There always seems to be a conversation about what should be in a knowledge retrieval session in a lesson in maths, and I am definitly on one side of the fence. If i ramble enough, maybe some insight will unscramble from my brain.

For me this is all linked to mixing up the daily review and the weekly and monthly review (step 1 and step 10 of  Barak Rosenshine’s principles in action). But it’s the purpose of these reviews that I feel are often lost. If I look at them each in turn then hopefully i can untangle the purpose and how to use them effectively.

The Daily review for me has two key purporses. To remind students what they were learning the previous lesson and to get it fresh in their mind so they can make links with today’s work, and allow the teacher to notice any misconceptions or knowledge gaps that need to be addressed before they can succeed with the current days work.

Let me go back to the series theme of this blog (when i remember to post). The previously on recap is a carefully chosen series of bit of information to give you the context, and to remind you of key facts that you may need to know.

This is genearlly what happened last episode but other key information (Katherine becoming free for example) from several episodes ago which is important for the context of this episode.

The weekly / Monthly review is totally different. This is more of a pub quiz, checking the learning and finding out what people know. I don’t mean that in a belittleing way. It’s important, and helpful to help retention of information and reinforcing to long term memory, as well as allowing a teacher to know where people’s gaps are and what hasn’t been retained and allowing reteaching or reframing.

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The problem I have is that combining them together may make things easier for a teacher, but it is not helping the cognative load of students. It would be like starting a an episode of vampire diaries telling you random unrealted facts about series 1. This may help you in the long term remember more about the key characters and stick in your memory, but it is going to confuse you in the next episode.

Planning my Knowledge Retrieval

Imagine I am teaching a lesson on addition of fractions. I think about my previous lesson (equivalency and simplification) and then I think about the key information that the students need for today’s lesson from prior learning (addition, multiplication, multiples, LCMs)

I also want to make sure that they understood the last topic on Percentage of an amount, to check it has gone into long term memory

Combined Knowledge Reterieval

I see this a fair bit. People do 5 questions on perentage of an amount and 5 questions on LCM and multiples. They have ticked their Rosenshine box of Daily and Monthly review and got it out of the way, so they can start the lesson To be fair, the more able students can probably cope with this, but the cognative load for some of our students is too much. We have gone through percentage of an amount, they have thought hard about what they did, they got some right, it is gone through by the teacher. They now have a lot of percentage of an amount facts and thought in their head and they think “the teacher must have told me this for a reason – it must be useful” So as we teach the lesson they are using some of their working memory thinking about percentage of an amount. Again, it is like being told an irrelivent fact in the “previously on” which you then keep thinking with be relevant so you make assumptions about it linking in and get confused on the plot.

The other issue is what does a teacher do if the class don’t understand the percentage of an amount work. Do they leave the students with the misunderstandings… in which case what was the point, they are just reinforcing these misconceptions or do they stop and teach it again. This means the students have a break in the flow of the fractions lessons to pick up earlier errors, again potential causing issues, and if students didn’t understand it the first time why would a non planned lesson be better?

I have real issues with this combined knoweldge retrieveal between short term and long term for this reason.

Splitting up your Retrieval

By having your knowledge retrieval at the start of the lesson focused on what students need to know, you are allowing them to hone in on the key information needed that lesson. It allowed the teacher to address the important misconceptions and if they need to spend the whole lessons reteaching these concepts it’s a natural flow with the curriculum sequencing still.

But, what about the weekly/monthly review? Is it not important?

No, of course it’s important. Knowing what your students haven’t absorbed, allowing for spaced practice to move it to their long term memory, being able to reteach and address misconceptions is important. But, for me the time to do this is at the end of a lesson. Plan to finish one lesson a week early. Have a knowledge recall quiz. Spend time going through the answers and spending that time looking at them. THe students will be in a routine… they can pack away their learning for the day and then mentally prepare for a quiz. If a large error is found and you realise that the class hasn’t understood a concept you can use this information to plan a lesson to address this at a suitable time.

So looking at my adding fractions example. I teach my lesson on adding fractions, i then pack away and have a knowledge retrieval quiz. I realise studnents are strugling with percentage of an amount – I go through the answers quickly but tell them not to worry, we will revisit. I then plan after i finish adding fractions we will have a recap lesson on percentage of an amount (and maybe link to fractions of an amount) to allow them to revisit.

Anyway – those are my thoughts anyway. I will leave you with a video that explains the musical themese for every wandavision episode – cos it’s really interesting.