Why Your Test Review Isn’t Working (And What to Do Instead) [Episode 246]

Heidi 0:00
This is episode 246 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 are redefining what test prep actually is, because it doesn’t have to mean packets and stress, and we’re sharing a teacher approved tip for adding a little bonus prep time to your week.

Heidi 0:50
But let’s start with try it tomorrow, where we share a quick win that you can try in your classroom right away. Emily, what’s our suggestion for this week?

Emily 0:58
This week, try using intentional think time. So when you ask a question, instead of immediately calling on someone, ask students to just think about it for 10, even 30 seconds before you take any responses. Now this will take some training, because some students are going to shoot their hands in the air immediately, since that’s what they’re used to doing.

Heidi 1:19
Right. So when that happens, you just gently remind them, you know, have this in your brain ahead of time, because this will happen, I just want you to think right now. I will let you know when I’m ready to hear your ideas.

Emily 1:30
And what’s great about this is it improves the quality of responses. When kids aren’t racing to be first, they actually have time to form a complete thought. And you’ll probably find that way more students are prepared to participate, because it’s not just the fast processors who get to answer anymore. I think some kids, once they see everybody else’s hand is shot up, they stop even trying to figure out the answer in their mind.

Heidi 1:52
Absolutely. This is such a simple shift that can make a really big difference. If you try it, come tell us how it goes in the Teacher Approved Facebook group. And if you like this tip or anything else we share here on the podcast, would you please take a second and give us a five star rating? Ratings and reviews help new listeners find us, and we really appreciate every one of them.

Emily 2:12
Okay, we know it’s still February, but yes, it really is time to talk about test prep.

Heidi 2:18
Ah, the two little words that make most teachers shoulders tense up a little bit.

Emily 2:23
Yeah, just a little bit, maybe, a lot a bit.

Heidi 2:27
A lot a bit.

Emily 2:29
Test prep makes our minds immediately jump to packets, worksheets, Jeopardy games, drilling skills, over and over, and maybe stopping real instruction so we have time to get kids ready.

Heidi 2:42
And when you assume that that’s what test prep has to look like, it’s no wonder it feels overwhelming. But we are here to tell you that test prep does not have to be an intense slog. You can help students get ready for assessments in a way that everyone enjoys and still prepares the kids for what’s ahead.

Emily 2:59
That’s what we’re digging into today, we want to challenge some assumptions about what test prep is and offer a different way to think about it. And that’s why we’re starting with this now.

Heidi 3:09
Yeah, February is probably not the moment you usually start thinking about state testing. You are probably nowhere close to being done with teaching your curriculum.

Emily 3:18
Yeah, because it is still really early. Most people probably haven’t even had Spring Break yet. But even though you haven’t taught all your units yet, some of what you taught back in September and October is already just a vague memory for your students, because that’s just how brains work.

Heidi 3:34
And what happens if we wait until April to start reviewing is we end up in that frantic cram-everything-in mode, which is stressful for everyone, and it’s honestly not that effective. All of the worksheets and repetition that we call test prep are not really test prep. They’re tools we use to help with test prep.

Emily 3:53
And they’re not even very effective tools, which means we need a different definition of what preparation actually is. It’s not about showing students the material again. It’s about helping them remember what they’ve already learned.

Heidi 4:07
That’s really a different goal, and it requires some unique strategies.

Emily 4:11
Yeah. So let’s start by taking a look at something we call the recognition trap. This is sneaky, and it’s why a lot of traditional test review doesn’t actually stick in your kids’ brain.

Heidi 4:22
Think about what review often looks like in an elementary classroom. We pull out the anchor charts, we rewatch a video, we play a Kahoot where kids can look at their notes, and it feels productive. The kids are saying, Oh yeah, I remember this. They’re engaged. They’re participating. It seems like it’s working.

