Research School Network: Retrieval for Elaboration Jess Field shares an approach to maximise learning through elaboration

How can we ensure that retrieval practice is not only supporting memorisation, but is also being used to demonstrate the depth of understanding and to deepen the learning taking place? These are questions we contemplated, as a department, when grappling with the idea of a ​‘recovery curriculum’.

In my previous blog, I laid out how we approached the concept of recovering lost learning and how we came to the decision to use ​‘Do Nows’, as part of a mapped retrieval plan, to identify and close gaps. This meant that we could continue with our curriculum at the same time as addressing this issue. We have long used ​‘Do Nows’ for spaced retrieval – it is a routine firmly embedded with both staff and students. To make this higher leverage we developed the idea of ​‘retrieval for elaboration’.

Elaboration

Our department has long had a focus of teaching for understanding. We didn’t want to just identify gaps in knowledge, but also wanted to assess students’ depth of understanding whilst taking the opportunity to deepen this. Elaborative interrogation has proven to support students in deepening understanding by challenging them to transfer and apply their knowledge (1). It also supports the development of schema organisation by demonstrating links between ideas and requires ideas to be connected in order to develop explanations (2). You can read more about this in our blog here.

We applied these ideas by developing ​‘Do Now’ activities which were increasingly complex, with different types of question stems and visual prompts forcing students to think about the content in multiple ways. This format also explicitly demonstrates links between knowledge, building connections and developing schema. It prompts students to remember the knowledge whilst providing hints and scaffolds to support application.

These resources have been created in 2 formats:

A collection of 5​‘Do Nows’ that can be used over the course of a week. Day 1 is simple factual recall low stakes quizzing with a diagram used as a visual prompt. Day 2 is again simple factual recall low stakes quizzing but without the visual prompt. Day 3 move onto a mixture of facts and higher order questions. The questions become progressively more difficult. Day 4 questions are more synoptic and reveal connections between different areas of the topic. Finally, on day 5 students are presented with an extended response elaboration question based on the knowledge that has been retrieved over the previous 4 days. In this way the earlier questions support students in answering this harder question, providing a scaffold and therefore supporting in success and so motivation.

A resource to be used in 1 session. An extended response elaboration question has been identified for each topic. Then, increasingly difficult retrieval questions have been devised on the content students need to retrieve and apply to this context. Again – the earlier questions provide prompts and scaffold for success in the elaboration task.

Feedback is given during the lesson and the teacher can, at this point, make a decision around whether this content is firmly embedded or whether more therapy in this area is needed. We use messy mark books to make a note of areas we need to come back to and faculty time is allocated to using these to collaboratively plan next steps.

As alluded to earlier, another advantage of the resources being ramped is that of motivation. Giving students opportunities to secure success is one of the most important levers in gaining motivation (3). Success in a task feels good and so students are more likely to give attention to, and better learn, the subject knowledge.

Key questions to ask:

1. What opportunities for retrieval practice are currently being used in your department?
2. How is the formative assessment data gathered during retrieval practice used to inform planning?
3. Does retrieval practice support elaboration?
4. Does retrieval practice support schema development?

Jess Field is Director of Science at Dixons Allerton Academy, and Research Lead for Bradford Research School.

(1) (http://pdf.retrievalpractice.org/TransferGuide.pdf).
(2) https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1186/s41235-017‑0087‑y.pdf
(3) P Mccrea (2020) Motivated Learning