The 60-second card
The finding
Pulling an answer out of memory strengthens it more than rereading or reviewing notes does.
Do this
Start most lessons with a few no-notes questions from yesterday, last week, and last month. Keep them low-stakes, and show the right answers right after.
Best evidence
A review of 222 classroom studies with about 48,000 students found quizzing raised achievement by about half a standard deviation, across school levels (Yang et al. 2021(opens in a new tab)).
About 0.5 SD
achievement gain from quizzing across 222 classroom studies
The 5-minute brief
Why it works
Every time a student retrieves something from memory, the path back to it gets stronger. Rereading feels productive because the material looks familiar, but familiarity is not the same as being able to recall it. The same review found quizzing helped with conceptual learning and problem solving, not just facts.
The U.S. Department of Education's practice guide on organizing instruction lists quizzing among its seven core recommendations (IES 2007(opens in a new tab)).
What it looks like
| Grade band | In practice |
|---|---|
| K–2 | Oral warm-up: "What sound does sh make? What's 6 + 4?" Everyone answers together, then a few individuals. |
| 3–5 | Five-question warm-up on a half sheet: two from yesterday, two from last week, one from last month. |
| 6–8 | Blank-page brain dump: 90 seconds to write everything they remember from yesterday's history lesson. |
| 9–12 | Weekly no-grade quiz mixing current and older units; students check answers and log what they missed. |
Common mistakes
- Grading every quiz. Keep them low-stakes so they work as practice, not a verdict.
- Only quizzing on today's lesson. Include older material, or it becomes a check for understanding instead of long-term practice.
- Skipping the answers. Showing the correct answer after each quiz helps fix errors before they stick.
What a leader looks for in 5 minutes
- Did the lesson start with review from memory, with no notes or books open?
- Do the questions reach back further than yesterday?
What we don't know yet
The ideal number of quizzes, how hard they should be, and the best question format are still being studied. Most classroom studies compare quizzing with rereading or no review, so its edge over other active strategies is less certain.
Go deeper
- Researcher
- Henry Roediger and Mark McDaniel; Chunliang Yang
- Translator
- Pooja Agarwal, Powerful Teaching; Blake Harvard
Also called: retrieval practice, testing effect, low-stakes quizzing
Grades and subjects
Sources
- IES 2007, Organizing Instruction and Study (opens in a new tab)
ies.ed.gov
- Yang et al. 2021, classroom quizzing (opens in a new tab)
scholars.hkbu.edu.hk