Emily 4:39
But that oh yeah feeling isn’t really remembering. It’s recognition. And we might use remember and recognition as synonyms, but they are not the same thing. When students recognize something, they’re thinking, this looks familiar.

Heidi 4:54
But tests are not asking students to recognize information, they need to remember it. That means pulling information out of their brains with nothing in front of them.

Emily 5:04
When we plan our review activities, it seems logical that offering extra support, like letting students reference their notes or a textbook should make review extra effective, but that little safety net completely undermines the effectiveness of the review that we spent so much time and energy putting together.

Heidi 5:21
So what actually works? The short answer is practice remembering. Give students low stakes opportunities to pull information from their memory without any support. This is called retrieval practice, and it is the most effective strategy that we have for helping learning stick.

Emily 5:41
And I have to tell you something funny. I was listening slash watching the Good Hang podcast with Amy Poehler the other day, and she was talking about something, I don’t even remember what it was, like they were trying to remember someone who was, who played something in a show, something like that. And she went to reach for her phone, and she goes, Oh, wait, no, you’re supposed to try to remember what it is before you ask, or before you search, before you look it up. You’re supposed to try to remember. It’s better for your brain if you do that. I was like, Yes, that’s true. Good job, Amy!

Emily 6:13
Not to say that I am good at doing that before I go and Google things, I should try harder. But I loved that she said that. I was like, Oh my gosh, that’s amazing. And of course, like here on the podcast, we are not going to go super deep into the science today, but the basic idea that Amy is talking about is this. Every time you work to recall something from memory, you strengthen that memory. The effort of trying to remember is what makes information stick.

Heidi 6:37
And what maybe Amy realized is is that you don’t even have to get the right answer for this to benefit you, even if you’re wrong, just trying to come up with the answer, is enough to boost understanding. The struggle to remember is what builds the pathway.

Emily 6:53
Which totally feels opposite, like it doesn’t feel good to try to remember something and then get it wrong.

Heidi 7:00
Yeah, when it feels hard, we think something’s wrong, but the hard is actually the goal.

Emily 7:05
So if you’re new to retrieval practice, don’t let the official name scare you. It really can be as simple as flashcards.

Heidi 7:13
And another simple strategy that I love is a brain dump. You just pause your lesson or activity, ask students to write down everything they can remember about what you’ve been teaching to that point, and then you just continue with the lesson.

Emily 7:25
And you don’t have to grade these. You don’t even have to collect the papers. Students can keep them to look back on later. It’s kind of cool to see how much they know after a few weeks. Or they can just go straight in the recycling bin.

Heidi 7:37
Brain dumps are so versatile, they work for any grade and any topic, whether your students are drawing pictures in kindergarten or writing full paragraphs in fifth grade, the concept is the same. And bonus, there is no prep involved with this.

Emily 7:52
Oh, such a win. Another retrieval practice comes from a book called Powerful Teaching by Pooja Agarwal and Patrice Bain. This book is chock full of helpful learning routines, and they share one that I really love called Two Things. You give students a simple prompt, like write down two things you learned so far today, or two things you remember from yesterday, or two things you’d like to know more about.

Heidi 8:17
And like with a brain dump, you can drop this in the middle of a lesson and then just move on, or you could use it as an exit ticket or as a warm up the day after the lesson.

Emily 8:26
With strategies like brain dumps or two things, the key is helping students see this as a learning tool and not a form of assessment. Cheer them on if it feels challenging, let them know that struggle means their brain is working hard, which means they’re learning.

Heidi 8:41
Meaningful review really does not have to be complicated. Keep it short, keep it consistent, and keep it as low stakes as possible. Do not grade these.

Emily 8:51
No, please do not grade these unless you are absolutely required to, and then just make it pass fail so the focus stays on the learning and not the points.

Heidi 8:59
This really couldn’t be easier. The hardest part is just remembering to actually do it. When you are in the flow of teaching, it’s really easy to forget to pause for some retrieval practice.

