Powerful Teaching: Unleash the Science of Learning

by Pooja K. Agarwal

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Provide as much – or as little – time as you'd like on a Brain Dump in class. You can even play it by ear, depending on how students are progressing. Depending on your students, it could take them 30 minutes or more to write down everything they know! While that's fabulous, we also know there are classroom constraints when it comes to time. Even if students retrieve only a subset of what they know, learning will be boosted for related information that's not retrieved.6

Scientists are currently exploring whether Brain Dumps are more effective if written by hand versus typed; include structure (organize as you go along) vs. no structure; or include prompts (“describe how clouds are made”) versus no prompts. So far, there are no hard-hitting winners when it comes to optimal structures compared to a simple “write down what you can remember” approach.7 We encourage you to do what's practical for you and your classroom and focus on retrieval, not format.

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Avoid using Brain Dumps as a substantial part of a grade (e.g., as an exam or paper assignment). By keeping Brain Dumps low-stakes, students will feel less pressured and more comfortable writing down everything they can retrieve, even if they make mistakes (which are good for learning!). They can be used as a learning tool for you via formative assessment, but steer clear of using them as high-stakes summative assessments.

What should students do after a Brain Dump? Simply move on with your lesson! No collection of papers, no grading, no class discussion, other than acknowledging students' eng...

Provide the opportunity for peer feedback. Ask students to swap their Brain Dump with a neighbor for 1–2 minutes, have them add something new that wasn't already written down, and pass back the Brain Dump. This is quick and instant feedback, but it could also be followed with extended discussion.

there anything in common that both of us wrote down? Is there anything new that neither of us wrote down? Did either of us write down any misinformation? Why do you think you remembered what you did? With such a powerful, simple strategy like Brain Dumps, you can unleash the science of learning and your students can unleash it, too.

We asked teachers around the world for alternative names for Brain Dumps and here were their top suggestions: Free Recall Brain Drain Brain Pop Brain Drop Brain Inventory Data Dump Knowledge Bombs Knowledge Download Show What You Know Stop and Jot Free Flow Total Recall Learning Deposit Tell Me Everything Information Extraction Information Unpacking Learning Sync Learning Unplugged As you can see, there are many ways to describe retrieval practice! The words exam and test are nowhere to be found. Keep Brain Dumps no-stakes or low-stakes, include feedback when you can, and engage students in the process. Power

TWO THINGS: A QUICK STRATEGY FOR THE BEGINNING, MIDDLE, AND END OF CLASS

What are Two Things you learned so far today? What are Two Things you learned yesterday (or last week)? What are your two takeaways from this unit? What are Two Things you'd like to learn more about? What are two examples from your own life that relate to today's lesson?

Also, remind students that the challenge from retrieval is a desirable difficulty – it's good for learning!

RETRIEVE-TAKING: A POWERFUL SPIN ON TRADITIONAL NOTE-TAKING

How can we turn note-taking into retrieval practice? We call it Retrieve-Taking! Here are the steps: Teach your lesson as usual. Students listen and participate, but they can't take notes (yet!) Pause your lesson. Students write down important topics they want to study. Give students quick feedback about important topics or facilitate a discussion where students share what they wrote down. Continue with your lesson.

I have heard, “But learning is so much more than the regurgitation of facts.” I couldn't agree more! However, how can we expect our students to answer essential questions, to go to deeper levels of understanding, without first knowing the facts? Through daily retrieval, students learn what they know and what they still need to learn. We compare, contrast, differentiate … and this continues with each new chapter and unit. We retrieve every step of the way.

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In the first step, by starting class with retrieval practices immediately, students have an incentive to attend class on time.

In the second step, I find silent writing time invaluable. Building on the strategy Everybody Writes by Doug Lemov, all students have time to think and reflect at their own pace.11

In the third step, once students have retrieved individually, I use a combination of Think-Pair-Share, small-group, and whole-class discussions for feedback. In line with our fourth Power Tool, feedback-driven metacognition (see Chapter 5), my structured discussions are opportunities to check student understanding,

How many questions are there? (3–5 questions) Are there makeups? (Nope!)

Retrieval Practice Boosts Learning for More than Vocabulary and Facts As we discussed in Chapter 2, retrieval practice improves learning of both basic concepts and complex concepts. The key is that, if you want students to learn facts, concepts, and higher-order topics, implement retrieval practice using fact-based, concept-based, and complex questions. Don't just stick to one type or another. Put differently, think of this phrase often attributed to music and sports: “practice how you're going to play.” Think about your lesson, curriculum, or course objectives, and be sure to incorporate a range of question complexity if you want students to think and understand across a range of concepts, situations, and content.

“Compared to a short-answer quiz, is a multiple-choice quiz equal to, slightly-less-good, substantially less good, or all-but-worthless?”

Confirmed by a review of the literature by scientist Andrew Butler in 2018, multiple-choice questions are a good thing for learning!14 Research demonstrates:

Benefits from Pre-Tests depend on your learning objectives and goals. Based on both research and classroom experience, Pre-Tests improve understanding in the short term (e.g., for the lesson immediately after). At the same time, benefits from Pre-Tests on long-term retention (e.g., after weeks and months) are less clear.

A question we get asked by both teachers and students is whether students can engage in retrieval practice by generating their own questions. Sometimes, students generate their own questions as preparation for an exam, in hopes they're creating an “exam” that mimics what they'll actually receive as an assessment. But does self-generation improve learning?

On a related note, there is research demonstrating that teaching someone improves learning.29 In other words, if one student teaches another student without access to notes, they are engaging in retrieval practice! As we all know, this benefit for learning from teaching applies to us as educators. Having taught our material to students frequently, we know it like the back of our hand!

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Just because something seems “active” doesn't mean that learning sticks. The key question to ask is this: Are students engaging in retrieval practice during “active” instruction? We hope you will be mindful with your instructional strategies and include as much retrieval practice as possible, not just activity for engagement's sake.

Many of us already use retrieval practice in the classroom by calling on individual students to answer questions throughout a lesson (also known as cold calling). But cold calling doesn't guarantee that all students are engaged in retrieval practice. The students who aren't called on are “off the hook” and no longer responsible for thinking about a response. In fact, research led by Sarah Tauber has demonstrated that when students engage in retrieval practice covertly (in their head, as opposed to an overt written or verbal response), their learning doesn't increase.31 In other words, we may expect that all of our students are retrieving when we ask questions during lessons, but it's likely that they aren't receiving any benefit unless they're the one being called on.