Portledge in the Now.

Thinking, Retrieval Practice, and the Anatomy of a Lesson

Nancy Aranda
Pedagogical Inspiration:
In the book Why Don’t Students Like School? one of author Daniel Willingham’s assertions about learning is that students remember what they think about. This statement captured my attention, not only because of how simple an idea it was, but because of its far-reaching implications.
What seemed obvious at first, became less so as I began to think about thinking, and how I can teach my students to do it. I’d spent years using Bloom’s Taxonomy to make sure my students were exercising a range of thinking skills.  How, though, can understanding what is happening in the brain when thinking is taking place inform the anatomy of a lesson? 
Enter Dr. Ido Davidesco, our guest speaker at the December 2019 Professional Development Day, who used the phrase “retrieval practice.” This phrase about a very specific mechanism of thinking was, and is, incredibly powerful for me because it points quite deliberately to the difference between having a memory and accessing it.  We assume that if the memory exists, it can be retrieved, and if it can’t be retrieved, it isn’t there. Rather than assume students can handily retrieve a memory whenever they need it, maybe memory retrieval needs to be tended to as any other skill does, with the design of an intentional learning experience, spaced practice and gradual release of control from teacher to student. This was the information I needed to help me restructure spaced practice in a way that would gradually require more and more memory retrieval during practice. 

Classroom Practice:
In learning how to solve word problems in third grade math, there are six steps we repeatedly follow. They are:
  1. Read the story.
  2. Reread the story and visualize each part of it.
  3. Construct an answer sentence that will answer the question. Leave a blank where the unknown quantity will go.
  4. Draw a visual representation of the story (a bar model, a number bond or, in some cases, an actual sketch of the story) and label where the knowns and the unknowns are.
  5. Decide which operation would solve for the unknown and solve. Are you looking for a missing part, or a missing whole?
  6. Write the solution into the answer sentence
There is an anchor chart of these steps in full view that we refer to each time we work on a word problem, and typically, the specific word problems are written on a worksheet that has been thoroughly scaffolded for these six steps. While this routine has given our third graders ample opportunity for spaced practice of this problem-solving routine, I had been neglecting to ask them to retrieve any part of this process on their own!  It was no wonder they couldn’t construct this process without the scaffold! 

After hearing Dr. Davidesco, I returned to my class and immediately began to wean them off the template, one part at a time. First, we eliminated the reminder for an answer sentence, and they began to retrieve that step on their own. Then we removed the space specifically labeled for the computation. Again, they performed their calculations without the designated space. We are still in the weaning process and are working on removing parts or all of the visual representations, as that is the most challenging piece of the process. Lo and behold, their models are beginning to appear with little to no prompting!

It’s so gratifying for me to see my students moving forward in this way, and it’s my hope that they will remember this routine because of how they thought about it as they practiced.
Back

Latest news

List of 3 news stories.

Archive
    • Portledge school

      Footer bG

      FooterBg

Become an Integral Part of Our Community.

Get In Touch

Legal

*NOTICE OF NONDISCRIMINATORY POLICY AS TO STUDENTS
Portledge School does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, age, marital status, disability, or any other characteristic protected by law. This policy applies to, but is not limited to, educational policies, admission, financial aid, hiring and employment practices, use of school facilities, athletics, and other school-administered programs.
Web design by Digital Silk