Emily 9:11
And that’s why we created a resource called Power Questions. It’s designed to make this kind of practice painless and easy to maintain. The idea behind this is simple. After you teach a lesson, you jot down a question from the lesson on a slip of paper and drop it in a basket. Over time, you build up a collection of questions that cover a bunch of different topics.

Heidi 9:30
And then when you have a few minutes, maybe you do this as part of a warm up, maybe you save it for before lunch, or as a transition, you pull a question from the basket and you have your students answer it. Because the questions come from lessons that you have taught days or weeks ago, your students have to work to actually remember, and that’s our retrieval practice. And that’s where the learning happens.

Emily 9:51
Now Power Questions is currently only available inside the Teacher Approved Club, because that is this month’s bonus tool for our club members. We have included blank question slips that you can print and cut out so they’re ready when you need them. There’s a label for your question basket to make it a visual part of your routine. Plus it has a cute, super cute, superhero theme.

Heidi 10:13
It really did turn out so cute. When we’re designing stuff, like, we don’t have a design background, so there’s always a little bit of like, I’m not sure how this is going to go. But it came together so cute.

Emily 10:22
Yes.

Heidi 10:23
The question slips provide a great structure for your review, but we know that structure always needs a little bit of spark to balance it out. So we included some fun bonus prompts that we called power ups. These are all desk friendly activities that can be done in a minute or less, think things like tongue twisters or slow motion movement challenges like, pretend to be a melting snowman.

Emily 10:46
I love that.

Heidi 10:47
They’re quick, but just a little sprinkle of fun can go a long way toward keeping your kids engaged. And the more engaged the kids are, the more they can learn.

Emily 10:56
We had so much fun thinking up these prompts, and we also include a seven page Teacher’s Guide that walks you through how to fit this in your day without it becoming one more thing to manage, plus every possible thing you might wonder about setting this up. We really thought about it for you, common problems you might run into, troubleshooting, all of that. It’s all in the teacher’s guide.

Heidi 11:15
And if paper isn’t your thing, we included digital slides too. It works the same. You just record a question after a lesson and then come back to it later. But with the slides, you can display the question for students to see.

Emily 11:27
Yeah, which is super handy. And then club members also get access to a bonus training this month that goes deeper into the learning science behind all of this. We explain how the different pieces work together to help create durable learning and share some practical tips to help keep it manageable.

Heidi 11:43
Okay, now you’ve got some good tools for incorporating retrieval practice into your regular schedule. So let’s talk about another layer to this process, which is helping students recognize what they actually know.

Emily 11:56
It might not sound like much, but this is actually a really important part of test prep, because students often think they understand more than they actually do. Researchers call this the illusion of knowing, and it happens to all of us, not just kids.

Heidi 12:09
Oh, for sure, I do this all the time, even on just a small scale. Like, how many times have I scanned the directions on the back of the frozen food box, confident that I knew what to do, because I have cooked frozen food before? But then I have to retrieve the box because I already have forgotten the temperature it needs to be cooked at. You know, honestly, it might happen every time I cook.

Emily 12:29
I know, I’m always scampering back to that trash can, wait, what did that say? Because it seems so easy you don’t pay close attention, and that’s why you can’t remember if it’s 375, or 425, for your chicken nuggets. I know you’re eating a lot of chicken nuggets, Heidi.

Heidi 12:44
Well, for chicken nuggets, it’s gotta be what, 400 at least, I would think.

Emily 12:47
I mean, probably. But do either of us actually know? We just think we know. And that’s exactly what happens to students. When something feels familiar, when we recognize that, our brain interprets that as understanding. We think, yeah, I’ve got this. But recognition is not mastery, and that false confidence can really trip students up.

Heidi 13:07
That’s how everyone sits through a review, nodding along. You think everyone’s got this, and then they get to the test and realize they were not as solid as they thought.

Emily 13:17
And so that’s why feedback is so important. Feedback interrupts that false confidence. It gives students real information about where they actually are.

