Classroom for educators

BEFORE

  • Share with your learners why spaced retrieval practice+ works (interleaving, feedback and elaboaration).

  • Review the tried and tested introduction

SET UP

  • Set the expectations for learning

  • Use few cards prompts, small decks (<30 Card count) and high reps

  • Use ⤵️ Reorder before 🔄 Refresh

After

  • Build learner agency - expect learners to self-correct their work and / or add to their responses

  • Notice and recognise when knowledge surfaces in lessons and in written work

"Even better you learn what you don't know so when your in class you're a lot more confident," Pupil review

Codes

With routines secured, flex the four Classroom modes and practice settings, using either overt (recorded responses) or convert (thinking-hard responses) practice and 🌺 ideas.

⚙️ Classroom Settings: 🎚️ +/- Deck size 🏷️+/-Tags ❓+/- Qs 🏷️show/hide Tags 📝Notes ⏲️ +/- timer ⤵️ Reorder and 🔄 Refresh. 🖊Overt 💭 Covert 💬 Verbal

🔥Win or day streaks 🪤Hunt correct answers (no hands up) 🔮Forecast performance 🃏Life-line

🛠️ Set up 💡Top tips 🌺 Share ideas

✅ Self-assessment: 2 marks for a precise / exact answer. 1 mark for a correct answer. Learners agency - (marks 2, 1 or 0 and divided the total marks awarded by two and round up.)

Using Classroom to improve learner outcomes

With 21* (last updated 30.12.21) iterative experiences of introducing and teaching with Classroom, together with the observations and feedback from a community of educators around the world, here are our key points.

Spaced retrieval practice+ can be a lot of fun however it is not the easy option (at least to start with). With Classroom, spaced retrieval practice+ is both independent and effortful. It challenges many of the cognitive biases learners have adopted and grown comfortable with.

Classroom promotes:

    • routined, independent, purposeful and meaningful spaced retrieval practice+ (when used as a lesson stater, it provides an immediate start and common finish time that can be used to define the transition to the taught phase of the lesson)

    • flexible anytime spaced retrieval practice+ using categorised and tagged cards to leverage the learning gains of interleaved practice

    • directed and focused attention

    • learner agency and is self-assessment strategies are included, metacognition gains are available

Classroom challenges:

    • learner beliefs about effective learning

This results in a learning climate that has shown to improve learner outcomes and support and focus learner behaviour in a number of classroom settings.

Introducing Classroom and an 'Instruction model,' - (RRRR-RRR).

"I have a tricky class of Year 8 , lots of different history teachers. I'm convinced Successive Relearning has had a positive impact on behaviour."

Forewarning - Retrieval practice is not the easy option

Introduction Plan: Building a retrieval routine is a three step process.

  1. Learning: Build the routine - slow retrieval (overt or written responses🖊. Few cards, small decks, high repetitions, high success rates, feedback).

  2. Re-Learning: Fast & faster retrieval - (overt or written responses 🖊. More cards, larger decks, fewer repetitions, high success rates, feedback).

    • Fast: Use the card prompt to frame your response. - combining the card prompts

    • Faster: Only record the card prompt if left blank.

  3. Re-Learning / revision: Covert or verbal responses💭. Even more cards, larger decks and more repetitions - personalisation is an option).

The same three step process is used for introducing new content, to experienced classes, only the process can be accelerated. The move to covert or responses allows for significantly more retrieval opportunities.

⌚ BEFORE

  • Your learners will need: Pen and a second colour pen or highlighter and ruler. We recommend a highlighter.

  • Share why 'testing effect' is effective. Results are "unequivocal." Share with your class that you are fully aware that the first series of sessions are the most challenging and demanding - and that 'effortful practice' is worth it - in the long run. (Knowledge as a germinating seed of the Story of Chinese Bamboo.)

🛠️ SET UP

  • Set the expectations for learning. It is not psychologically possible to be talking and retrieving at the same time. This is independent, focused retrieval. This is a powerful 'settler' instruction for educators to share with learners.

  • Use few❓prompts (retrieval prompt pairs) (3-4), from a small deck (<30 Card count) and high repetitions - this helps to secure the routine. Using ⤵️ Reorder before 🔄 Refresh promotes success and build learner confidence.

🏆 After

  • Build learner agency. Expect learners to self-correct their mistakes or add to their responses - show your trust in their self-assessment. Resist adjudicating their queries, seek responses from the other learners in the class.

  • Explain how the completed prompt pair - is available for revision and for referral in future sessions.

  • Notice and recognise when knowledge surfaces in lessons and in learner written work.

