I wrote a blog posting last week about a short video that I had made to introduce my students to the first step in my fall classes – Guided Readings. (By the way, these videos were made with the Screen Recording function in PowerPoint. That is a simple way to make and distribute short videos to your students.)
The idea behind Guided Readings was that students needed assistance in learning the essentials from their textbook so I developed PowerPoint Flash Cards to help them make the most of their readings.
But – now what? Even an excellent reading of the textbook is not a complete education.
In the marvelous book, Make It Stick – The Science of Successful Learning, the authors (Brown, Roediger, and McDaniel) stress the importance of retrieval. The second chapter is even titled, “To Learn, Retrieve.”
They assert, “Repeated retrieval not only makes memories more durable but produces knowledge that can be retrieved more readily, in more varied settings, and applied to a wider variety of problems.” Or, as I describe the process, “Bring new knowledge up and make use of it. Bring it up again and use it creatively. Bring it up as often as possible and in as many different ways as possible.” That statement might describe my teaching better than anything else.
So, after Guided Readings, I immediately prescribe a sequenced series of questions designed to see how much of the material I can get the students to retrieve and use in some way. I write approximately 14 to 20 questions that come directly from the material they have just read. However, each question requires them to retrieve the new information and make use of it.
The process is carefully scripted.
--First,
I include all of the retrieval questions for this section of the material.
--Second,
I then repeat those same questions but this time with the answers.
I refer to this as a, “Wash, Rinse, Repeat” assignment. I want the students to read the questions and see how many they can answer. Then, they are directed to scroll down to the answers and immediately check their work. They are told to note questions that they missed or where they had no answer.
I instruct them to go back to the top of the page and go through the questions again to see how many more they can answer this time. Hopefully, if they do this entire loop two or three times, they will feel comfortable with all the answers.
--They first used the Guided Readings to pull out the essentials from the textbook.
--They
then use the Retrieval Questions and Answers to help organize, solidify, and
expand their knowledge and understanding.
I like to think that I am developing distance learning for my students using a structure that makes logical sense.
Last week on this blog, I offered to provide a chapter of Guided Readings and many people took me up on that offer.
This week, if you would like to see an example of Retrieval Questions and Answers, drop me an email at Jhoyle@richmond.edu. Always glad to share.
Here is the video that I used to explain my Retrieval Questions and Answers to my students. It is less than 7 minutes. I hope you will watch it.
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