The point here is not assessment, but to provide a situation where students have to recall information, and we’re helping them strengthen those neuronal pathways with these tests, remember?

 

Heidi  12:38

But keeping it low stakes, which means you’re not giving a grade, or if you are, it’s only for completion, your students can benefit from this practice without having to feel stressed. The more you do these low stakes quizzes, the more your students will be comfortable with them and that they can reap the benefits of them.

 

Emily  12:56

You can make the quizzes even more powerful by not just quizzing on today’s lesson, but also asking questions about yesterday’s lesson, last week’s lesson, last month’s lesson, like we mentioned before. And by that, we mean something learned anytime earlier this school year.

 

Heidi  13:11

And don’t forget that you want to go over and discuss those quizzes as a class.

 

Emily  13:16

Yep. Clear up those misconceptions right away. This doesn’t have to be a big deal either. It can be three to five questions and a few minutes to correct.

 

Heidi  13:24

You could even mix this up by giving your students a chance to write their own quiz questions for the class. You know, kids would love that. And then you can choose some of those questions to include in your quizzes as well.

 

Emily  13:35

A quick way to make these quizzes would be to use Google Slides or PowerPoint and have the students write their answers on a blank sheet of paper, then your slideshow can also include the answers for discussion.

 

Heidi  13:46

So as you prepare for this testing season, be intentional about making time for retrieval practice by using cumulative reviews, brain dumps and low stakes quizzes. These simple techniques will have a huge impact on your students learning.

 

Emily  14:02

And we’ll be back to talk about some more test prep strategies next week. We would love to hear what you do to prepare your students for end of your testing. So come join the conversation in our Teacher Approved Facebook group.

 

Emily  14:15

Now let’s talk about this week’s teacher approved tip. Each week we leave you with a small, actionable tip to elevate what matters and simplify the rest. This week’s teacher approved tip is to add writing time to think pair share. Tell us about this, Heidi.

 

Heidi  14:30

As we mentioned earlier, the book Powerful Teaching has lots of great suggestions for how to extend brain dumps and also boost learning. One of their suggestions is to combine a brain dump and a think pair share. So instead of think pair share, we’re going to write pair share. Start by giving kids, you know, two minutes or so to brain dump on whatever topic you’re discussing, and then you partner students. But instead of chatting, they’re going to switch papers Depending on the age of your students, you might need to offer a lot of support at this stage, but you can ask students to add new information to their partner’s paper. Anything that the partner forgot to include is fair game, and then the kids can trade their papers back, or they could switch with a new partner and add information to that partner’s paper as well.

 

Emily  15:17

Once students have their own papers back, you can have a class discussion about what was the same on both papers, or information that they both forgot. You can discuss misconceptions and have kids reflect on why they remembered what they remembered, and what they should focus on going forward.

 

Heidi  15:33

I love activities like this because it requires such minimal prep from the teacher, but the kids are swimming in the deep end of the learning pool for that whole activity. There’s no fluff or busy work here. Everyone is working at their individual levels and getting a little nudge into the next step. And all the teacher had to do was plan time for it and give some paper. It’s a huge win for everyone.

 

Heidi  15:58

To wrap up the show, we are sharing what we’re giving extra credit to this week. Emily, what gets your extra credit?

 

Emily  16:03

I’m giving extra credit to the book The Favorites by Layne Fargo. So let me read you part of the book blurb so that I can do it justice.Katarina Shaw has always known that she was destined to become an Olympic skater. When she meets Heath Rocha, a lonely kids stuck in the foster care system, their instant connection makes them a formidable duo on the ice. Clinging to skating and each other to escape their turbulent lives, Cat and Heath go from childhood sweethearts to champion ice dancers, captivating the world with their scorching chemistry, rebellious style, and roller coaster relationship. I told you I couldn’t do it justice unless I read it. Until a shocking incident at the Olympic Games brings their partnership to a sudden end.

 

Heidi  16:46

Oh no!

 

Emily  16:47

And that is not a spoiler, because, you know there’s an incident from the beginning of the book, but you just don’t know what it is. So the book takes place 10 years after those Olympic Games and is told in documentary style. So I’ve seen it described as part Wuthering Heights and part Daisy Jones and the Six. And I think that’s pretty accurate. And I really recommend the audiobook, because there’s a really fun cast of narrators, including Johnny Weir, which is like so much fun. So I devoured this book in two days. It’s not like high level literature here, but it’s a really fun time, and that’s what I’m here for.

 

Heidi  17:23

That is all we really want, let’s be honest.

 

Emily  17:25

Yes. So I highly recommend this.

 

Heidi  17:27

Well, now I’m picturing Julia styles and Heath Ledger, like, Cat and Heath, that can’t be coincidence.

 

Heidi  17:33

Oh, I didn’t even think of that, because the mix between real name and character name, I didn’t think of that. But, well, I want you to read it with those characters in mind and let me know how that works for you.

 

Heidi  17:47

Well, I’ll have to check that out, because, you know, I’m here for fun time.

 

Emily  17:51

Yeah. What are you giving extra credit to, Heidi?

 

Heidi  17:53

Well, this is gonna bring down the vibe. My Extra Credit goes to Emily in your Phone’s Substack, which makes it sound like it’s depressing. It’s not. It’s really good read, but it’s all about current events. So if you are also buried in the avalanche that is current US politics, Emily Amick, from Emily in your Phone, is a very helpful guide for kind of just cutting through all of the noise and helping you focus on what matters. I love her on Instagram. She’s a great follow, but I also really love her substack, because she’s able to go into a lot of depth about what’s happening, the implications of all of it, and then how we can get involved to either support or not support, depending on how things are going. So check her on Instagram, and I will put a link to her substack in the show notes if you want more information.

 

Emily  18:41

And she put out a book last fall too, called democracy in retrograde. That’s a very good read.

 

Heidi  18:46

Yes, and it has a really cute cover.

 

Emily  18:48

Yes, it does. I love when there’s pink in politics.

 

Heidi  18:54

That is it for today’s episode. Try our three ideas for getting retrieval practice into your schedule, and don’t forget our teacher approved tip for adding writing to your think pair share.

 

Heidi  19:07

We hope you enjoyed this episode of teacher approved. I’m Heidi.

 

Emily  19:11

And I’m Emily. Thank you for listening. Be sure to follow or subscribe in your podcast app so that you never miss an episode.

 

Heidi  19:17

You can connect with us and other teachers in the Teacher Approved Facebook group. We’ll see you here next week. Bye, for now.

 

Emily  19:24

Bye.