💡Top tip: Late arrivals

Move late arrivals onto the retrieval task as soon as possible as "not to disrupt the others." Remind the late arrivals that they will need to be extra focused when the responses are shared, so that they met the requirement of "Every prompt - paired. Every practice." So "not to be disadvantaged next time."

Establishing your instruction routine

We recommend - RRRR-RRR.

Retrieve ➡️ Reflect ➡️ Reveal ➡️ Repeat. ⤵️ Reorder. 🔄 Refresh. Refine.

Start with 'slow retrieval' and ⤵️Reorder to build a climate of success before moving onto 🔄Refresh. With secure routines in place, you can move to fast and faster routines with more retrieval opportunities. At which point, there are no end of iterations (cards, tags, mode, time) and ideas, just add your 🌺 imagination or visit "More Classroom routines."

Pre-teaching or potentiate learning, planting "seeds of knowledge" at the start of the lesson, that could then be harvested or revisited at any point during or after the lesson, can very powerful. Review, revising, consolidating and summative testing, is just a few clicks away with Classroom. In sum, Classroom offers routined, purposeful and meaningful learning that builds 'confidently correct learners.' All this without the additional power of RememberMore still to come.

Successive Relearning Cycles

Purposeful: Effort and little reward (0-8 sessions)

⚙️ Use fewer❓prompts (retrieval prompt pairs) (3-4), from a small deck (<30 Card count) and high repetitions - this secures the routine and the Successive Relearning design promotes success (see Pekrun et al., 2014, 2017).

💡Short or specific content, eg characters, vocab, term-definitions are quick to record, recall and easier to assess.

  • Moderate learner expectations, underline Classroom is learning (not testing)

  • Set expectations - "Every prompt - paired. Every practice."

  • ⏲️ 30s- 1 min per prompt - allowing for retrieval and written response time.

With such focused or targeted decks with Successive Relearning opportunities, learners experience 'performance' gains more quickly. Use ⤵️ Reorder, before 🔄 Refresh, and continue sampling cards from the narrow <30 Cards deck. Continue with this set up (few questions, from a small deck) increasing the number of session repetitions. Use 📝 Notes sparingly, if at all.

OVER-learn and secure this routine before increasing the number of❓cards or extending the 🏷️Tags.

💡 Classroom is open. Learners can access the same content in and out of class.

Purposeful: Effortful and some reward for learners (9-12 sessions)*

With the routine becoming more secure, knowledge retained, you can expect more from learners, in the same time frame. More ❓cards in the same time frame (of course, you could reduce the time allocation).

More ❓cards (4-8), from a small deck (<30 Cards). High repetitions. Adding to the deck card count introducing new content and raises the difficulty level.

Use 📝Notes sparingly, if at all.

Purposeful: Rewarding and learners on board (10-15 sessions)*

The routine is secure. You will be more confident with Classroom, the learners are growing in confidence and success rates are increasing. By this point, most educators report settling on 10 cards and either 1 or 2 repetitions.

⚙️ 🎚️ + deck size ❓+Qs ⏲️ - time 🔄 Refresh.

Decks can be accumulated (Ch 01, Ch 02, Ch 03, Ch 04) or focused Ch 05. Build the card count. Use 📝 Notes sparingly.

💡If introducing new content, temporarily revert to the Session 1 settings.

Classroom content seeps into classroom discussions and finally, transfers to written work.

With a secured Classroom routine - you may wish to explore how learners record their 📝overt response.

💡 Only record the retrieval prompt (and then response) of the cards you do not 100% know the answer.

*The overlap occurs, as different groups respond unique. Where learners have high success rates this significantly accelerates the Review. Especially when using ⤵️ Reorder. Second, the content maybe different and third the spacing variable across subjects. Core subjects with high frequency tend to benefit.*

Success-motivation-success (16+)

When the 'Success-motivation-success' cycle kicks in, and it will, you will know that you have a secure Classroom routine from which to accelerate and innovate. Classroom is flexible with a range of ⚙️ Classroom settings to employ:

🎚️ +/- deck size 🏷️+/-Tags ❓+/- Qs 🏷️show/hide Tags ⏲️ Use / +/- timer ⤵️ Reorder and 🔄 Refresh.

"The impact of achievement on self-concept is greater than the impact of self-concept on achievement. " Daniel Muijus

Remember, "emotions indeed have an influence on adolescents’ achievement, over and above the effects of general cognitive ability and prior accomplishments," Pekrun et al., (2017).

What are the learners thinking, learning, contributing?

Retrieve ➡️ Reflect ➡️ Reveal ➡️ Repeat.

  • Enforce your expectations. Independent, focused retrieval.

