We love to share examples of great teaching on the TLAC blog–especially great teaching that demonstrates core principles of cognitive psychology in action. If you follow the learning science at all you’re probably familiar with the importance of Retrieval Practice: how critical it is to bring previous content back into working memory so students remember... The post A Great Example of Retrieval Practice from Kerrie Tinson’s classroom appeared first on Teach Like a Champion.
We love to share examples of great teaching on the TLAC blog–especially great teaching that demonstrates core principles of cognitive psychology in action. If you follow the learning science at all you’re probably familiar with the importance of Retrieval Practice: how critical it is to bring previous content back into working memory so students remember it.
We’ve recently added this beautiful example of Retrieval Practice to our library. It’s from Kerrie Tinson’s English classroom at Windsor High School and Sixth Form in Halesowen, England.
Kerrie’s students are reading Macbeth and she starts her lesson with a Smart Start that focuses on Retrieval Practice… a series of questions that asks students to review and reflect on things they learned in the first scenes of the play.
We love how Kerrie asks students to write the answers to her questions–this causes all students to answer–universalizing the retrieval. We also love how familiar students are with the routine of starting with retrieval. This not not only makes the Retrieval Practice more efficient and easier to use but it socializes them to conceptualize Retrieval Practice as a great way to study on their own.
As students answer questions, Kerrie circulates and takes careful notes. This allows her both understand what students know and don’t know–you can see that she’s added one question to address a common misunderstanding–and also to Cold Call students to give good answers, which expedites the retrieval, making it efficient and pace-y.
But Kerrie doesn’t just rely on simple retrieval. She often asks students to “elaborate”: to connect what they are thinking about to other details from the play. For example, when a student recalls that Macbeth was a traitor, she asks “Why was that important?” The connections that come from elaboration build–schema–stronger connected memories that cause student’s knowledge to be connected and meaningful.
We also love the way she ends the session–by pointing out a couple of key concepts–that Macbeth is Impatient and eager– that are especially important and that everyone should have in their notes.
All in all its great stuff and we are grateful to Kerri and Windsor High School for sharing the footage with us!
The post A Great Example of Retrieval Practice from Kerrie Tinson’s classroom appeared first on Teach Like a Champion.
