Powerful Learning
Spacing
The amount of time between learning and retrieval.
How much time
Discrimination
Interleaving
Mixing in old topics with new ones during review
Desirable difficulty
Similarity
What is it?
Retrieval Practice
Pulling information out of a student's head instead of putting it in their head
Feedback
Metacognition
How we think about what we know
Strategies
Self-feedback
Feedback
Both immediate and delayed feedback are beneficial. It can be correct answer (i.e. right or wrong) or elaborative (why is a response incorrect). Regardless, the feedback needs to be timely and related to the topic. To make the most of feedback, we should encourage students to make mistakes. We can do this with no-stakes opportunities for them to show what they have learned. This requires us as teachers to not "save" them and allow for them to struggle (remember that desirable difficulty).
Similarity
With interleaving, we mix the order and concepts of similar topics so students have to descern the differences. Interleaving requires spacing, but spacing is not necessarily interleaving. With interleaving, students have to pause and think about how to solve a problem or answer a question rather than mindlessly follow a pattern.
Examples
- Compare and contrast
- What's the best way to solve these 5 quadratics and why?
Self-Feedback
Metacognition is thinking about our own learning. Having students do this can improve learning by reducing the illusions of fluency and confidence. Choose strategies that allow students to assess what they do know with confidence, what they know and are not confident about, and what they do not know. Coach students to tailor their studying to what they need to still learn.
Discrimination of closely related topics
The reason why interleaving works (in addition to its connection with spacing and retrieval practices) is that it requires students to discern or discriminate between similar ideas, concepts, or processes.
Strategies
- Brain Dump: Close the resources and have students answer a question or set of questions referring to the last lesson taught in class
- Retrieve-taking: Have students listen and watch and then take notes after lecturing is complete.
- Think-pair-share-(add): Could be combined with either strategy above, but now include sharing information with a partner. Have the partner add one additional fact to the notes that wasn't there already.
How much time?
The amount of time depends on the length of the unit. One recommendation is to space retrieval by 1:10 of the total time of the unit. For example, if a unit is 30 days long, then a lesson at the beginning of the unit should have retrieval practices every 3 days. The biggest "bang for your buck" is to delay a no- or low-stakes quiz on a topic by a few days after learning.
Strategies
Blast from the past: "Remember when we...", or give HW from a previous lesson on a new lesson Delay Summaries: Summarize notes the day AFTER taking the notes without looking at the notes. Or, have students write "Two Things" they remember from Friday's lesson on a Monday. Big Basket Quiz: Cut up questions from past lessons and put them in a basket. Randomly pull questions for a quiz. Return the questions to the basket so that they may show up on a future quiz.
Retrieval Practice
- No- or low-stakes opportunities to pull information out of students heads instead of putting information into their heads.
- Requires students to write down (or verbalize) what they have learned
- Re-reading, re-lecturing, simply highlighting a reading are NOT retrieval
- Has been shown to improve higher-order thinking AND transfer of information to related scenarios
Desirable difficulty
Too challenging. Few students will benefit
Too easy. Few students will benefit
Spacing allows time for students to forget information so that they have to retrieve it from the depths of their mind. This creates a desirable difficulty; it makes the retrieval not too challenging and not too easy. In other words, it creates appropriately rigorous work.
Appropriately challenging. Many students will benefit.
Power Learning
Zachary Pratt
Created on August 7, 2023
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Transcript
Powerful Learning
Spacing
The amount of time between learning and retrieval.
How much time
Discrimination
Interleaving
Mixing in old topics with new ones during review
Desirable difficulty
Similarity
What is it?
Retrieval Practice
Pulling information out of a student's head instead of putting it in their head
Feedback
Metacognition
How we think about what we know
Strategies
Self-feedback
Feedback
Both immediate and delayed feedback are beneficial. It can be correct answer (i.e. right or wrong) or elaborative (why is a response incorrect). Regardless, the feedback needs to be timely and related to the topic. To make the most of feedback, we should encourage students to make mistakes. We can do this with no-stakes opportunities for them to show what they have learned. This requires us as teachers to not "save" them and allow for them to struggle (remember that desirable difficulty).
Similarity
With interleaving, we mix the order and concepts of similar topics so students have to descern the differences. Interleaving requires spacing, but spacing is not necessarily interleaving. With interleaving, students have to pause and think about how to solve a problem or answer a question rather than mindlessly follow a pattern.
Examples
Self-Feedback
Metacognition is thinking about our own learning. Having students do this can improve learning by reducing the illusions of fluency and confidence. Choose strategies that allow students to assess what they do know with confidence, what they know and are not confident about, and what they do not know. Coach students to tailor their studying to what they need to still learn.
Discrimination of closely related topics
The reason why interleaving works (in addition to its connection with spacing and retrieval practices) is that it requires students to discern or discriminate between similar ideas, concepts, or processes.
Strategies
How much time?
The amount of time depends on the length of the unit. One recommendation is to space retrieval by 1:10 of the total time of the unit. For example, if a unit is 30 days long, then a lesson at the beginning of the unit should have retrieval practices every 3 days. The biggest "bang for your buck" is to delay a no- or low-stakes quiz on a topic by a few days after learning.
Strategies
Blast from the past: "Remember when we...", or give HW from a previous lesson on a new lesson Delay Summaries: Summarize notes the day AFTER taking the notes without looking at the notes. Or, have students write "Two Things" they remember from Friday's lesson on a Monday. Big Basket Quiz: Cut up questions from past lessons and put them in a basket. Randomly pull questions for a quiz. Return the questions to the basket so that they may show up on a future quiz.
Retrieval Practice
Desirable difficulty
Too challenging. Few students will benefit
Too easy. Few students will benefit
Spacing allows time for students to forget information so that they have to retrieve it from the depths of their mind. This creates a desirable difficulty; it makes the retrieval not too challenging and not too easy. In other words, it creates appropriately rigorous work.
Appropriately challenging. Many students will benefit.