Easy Ways to Have Students Review Material Frequently

The science of learning is clear: Students need to review material continuously. This includes material from prior lessons and chapters. All too often, teachers wait until a few days before the final exam for students to undertake a comprehensive review of information they’ve learned, but reviewing “old” material in a methodical, scaffolded manner throughout a course has many benefits. Students will be more apt to learn the information with consistent and recurring analysis. They might also do better and feel less overwhelmed come time for finals.

Here’s how I go about reviewing material throughout a course.

Bridging Prior and New Lessons Through Review

Regular, routine exploration of concepts and facts is key to student understanding. Teachers, as such, must continuously return to old material, even if briefly, to discuss and reinforce prior concepts. Student brains need repetition and reassessment for authentic learning.

Teachers sometimes think of bell ringers as a way to introduce a new concept or prepare students for the day’s lesson in an engaging and concise manner. We may want to rethink bell ringers as bridges between the former lesson and a new lesson. Consider ways that a bell ringer might help students to review old concepts, as well as teach new ones. The bell ringer, therefore, can become a deliberate and effective manner of review.

Low-Stakes Formative Assessments

I’m a proponent of daily low-stakes formative assessments in which students take a short quiz that tests their knowledge on the day’s content.

The “low stakes” aspect can be particularly important if teachers choose to add questions about lessons learned at a prior time. Include several review questions from formative assessments to help students commit the information to memory by repeatedly seeing and working with the questions or problems.

Mixing some old problems in with new problems also helps students make connections between the material and see relationships that may otherwise elude them.

Furthermore, when constructing activities and projects, keep opportunities in mind to have students see and review prior material, even in small ways.

You can also incorporate review deliberately into lectures and slide shows. This can be done in an organic way. For instance, have a slide show titled “This reminds me of ___ in the last lesson” or some variation. Students can fill in the blank.

I like having the review question written down on a slide for the class to see. This visual cue is helpful for the learning process.

Begin a lecture with a little review of the last lesson or even lessons (plural). Lectures offer a low-stakes way for teachers to get the feel of the room—does a review question elicit blank stares and silence? This can be a casual, formative assessment.

Prepare Concise Summative Assessments

Students will sometimes raise concerns when faced with questions from prior chapters on a test. They will often feel blindsided, saying, “I didn’t study this content.” There are a couple of ways to approach adding review material on summative assessments and tests.

First, be open, honest, and as transparent as possible. Tell students that you often include questions from prior lessons on summative assessments. Explain the rationale behind doing so—the information is important and you want them to keep it fresh in their minds.

Second, keep the review material short and targeted. In other words, be as intentional and specific as possible. If the students are testing on Chapter 2, I avoid sprinkling questions from Chapter 1 throughout that test. On the contrary, I will tell students beforehand: “We’re testing on Chapter 2, but the following three vocabulary words from Chapter 1 might make an appearance!” Or I may say, “I want you to study Chapter 2, but please review this one page or section from Chapter 1, as I will incorporate questions from it, as well.”

Third, be upfront about the review material by including it on pretests, practice tests, and study guides. This will give students a heads-up that the info will be included on the summative assessment. No surprises!

Classroom Review Practices

There are many ways to add a brief review session during class.

• Mini-whiteboards: Incorporate a quick review using mini-whiteboards, which I’m a big fan of using.
• Classroom projects: Be intentional about adding one element of a review, even if really small, to creative in-class projects.
• Group work: For group work, ask small groups to include how any questions relate back to an earlier lesson.
• Questions: Remember to always open up the floor for questions about the current material and older material.
• Flash cards: I like to have my students create physical flash cards using note cards. The flash cards will feature vocabulary words and accompanying definitions or explanations of key concepts. This is a super-easy way to review. Just ask kids to pull out their flash cards from a previous lesson or chapter and quiz themselves or a partner.

These strategies don’t take up much time.

Talk to Students and Focus on Simplicity

Make sure you share with your students the importance of reviewing material. Many students want to do better, and reviewing material consistently is a surefire way to better retain information. By talking to students about the benefits of constant, regular review, you are training them to be better learners—to learn how to learn. This is a lifelong skill that will help them in class and beyond. There are obvious hurdles to consistent review. Our time with students can be brief. The standards and curriculum’s schedule—be it written for us or self-imposed—typically require us to move quickly through lessons. Lastly, as educators, we want to cover as much content as possible!

All of these factors can form roadblocks to the time and effort taken to systematically incorporate regular review into our lesson plans. Nonetheless, there are ways to do so organically and succinctly that offer enhanced student learning. The key to all of this is just to remember the importance of review. Don’t overthink your review time. One or two simple review questions can suffice. In fact, simplicity is the key.