  • Learners record prompt 1 and then, where possible, their response. "Thinking hard" is expected, noticed and recognised. Where no response is available to the learner, and only after thinking hard, they should leave a space for the response which they will add at the end of the Review - before moving onto the next retrieval prompt.

  • Learners then records their response to prompt 2, or leaves a space, and so on through to the very end of the practice.

  • Learners tend to want to respond and answer to each prompt as they progress through the Review, diverting to find answers recorded in their exercise books. Recognise their determination BUT discourage this practice.

  • Encourage learners to "Focus. Think hard," and attempt all retrieval prompts.

  • Learner like to discuss their responses. Recognise their enthusiasm BUT this is independent practice.

  • Retrieve ➡️ Reflect ➡️ Reveal ➡️ Repeat. ONLY when all of the prompts have been attempted, should learners be encouraged to revisit, find and add or correct their responses. This presents a second and separate retrieval episode, feedback and success. It also ensures early finishes remain focused, learning and have agency in their work.

  • Fragile or unsecured knowledge from previous sessions is highlighted in their exercise books to make it easy to find.

Answer all prompts, every practice.

Year 8 Romeo and Juliet practice

Retrieve ➡️ Reflect ➡️ Reveal ➡️ Repeat.

  • Before you begin the Review, explain how self-assessment works (in your class) and why it is important, otherwise you will have to manage the many learners questions and queries of 'near-correct' answers. How you manage this positive consequence is a key decision for you before you start the Review.

💡One strategy to expedite the ✅ self-assessment: 2 marks for a precise and exact answer. 1 mark for a correct answer. Learners decided 2, 1 or 0. Divided the total marks awarded by two and round up.

  • Managing a collective end to the session enables a seamless, transition to the taught phase of lesson. Mark it and make it clear.

  • Look and listen for knowledge from the session surfacing in the lesson. When learners uses or apply knowledge or vocabulary from the session, notice, recognise and celebrate it. Once this transfer happens, and it will, the learners commitment to the retrieval practice palpable deepens.

💡"Interesting. What makes you say "[paraphrase response]?"

Year 8 Romeo and Juliet practice

Agency or Learner Ownership

  • Classroom promotes learner agency and trust through self-assessment and self-correction and leverages the relationship between prior knowledge and learning engagement being further enhanced by self-regulated learning see Yang et al., (2018).

  • Keeping the routine low-stakes and high success, is important for some learners, less so for others. You know your class.

  • Learners 🔮forecasting performance has been shown to increase learner commitment and quiz performance.

High expectations for all learners

  • Answer all prompts, every practice.

  • No empty spaces or gaps at the end of the Review or Session.

  • As learners start to remember more, they will complete the practices faster. The reward for success is up to you, I would recommend more questions.

💡 You could increase the🎚deck, broaden the🏷️Tags, add more❓Questions, ⏲️ - reduce time. Even try the different modes or hide 🏷️Tags.

  • Apply the over-learning principle of 120%. Learners are typically over-confident.

  • When the learners knowledge is secure (you will get a sense of this from Review performance and wider contributions to class) consider moving to the “faster" response routines. Where the learners are confident of the answers, learners use the prompt to frame their answer. This significantly speeds up the routine, again creating time for more questions.

Year 8 Romeo and Juliet practice

Four RememberMore modes

Classroom has four mode. Q&A, A&Q. Mix and "Match." (Match is not available on RememberMore).

Start with Q&A as this is most familiar to learners however MATCH is the easiest. A/Q and MIX are fun to experiment with once the routine is secure.

Matching question types have been show to be very powerful retrieval practice approaches (See Yang et al., 2021).

📝Overt and 💭 Covert

In retrieval literature, the research focus is most often on overt retrieval. A recorded, retrieval response. The key benefit to 📝 overt retrieval is that where a response is retrieved and record, you know retrieval has occurred. The drawback, is recording the answer is slow. The key benefit to 💭 covert retrieval is that it is very, very fast, however you have no evidence that retrieval has taken place.

Therefore, if adopting 💭 covert retrieval routines, look to have learners "show" their thinking and retrieving.

💡Have learners report their immediate or terminal scores

💡Cold call for response to question X.

💡Have learners track their performance visually - "count your score on your hands. At any point I should be able to see your current score.."

  • If seated "Stand up when you... are finished, when you hit your first hard question

  • If standing "Sit down when you...

Do you want learners to record or report their scores?

