What matters most here
| Rank | Practice | Grade |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Low-stakes quizzes spaced across a unit, with review quizzes before exams (principles 6, 7) | Evidence grade: Proven in classrooms Proven; in 8th grade science, quizzing raised unit exam scores by 13–25%, and review quizzes helped most (McDaniel et al.(opens in a new tab)) |
| 2 | Teach the idea and the method before the lab (principle 2) | Evidence grade: Strong Strong |
| 3 | Worked examples for calculations and models (principle 3) | Evidence grade: Strong Strong |
A lesson in this room
Five retrieval questions on last week's cells. Teacher teaches plant cell parts with a labeled diagram. Students label a blank diagram from memory. Then the microscope lab, now that they know what to look for.
Leader look-fors
- Quiz questions from earlier in the unit and earlier units
- The lab follows teaching, not the other way around
Stop doing
Labs that ask students to discover ideas they haven't been taught. Unit tests as the only time old material comes back.
Where the evidence runs out
When cognitive science principles were built into middle school science programs and tested at scale, effects were often small (Perry(opens in a new tab)). Single practices tested in classrooms look stronger than whole-program redesigns.
Principles
Sources
- McDaniel et al. 2011 (opens in a new tab)
ovid.com
- Perry, what we don't know (opens in a new tab)
my.chartered.college