First Time Correct

The gateway to retrieval practice

Retrieval Practice Gone Wrong

Retrieval practice is great. Students forget things. One of the best ways to help students remember what they learn is retrieval practice. Don’t teach a topic and then let students forget it. Have students retrieve that knowledge on the order of days, weeks, and months to secure it in long-term memory.

Sounds nice, right? But the details of retrieval practice have been hard for me to get right.

I would teach something. Two-step equations or percent increase problems or subtracting integers. I would set up routines for a retrieval practice starter and low-stakes quizzes. Here’s the problem: some students did well, and the retrieval practice helped them retain what they learned. Others left lots of questions blank or seemed to guess at random. Over time these students became discouraged and reluctant to try the retrieval practice activities at all.

That second group of students didn’t learn the content very well in the first place. Retrieval practice doesn’t do any good if there’s nothing to retrieve. There’s a lazy answer here: just do a better job teaching it in the first place! And sure, yes, I’ll just go be a better teacher thank you very much. On a practical level, how can I tell when a student has learned the content? How can I tell when I’m finished with instruction and ready for retrieval practice?

The “simple model of the mind.” Image credit to Cognitive Resonance

First Time Correct

The best answer I’ve found is called “first time correct.”¹

Exit tickets are ubiquitous in education. Teachers often take for granted that a check for understanding should happen at the end of a lesson.

A better time to check for understanding is at the beginning of the next lesson. The question is, can a student answer correctly the first time they see a question in a given lesson? Remembering something you were taught minutes before is one thing. Remembering it the next day is much harder.

When I first started using retrieval practice, the results felt a bit mysterious. Sometimes students remember things and retrieval practice works. Other times they forget and it all seems like a waste. I had a tough time predicting what students would forget and what they would remember.

First time correct is a bit like seeing into the matrix. If a student gets a question right at the start of a lesson, that student is ready for retrieval practice. I can feel pretty confident the retrieval practice will do its job and they will retain what they learned. If that student gets the question wrong at the start of the lesson, retrieval practice isn’t likely to do much good.

I think of first time correct like the gateway from instruction to retrieval practice. It’s asking a simple question: can the student retrieve what they learned after a short delay? If the answer is no, we need to spend some more time on the topic. If the answer is yes, it’s time to toss that question into the rotation of retrieval practice questions I ask regularly.

That Sounds Like a Lot of Work

You might read this post and think hey, that makes sense, but it sounds like a ton of work. I teach a concept, assess it the next day, and if every student doesn’t get it right I need to teach it again until students are ready for retrieval practice?

Teachers need to be selective about what we prioritize for retrieval. Retrieval practice can devolve into endless recall of trivialities. The goal should be to help students remember what they’ve learned because learning is cumulative, and what we’ve learned before can help us learn new ideas in the future. Learning is cumulative, but it’s not cumulative in a nice neat straight line. I need to pick out the content that plays the largest role in future learning and prioritize that content for extra instruction and regular retrieval practice.

Knock-On Effects

First time correct also drove a bunch of other changes in my teaching.

I put a much larger emphasis on connecting current learning with prior knowledge, which from my observations is the single biggest factor predicting whether a student remembers what we learned a day later.

Typical curriculum sequencing isn’t well-suited to this type of checking for understanding and retrieval practice, which led me to my multi-stranded curriculum design. You can read about it here.

I now put less emphasis on the way I first introduce content, and think much harder about how students will practice and apply what they’ve learned in different ways for the learning to stick.

I realized that a lot of my teaching was oriented toward helping my students learn how to do something within a single class period. My goal has shifted: now I want to help my students learn and retain that learning in long-term memory.

1. The “first time correct” idea comes from Zig Engelmann and his Direct Instruction programs.