As I mentioned in my last post, this summer I read Small Teaching by James Lang and found it incredibly informative. Another interesting topic he writes about is how to help students remember course information. He calls this retrieval and says that if we want students to retrieve information from their memories, then we have to give them opportunities to practice doing just that. He gives several tips for how to do this effectively: 

1. Give frequent low-stakes quizzes. In my English 99/108 class for example, we do a five-point grammar quiz at the start of every class. Students have to do what they can from memory. Once they get stuck, they can ask a partner or check their notes to finish. The idea is that by the time they get to the test, they will have practiced retrieving that information and will find it easy.
2. Start each class by asking students to remember what they learned in the previous class. Ideally they do this in writing so that every student has the chance to practice the retrieval. This also encourages reflection back as a habit of mind to use in their other classes as well, so they are always connecting what they are learning today to what they learned previously.
3. Close each class by also asking for some retrieval. Without looking back at their notes, students could write about the most important or interesting point from that day’s class. Or they could write about a question they still have or a point they are confused about. Just be sure to clear up any misunderstandings or answer any questions either online or in the next class.
4. For online classes, in addition to the ideas above, you could require students to take a quick quiz after a certain amount of material or in order to “unlock” another activity. 

Regardless of how you reinforce retrieval, be sure to explain to students why you are doing it and how it will help them learn. Explain that by having them go through the cycle of learn, forget, remember, forget, remember, they will reinforce connections and pathways for knowledge in their brains. Then, rather than these little activities seeming weird and potentially annoying, students will understand that this is actually how learning works, and they can begin to incorporate some of these practices into their own studying and learning.