"Retrieval practice isn't working"

Please, don't take any of this personally.

Retrieval practice is one of those things that feels pretty easy to do, and yet teachers up and down the country feel that it isn't getting them the results that they want. I think there are a few reasons for this.

1. It takes too long...
   ...to plan
   I have a Google Drive full of colour-coded retrieval grids with different colours to tell students how long ago they studied something. And the thing is, time of encoding as a retrieval cue appears to have absolutely no positive impact on retrieval. In fact, in one study, it actually slowed down retrieval. And here I was, putting a little key on all my retrieval grids saying if we did it last lesson or last week or last term or last year. How long did that take me? Dunno. But it was time wasted.

   

   Clearly I realised it was a waste of my time because at some point I gave up and just used the gradient fill tool instead of individual boxes. I don't even think that gradient is accurate - who does bile before organ systems???
   

   
   Get a question bank and a randomiser (Carousel is fantastic) and use that. Takes literally seconds to get five, seven, nine questions on the whiteboard. 
   
   ...to deliver
   Retrieval practice should be pretty pacy. It's not a prerequisite knowledge check, it's just "remember this so you don't forget it". One problem I have with these grids is they aren't pacy. When I'm going through the answers, I don't want students to be trying to find which question I'm going through the answers for. Do students write out the question? But that takes time that could be better spent on something else. Like learning. Do I print the students a copy of the grid for them to write in? But then what do you do with it? Glue it in their book? You have glue sticks, you lucky so-and-so? It's also not great for the environment printing loads of paper. Maybe they draw the grid in their book. But again, you're wasting your time.
   
   
   So, because as Tom Rogers put it "it's far easier to criticise a teaching idea than to come up with one of your own and share it" what am I saying is the alternative? A list. Ideally, a numbered list. No icons. No colours. No games. A list. 1. question. 2. question. 3. question. Whack it on the board and get on with your life*.
2. It isn't retrieval
   
   Knowing when an answer was taught is useful for one thing - looking up the answer. Which is a great skill to have. But it's not retrieval. If your students are flipping through their books to find the answers, they're not actually doing retrieval practice. They're doing, I dunno, look-up practice.
   
   
3. Gathering data isn't easy enough.
   I start each of my lessons with five to seven retrieval questions. While students are answer the questions in the back of their book, I circulate and have a good look at what they're writing. If I find that a bunch of students have written nothing for question four, I know I need to do something about that, whether that is reteach it at a later date or set it for homework. If my students have been able to look back in their book and find the answer, they all have an answer for question four, and I don't know they had to look it up. I don't know that they don't know it properly. So I think all is fine, move on, and my students suffer.
   
   
   If the questions aren't in a clear order, you're making things harder for yourself. If your students have a choice of the order, you can't skim their book and spot a blank next to question 4 and think "I need to address question 4" because "Question 4" doesn't exist. In my grid above, "question 4" could be:
• what is an organ system? (if the student went across the rows)
• Describe how the stomach is adapted for its role in the digestion of food. (if the student went down the columns)
• Explain why carbohydrates are so important in the body. (if the student went across the row and then snaked back on themselves)
• Explain how enzymes are important in the metabolism of the cell. (if the student went from less recent to most recent)
• Explain the different between organs and organ systems [Awful question] (if the student went from most recent to less recent)
  
  
4. Nothing happens
   *You can't one-and-done your retrieval practice. You need to take it somewhere. Do something with it. What do you do if none of them can answer a particular question? Leave it and move on? No. You have to go back to it. Personally, I make those topics the focus of the homework. Which means you can't set all your homeworks in advance. More on that another time. 

TL;DR
Give your retrieval questions as a numbered list.
Don't let students use their books.
Revisit the topics students struggle with, probably as homework.