That is up to you. It is a heavily debated and polarised topic. One side of the argument is that collecting results makes the session more meaningful versus collecting the results makes the session more outcome orientated. Social comparisons appear to incentivise some learners and discourage others. (I often see learners tracking their own scores in their exercise books.) Points to consider:

In the first handful of session, effortful practice is not instantly rewarded. Learners often doubt the routine, they will need your encouragement and assurance. As the class approached 20 sessions "scores" or knowledge or retention accelerates. Learners are exposed to more and more content in the same time. Learners experience more success. Success breeds motivation. Success-motivation-success momentum builds. In fact positive emotions (enjoyment, pride) positively predicted subsequent achievement, and that achievement positively predicted these emotions (controlling for students' gender, intelligence, and family socioeconomic status.) Highlighting the importance of emotions for students' achievement and of achievement for the development of emotions.

"...achievement outcomes reciprocally influence students’ emotions," Pekrun et al., (2016).

Consider your relationship with the class; the confidence of the learners in the class; the challenge level of content; spacing of the lessons, age of the learners; how familiar learners are with the routine; access to Classroom beyond lessons. Access to RememberMore.

Unquestionably the focus of Successive Relearning is as a learning strategy and not as an assessment tool. Do you record performance? You know your class. You decided.

Self-assessment

On self-assessment - if you use of a 'Knowledge Organiser' type resource as a companion document, students can be directed to use it to support their self checks once they have attempted all questions. Of course, as sessions accrue, learners have previous sessions recorded in their exercise books, with the not-yet-retained knowledge highlighted.

Lastly, the amount of feedback we can offer our students is limited. Limited by our available resource (time), limited by how much a student can attend to. In the longer term, the most productive strategy is to develop our students’ ability to give themselves feedback. Classroom encourages learner agency, learners self-assessing and self-correcting their work. Empower the learners in your classrooms to do so. This is an important metacognitive benefit of retrieval practice. This takes time and requires your direct support and instruction, with research suggesting that learners have "unsophisticated understandings" of the purpose of self-assessment (Harris and Brown, 2013; Bourke, 2016) and that might lead to shallow implementation of related processes.

Test expectancy

Set your daily, weekly, termly, yearly routine. We recommend you notify learners of your schedule to take advantage of test expectancy benefits (reducing learners’ mind-wandering during studying and / or by reducing interference from previously studied information). For what it is worth, I use Classroom every lesson and learners complete a recorded 10 question quiz from a small deck of 20-40 cards every five lessons and an end of term BIG quiz (see - 'BIG Quiz' showcase event). Attainment on the 'BIG Quiz' provides useful summative information, and to date, learner attainment on the final examination / assessment performance correlates highly with the BIG quiz attainment.

Levelling the practice-field

As more educators use and feedback on the platform "More CRM ideas" have been shared. We are aware that the routine has a heavy literacy requirement. We are aware that some learners will need your support. We are also aware that some of our more vulnerable learners respond to Classroom oracy fantastically well. Here are a few flexibilities or ideas to the routine:

Using Classroom AND RememberMore

Category and tags:

  • A easy to apply routine or model: Retrieve ➡️ Reflect ➡️ Reveal ➡️ Repeat ⤵️ Reorder 🔄 Refresh Refine.

  • 🏷️ More or less tags (interleaved practice). Toggle Tags- show/hide

Most routines flex Classroom modes and settings. Either overt (recording responses) or convert (thinking responses) practice and game ideas.

⚙️ Classroom Settings: 🎚️ +/- deck size 🏷️+/-Tags ❓+/- Qs 🏷️show/hide Tags ⏲️ Use / +/- timer ⤵️ Reorder and 🔄 Refresh.

📝Overt 💭 Covert

🔥Play for streaks 🪤hunt correct answers (no hands up) 🔮Forecast performance 🃏Lifeline

Routine set up 💡Top tips 🌺 idea

Number of questions:

  • ❓+/- Qs 🎚️ +/- deck size 🏷️+/-Tags ⤵️ Reorder and 🔄 Refresh.

  • Differentiated starting points or 🃏Life-lines - it is important for the lesson that follows the retrieval practice, that the class transitions together. Finishing at the same time promotes units and a clean transition. You may wish to start learners at the second, third, or forth retrieval prompt. Learners are still expected to fill all of the "All prompts, every practice," as your service or reveal the responses. Again, you will know your class.

  • Just recording answers, 💭 Covert retrieval or no pens - just pure and personal retrieval.

Mode

Countdown:

⏲️ Use / +/- timer. More ❓in the same time. Less time.

Support:

  • Extended support and time for self-correction practice

  • Learner partnerships during the correction phrase and paired or team retrieval (learners work together - has strengths and drawbacks)

  • Directed or sequenced routines (where the educator reads the prompts - the learners record their response sequentially) versus any question and any time.

Any more ideas - gratefully received.