Heidi 13:25
And just like retrieval practice, feedback is so easy to add to what you’re already doing. With brain dumps, for example, after your students write down everything they can think of, have them swap papers with a neighbor and try to add something new to what their partner wrote. That quick comparison helps both students see what they remembered and what they missed.

Emily 13:44
With the two things strategy, you can have students share one of their two things with a partner or with the class. Hearing what other people wrote helps them confirm they’re on track or realize they need to revisit something.

Heidi 13:56
In the teacher guide to our Power Questions resource, we walk you through how to lead a quick discussion about students thinking. Questions like, who tried it a different way, or what was tricky about that question, get students reflecting on their learning.

Emily 14:10
Even if you don’t pair reflection with retrieval practice, it can still impact learning all on its own. In one study, college students who simply rated their understanding after a lecture and reflected on how they could improve, ended up scoring nearly a full letter grade higher than their classmates who didn’t do the reflection.

Heidi 14:26
That is huge. Just the act of pausing and thinking about your own learning makes a measurable difference. So here are some reflection questions you can use with your students. You might ask which part felt easy, which part made you pause?

Emily 14:42
Or what would you tell a friend who missed this lesson? Rate Your confidence from one to five. Now let’s check and see how you did. Or what’s one thing you’re solid on and one thing you need to review?

Heidi 14:54
These questions help students become aware of their own learning. They start to notice what they actually know, versus what just feels familiar, and that self awareness is powerful. When students can name what they’re shaky on, they can do something about it.

Emily 15:09
Okay, so let’s pull this all together. Test prep doesn’t have to mean packets, pressure or pausing instruction. Oh, look at the alliteration. Real preparation is helping students remember and reflect.

Heidi 15:20
Start now, even though it is only February, with short, frequent, low stakes practice. All your kids need are opportunities to pull information from memory without support and increased awareness of what they actually know.

Emily 15:34
And if you want to go deeper, inside the Teacher Approved Club this month, we’re diving into the learning science behind all of this, how recall, spacing and reflection work together, and exactly how to use them without overwhelming your day.

Heidi 15:47
Club members get the Power Questions resource, which includes everything you need to start this kind of intentional practice right away, plus the bonus training that walks you through all of the whys and the hows. If you have been thinking about joining our club, this is a really great month to do it. We will drop a link in the show notes.

Emily 16:04
Now for our Teacher Approved Tip of the Week, where we share an actionable tip to help you elevate what matters and simplify the rest. This week’s teacher approved tip is to add a bonus mini prep to your schedule. I bet everyone’s excited to hear about this one.

Heidi 16:18
Yes, and we have talked about this idea before, but it’s been a little while, so it bears repeating, because I think this can be so helpful. So in a related discussion, back in episode 242, we suggested planning some independent activities for students at the end of the month as a little bonus planning time. That way you can effectively plan the month ahead, and, you know, maybe catch up on some grading.

Emily 16:42
Hopefully your end of month bonus prep can be an hour or two, or maybe even a whole afternoon. But today we want to look at how to add a smaller pocket of prep to your weekly schedule.

Heidi 16:52
So when I was teaching second grade, the 30 minutes before lunch on Fridays was officially phonics review time.

Emily 17:00
And what did they do for phonics review, Heidi?

Heidi 17:04
Well, my students watched a Between the Lines video while I planned the week ahead.

Emily 17:10
I love it, Between the Lines is awesome.

Heidi 17:12
It holds up. But that way, when my Friday afternoon prep time rolled around, I already knew exactly what to work on because my list was ready, it made me so much more productive.

Emily 17:24
So the tip is to look at your schedule and find one block of time in your week where you’re normally teaching in front of students, and find a way to turn that time into independent learning time instead.

