Teaching Strategy to Improve Student Recall of Information Taught in Previous Units

If you are an elementary classroom teacher you have probably encountered situations in which your students are unable to recall information that you or someone else has already taught.  In spite of the fact that you have documented evidence showing student mastery of a standard or skill, the new data you have collected indicates that some children no longer possess a sufficient understanding of the content.

Let's imagine that you are a second grade educator planning to teach a unit on telling time.  You expect that most of your students can read time to the hours and half hours because it is a first grade standard.  You give your students a pre-test on telling time and are disappointed to find out that many of your students can't tell time to the half hours.  You can't help but wonder what happened. 

Our brains don't perform as we might expect.  We don't always recall material with perfection.  The same holds true for our students.  If you take a look at a school division's curriculum guide you might notice that a topic such as telling time is taught as a unit.  One or more weeks are devoted to a telling time unit.  Once the unit is completed very little time is spent on the subject for the remainder of the school year.  It might be nearly 12 months before students are exposed to anything related to telling time.  For instance, a former first grader that learned about tellling time to the hours and half-hours in the month of January is learning about telling time with five minute increments in same month of the following year as a second grader.  Unless reading times on a clock is part of a child's every day life, it has been 12 months since the task of reading time on a clock was performed. 

Although most math textbooks have built in review portions throughout each chapter or unit, small review pieces do an insufficient job of maintaining skills that were previously taught from the current school year or from similar skills taught in the previous school year.

The good news is that there is a simple fix to this problem.  There are strategies that can easily be implemented throughout the school year that help students solidify learning that took place earlier.  One such strategy is using review games and review centers in the classroom.  Games can be played with the whole class or in small groups.  Most students will find the experience enjoyable!  Additionally, many games are easy for a paraprofessional to take responsibility of which frees up the educator's time.  Independent centers can also be used as part of a daily routine.  They can be used as part of a rotation when students are not in small group with their teacher. 

I believe that any games or centers in which the students are required to use independently (without adult support) must be games or centers in which the students already have at least 94% accuracy of the featured skill or skills.  If this is disregarded, incorrect learning will take place.  The time it takes to conduct student pre-assessments, review the data, and use the data to determine who can use the games or centers independently is time well spent.  If your head is spinning around while thinking about how you can do this, stop and take a deep breath.  As a teacher, you are a tactician.  You can do this!  Here are a few examples: 

1.  Use math games and math centers immediately after teaching the unit or chapter of the featured skill.  Let's say you finished your telling time unit and everyone in the class passed with flying colors.  You proceed with a unit on money.  While you are teaching the money unit students can be using telling time games and centers independently.  They have passed with flying colors, you have the data that verifies this, and now you are extending their brain's capacity to recall the information later on because you are prolonging the number of days they are having experiences with telling time.

2.  Use math games and math centers regardless of whether or not students have 94% accuracy - as long as "High Adult Support" is in place.  "High Adult Support" means that an adult is alongside the children that are engaged with the game or center.  The adult's presence is not peripheral.

3.  Use math games and math centers that are one or more grade levels below the class grade level.  If you are a second grade teacher and you know that the math unit on money (the one you plan to teach) is months away, you will want your students to be engaged in first grade level games and centers (related to money) long before you begin your unit.  This strategy should be at play for all math topics that you plan to teach.  Don't wait until you are ready to teach a math unit about place value to the hundreds to review place value for ones and tens.  You don't want it to be a year (or longer) since students have had exposure to similar skills such as tens and ones. 

If you are going to stage games and centers as an independent activity, you need to procure your own assessment data.  Using the math data from students' previous grade level is not current.  In our utopia teacher mindsets, we like to think of our students as reviewing content from the previous year over the summer.  The reality is that we can't depend on that happening.  While there are good intentions on the parts of parents to review core subject content, summer often gets in the way.  During the summer months, families have backyard barbecues, go swimming, pack and move into new neighborhoods, and take vacations.  School review material gets placed on the back burner so to speak.

Student using a telling time clip card center for summer review.

 
Below 94% accuracy = incorrect learning taking place.  Incorrect or confused learning will make teaching the unit (when you teach it) very demanding because you will have to reteach content that was incorrectly learned while the students were working independently.

The first two weeks of school is one of the best times to review the previous grade level's content.  Use review math games and review math centers on a variety of topics and continue to use them throughout new math units that you introduce and teach.  Consider devoting ten minutes of your daily math block to a math review game instead of using the review piece provided in the textbook. 

In another blog post I mentioned that I would include student probes for telling time.

Please be aware that a student probe is not necessarily the same thing as a pre-test which can offer you specific data about students' understanding.  The telling time probes that I've created are intended to give you a general idea of students knowledge about clocks and ability to read time in digital form.  You can get the probes by clicking here:  QUICK PROBES for TIME.

If you are looking for games about telling time, check out the BLOG POST where I informally probe the sweet gal in the video on identify time in digital form.  She is a quick study!  This little cutie also explored telling time clip cards which can be used as a center activity.

The center quickly migrated to an outdoor space.  I was thrilled that we could make learning happen outside!

If you are interested in my telling time clip cards, you can find them in the CLIP CARDS section of my shop HERE or click on any of the images shown below.

  

That's all!

Molly McMahon, Lessons by Molly