Lessons · Teaching · retrieval practice
Being asked is how it sticks
Pulling something out of memory strengthens it far more than putting it back in, so a question is not only a measurement; it is the strongest teaching move you have.
Hone is a place to practise a career, one idea a day. This is one of its lessons, written out in full and free to read without an account.
What it is for
This is the one you have the most evidence for, because you are the subject of the experiment. Since your first day here you have been asked one question a day rather than handed one summary a day, and that is why you can still count the phonemes in shrink three weeks on. Re-reading feels like learning and produces almost none of it. Being asked feels like failing and produces most of it.
How to think about it
Every time you are about to re-explain something, ask it instead. Closed books, low stakes, nothing written in a mark book. Then tell them the answer straight away, so that the question teaches twice.
Worked example
Instead of: 'remember, a phoneme is a sound'The re-explanation. Comfortable for everybody, and it does almost nothing.
Ask: how many sounds in ship? Everybody writes it.Every person in the room retrieves. Writing makes it everybody rather than the fastest hand.
Reveal straight away: three, sh and i and pThe answer immediately after. The question teaches and the reveal corrects.
Nothing recorded in the mark bookThe moment it counts for a grade it stops being practice and becomes a test.
Your turn
Write the line that turns a re-explanation into retrieval practice.
Instead of telling them again, them.
Solve one, graded on the server
The trap
Turning retrieval into a test. The moment a mark is recorded the class protects itself: they revise beforehand, they guess safely, and you have lost the one move that was making it stick.