S5 E12 - The Secret Weapon for Effective Retrieval Practice

If you haven't listened to that series yet , I'll link to it in the show notes on our website at jocelynseamereducation . com . Today I'd like to share some practical insights about how you can implement effective retrieval practice

in your classroom , beginning the process of planning with what I call a curriculum organiser . For those of you who've been with me for a while now , you'll know that I'm always looking for ways to bridge the gap between research and the classroom , and this is one of those tools that has made a real difference in my own teaching .

For really strong retrieval practice to work , we need to know right from the start of our planning what our learning objectives are . Now that might sound obvious , but when we can clearly and simply articulate what we want students to know by the end of a unit , we set ourselves and our students up for success for the entire unit of work .

One of the ways I've successfully done this in my own teaching is to use a simple knowledge organiser for every unit I taught . These

organisers stated the key vocabulary with student-friendly definitions , included questions that could be used for retrieval or review throughout the unit (with the answers , so you're not searching for them when you need them) , and they also noted the language functions and features that needed to be developed to enable students to effectively communicate their learning .

Where did this idea come from ? Well , the term knowledge organiser was coined by a teacher named Joe Kirby from the Michaela School in London . This school is known for a number of reasons , one of them being some controversial methods , such as having silent hallways , and the Principal has been called Britain's Strictest Principal .

But much of what they talk about is simply responding to what we know about how people learn . We learn in calm , orderly environments , we learn when teaching and learning is direct and clear , and we learn best when we're able to review and revise what has been previously taught and learned .

In 2015 , Joe Kirby wrote a blog post called Knowledge Organisers , which I'll link to in the show notes , where he talked about specifying subject knowledge in great detail . I also think it's a really good idea and I extended mine out to be curriculum organisers by connecting to some other things .

If we know what we want students to learn , if we know what good performance looks like , then we know how clear we need to be in our instruction . Curriculum organisers provide wonderful clarity for teachers . When I was working in leadership , I would provide new teachers with curriculum organisers that outlined the content that needed to be covered in instructio n .

Other than our

school's instructional model , which was an explicit teaching model, I wasn't telling them exactly how to teach or requiring them to teach everything exactly as I would , but when it came to the content , they knew exactly what to cover and teachers were grateful for that clarity .

Instead of spending hours trying to distill a broad amount of knowledge and skill into what they were going to teach , they had it right there in front of them and were able to take a shortcut . They knew what good performance looked like because it was articulated in the organiser , and they knew what students needed to know by the end of the unit .

Another benefit of curriculum organisers , particularly for older students in Years Five and Six and beyond , is that they can form part of a self-review and self-quizzing tool . Having specific questions and answers presented , along with a list of core facts and vocabulary helps students to know exactly what they need to focus on .

But remember we're not asking them just to read these things over, they need to be used for retrieval . Now let me give you a concrete example of what might go into a curriculum organiser . When I created these , I used a simple three-page format and not three full pages, there was plenty of white space , so it wasn't all overwhelming .

We're also not talking about a 12-page document or a 20-page document for every unit . It's simply too much to manage and create . The first page focused on vocabulary and concepts . So for a Year Three physical sciences unit on heat , I'd include student-friendly definitions of terms like heat, produced , transfer and

motion . I'd also include vocabulary for experiments , those terms that come up again and again across the years , regardless of when you're teaching them or what the core content is . Words like observation were included .

Then I'd list key understandings we wanted students to have , such as heat can be made in different ways , such as through friction , motion , burning or electricity . I'd include understandings about science as human endeavour and notes about the science skills the students would develop in that unit , such as making predictions and planning investigations .

In this way , I made sure that I wasn't missing any of the key elements of the curriculum . When we break things down like this , we can see just how much content there is to cover , and one of the things that makes teaching successful is when we clearly and purposefully work in a way that supports students' cognitive load .