Heidi 17:35
Now, you do not need to announce this to your principal, and I know we have some principals who listen to this podcast. So if that’s you, maybe stop listening now, so you have some plausible deniability. But like I said, on my official schedule, before lunch on Friday, was phonics review, and if anyone had walked in, they would have seen my students fully engaged in reviewing phonics with an educational video. It’s not like we were watching Charlie Brown.

Emily 18:00
Yeah, right. It’s not like you’re just putting any sort of filler up, you chose with intention.

Heidi 18:05
Yes, it was academic, educational content, but it freed me up to claim those 30 minutes, and that completely reshaped my teaching life, I’m not exaggerating. For the first time, I broke free from that day to day planning hamster wheel, and I started preparing more strategically. And yes, I could have done this planning after school, but by Friday afternoon, or really any afternoon, by any afternoon, I was just toast, and I wanted to get home. I didn’t have the brainpower for strategic planning. I had brain power to run copies. So I needed to split those work tasks into a time when I had the energy and focus for managing it. Doing it in the morning meant that I could deal with all of the details. It gave me a better shot at being the kind of teacher I wanted to be, instead of the overwhelmed one I was a lot of the time.

Emily 18:54
And this bonus prep does not need to be long. Even 20 extra minutes a week can have a huge impact on your productivity and your happiness as a teacher, if you’re intentional about how you use those minutes. It might be a video. It might be a review game that they can do without you. It might be silent reading or a listening center, whatever works for your class.

Heidi 19:14
All right, to wrap up the show, we are showing what we’re giving extra credit to this week. Emily, what gets your extra credit?

Emily 19:20
I’m giving extra credit to the new old Muppet Show. It’s so fun to have it back again, and I love that they did an almost exact recreation of one of the old openings for the new one. It was just, oh, it’s so nostalgic, but also like feels fresh at the same time. I don’t know if it’s just a limited run of episodes, or if it’s gonna stick around, but definitely check it out. It’s a super fun watch for the whole fam. I think those of us in our generation have the love and nostalgia of growing up with the Muppets, but kids these days love it just as much. So we all enjoyed it.

Heidi 19:54
Oh, that’s so fun. I’ve been seeing so much stuff online about it. I’ll have to check it out.

Emily 19:59
Yeah, it was on Disney Plus, but I think it was also just like on ABC.

Heidi 20:03
Oh, okay, good.

Emily 20:04
What are you giving extra credit to, Heidi?

Heidi 20:06
Well, my extra credit goes to the potted bowl garden subscription I got for Christmas. It has been such a joy. I am not a plant person, because the long term care of a plant is more than I can face. You have to prune it and repot it and manage the light. And I’m barely keeping myself alive. But this little bulb garden is so fun because it is a short term commitment. Everything arrives potted. Just take off like the little straw packaging on top. You water it when it’s dry, watch it grow, and then it’s done.

Emily 20:39
I love it.

Heidi 20:41
And I did buy a little clip on grow light. I guess I’m a gardener now, because my house doesn’t get much sunlight, but that is all the work I put into it. But it’s just so fun to wake up in the morning and see the new blooms that have bloomed. Blossomed?

Emily 20:59
Popped up.

Heidi 21:00
There we go. It makes me so happy. I can finally be a plant lady without having to be a plant lady. The bulbs are from Holland bulb farm, and I will put a link to them in the show notes, as well as a link to the grow light.

Emily 21:11
Well, I am so jealous of your bulbs. So now I really, really want these. I should have asked for them for Christmas too.

Heidi 21:18
Start your list.

Emily 21:20
I guess so.

Heidi 21:22
That is it for today’s episode. Remember, test prep doesn’t have to mean packets and stress. Small, consistent practice starting now will serve your students so much better than cramming later.

Emily 21:33
Try a brain dump or two things question this week and see how it goes. And if you want the full system for making this easy, check out Power Questions inside the Teacher Approved Club. We will have a link to that in the show notes. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next week.

Heidi 21:49
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Teacher Approved. I’m Heidi.

Emily 21:53
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 22:00
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 22:06
Bye.