Scaffolding Deeper Learning With Recall Activities
When students are asked to remember and explain relevant knowledge just before applying it, they arrive at a more concrete understanding of the content.
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Go to My Saved Content.Math teacher Maggie Arnold is about to launch a final summative project on a statistics unit in her ninth-grade Algebra class at Frederick High School in Frederick, Maryland. Before turning students loose to work on the project, Arnold first has them participate in a series of retrieval practice activities that bring their background knowledge and the math skills they’ve been working on for the last couple of weeks back into the forefront, so they are crystal clear.
Learning Science Partners’ Jim Heal explains why this is good practice. “When inviting students to engage in a task, it’s crucial to activate the prior knowledge they will need to succeed,” he says. “They can pull previously learned information into the here and now—where it will be useful for them in the current learning.”
After providing students with a high-level view of the project they are about to embark on, Arnold asks students to work on individual whiteboards. She instructs them to spend three minutes jotting down any phrases, symbols, vocabulary, and charts that they remember from the last several lessons—a brain dump. After giving them time to recall individually, she groups students into fours and asks them to consolidate their knowledge onto a large whiteboard.
According to Arnold, this second step is crucial. “Recalling is the first step—that’s surface level, where you’re just throwing ideas at it,” she says. But during the second step, when the students are collaborating, “you have to think about the content and be able to communicate and explain to somebody in your group about what you’re talking about.”
Arnold then displays the large whiteboards around the room, and the class does a gallery walk. She asks them to look for connections between the boards—as well as any math content they did not include on their own displays.
Arnold is up front with students about why retrieval practice activities are important. “I tell the kids, ‘You just have to work out that muscle. The more you recall, the stronger you get. It’s just like working out.’” She smiles. “That’s just how the brain works.”
This video is part of our “How Learning Happens” series, which explores teaching practices grounded in the science of learning and human development.