With a curriculum organiser , you can evaluate each element and think about what your students already know and what they still have to learn . The more knowledge and skills that need to be developed , the more carefully we need to consider cognitive load , because working memory is so easily overwhelmed .

You as the teacher are in the best position to determine how to support your students' cognitive load . Having a one-pager with all the core concepts and skills really helps jumpstart the process of designing responsive instruction . It enables you to know what kinds of things should go into retrieval or review activities in the unit .

Page two of my curriculum organisers stated the elements of the achievement standard that needed to be addressed . This created a clear link between assessment and instruction and because I've taught many students with English as an additional language , I also included the language functions that needed to be taught .

For me , one of the goals of instruction is to make every lesson a language lesson . Vocabulary is a huge part of that , but so is syntax . If we want our students to effectively and efficiently communicate their knowledge , we need to give them the tools and structures to do so .

For the heat unit , I included three functions: Questioning, and giving the students sentence starters like "what will happen if . Predicting, with sentence starters such as "I predict that , etc . and explaining, "through this investigation we have seen that , or the results of this investigation show that .

Students often struggle to explain concepts , explain their thinking and draw connections between the two . So providing them with scaffolds to explain their findings helps them communicate more clearly .

We all have to use some form of A to E grading in Australia , and these language structures can help you teach students the skills that help them move beyond the C , because part of what makes an A or a B grade is often how well the students can explain their thinking and in how much detail .

So teaching these language structures to everybody simply makes sense . when When teaching in schools with high EAL populations populations, I also included notes about general grammar that we might need to teach , such as present tense , which is a feature of scientific texts texts, and common adjectives to facilitate description .

Finally , the third page contained a simple rubric based on the curriculum .

This rubric had specific parts of the achievement standard listed and descriptors of what performance looks like from A to E , with clarification about the terms used . And remember that all the elements of these rubrics should be student-friendly so that they can learn to use this as success criteria . So how does all of this relate to retrieval practice ?

I hear you ask . Well , when you know what you want students to learn and what you want them to do and you have the simple questions and answers , you have your review written . And there are different levels of knowledge we're trying to build, it's not all about just memorising simple facts , but that's where it starts .

Of course , we want students to be able to develop deep knowledge , to transfer this knowledge and the skills they've learned to solve problems . But if we don't develop that knowledge first , they are not going to be able to solve those problems and problem-solving tasks then become a nightmare . Retrieval practice begins with the basics , but it shouldn't end there .

If you take nothing else away from this episode, I really want you to hear me when I say, as teachers we need to be very clear on what we want students to learn and we need a mechanism to break everything down into small parts .

As Rosenshein describes in his Principles of Instruction, break things down into small parts and teach them one at a time to mastery . We also need to link existing knowledge with new knowledge , which means we have to know what the student's existing knowledge is , not just assume it .

With a curriculum organiser , you're able to evaluate each item and determine what the existing knowledge is that the students have , so that you can make these links clear . And this will differ from class to class and school to school . So no program writer can create this for you and it just become a take and teach resource .

Yes , we can help you with organising ideas , but you are the one who has the knowledge about your students . Explicit teaching is about more than just delivering the program effectively and with fidelity

. It's also about really understanding the components of instruction that make everything work .

So when you're thinking about how to help your teams and students achieve even greater success , consider creating a curriculum organiser of no more than three pages , not with teeny tiny writing , but with reasonable size writing that doesn't hurt your eyes and lots of white space that makes it all feel achievable .

If you do this for each unit you teach , you will then have what you need to have concise , strong , targeted teaching right from the start . May the force be with you as you embark on this work of explicit teaching . I sometimes say that it's not rocket science , but when we think about it , there is complexity to learn .

When we truly understand what it takes for students to learn and feel comfortable in their learning , we can engineer success for them and for us . And while every student has the right to learn using evidence-informed practice , every teacher has the right to have the help to make that happen . If that's what you're getting out of this podcast , I'm so pleased .

Until next time , happy teaching everyone . Bye .