A Powerful Connection Between Assessment Prompts and Distributed Guided Practice and Summarizing

Cindy Riedl
Mar 30, 2009

"How do we make it 'perfect practice'?"

If students automatically improved with practice - "doing it again and again" - many of us would be without a job!  Think back to those days when, as a student, you had to write the definition of a term ten times. How long was that definition retained? Practice alone does not get the job done, but meaningful 'perfect practice' does. Many skills, such as learning math facts and some math processes, grammar and high frequency sight vocabulary, require extensive practice until students are able to internalize these skills. The skills should become automatic, so they can be successfully applied in solving problems, deriving meaning from print and communicating orally or in writing. When students fail to internalize these skills, they enter a cycle of failure early and often require additional support in the form of remediation, only to fall further behind their peers.

The latest research on retention emphasizes the importance of making practice more meaningful and engaging.  Students, who in the past had difficulty learning math facts, finally conquer this challenge by making meaningful connections with music, riddles and stories, such as experienced in 'Math the Fun Way'. Using mnemonics is nothing new, but how they are used is. Research also supports chunking content. Brain research emphasizes chunking information such as a word, a concept, process or a generalization. It also states that a typical 'working memory' can only hold five to seven meaningful chunks of information at a time.

In the revised and updated edition of Mastery Teaching by Robin Hunter, one of the four cited principles of creating practice that improves student performance is a focus on planning ahead, such as how much material should be practiced at one time. Hunter states that, before moving on it is important to introduce short, connected meaningful chunks and then give several examples or alternative connections, with an emphasis on checking for understanding. Notice, the assumption of making the content meaningful is one of the most important accelerants of learning. Using models with modeling while expressing the 'thinking process' and connecting or building past knowledge to be transferred to future learning has always been a Hunter mantra and an example of exemplary practice.
 
As a young teacher, I was 'Hunterized' over many years, but it was not until I had the opportunity to examine the Learning-Focused experience that I realized how far ahead of her time Madeline's teachings were. My reflections further convince me that Learning-Focused is on the right path when it comes to planning and implementing practice. The Learning-Focused model not only targets Hunter's principles but also the recommendations made by research - chunking content and utilizing methods and practices that make distributed practice memorable and applicable to connecting present learning to past experience to future learning.

Now, for the Learning-Focused approach, which begins with the Lesson Essential Question. This question focuses on content driven by the state's standard and represents a chunk of the instructional content from a unit of study. First, we examine the Lesson Essential Question and create a list of what students need to know and be able to do to answer the question at the end of the lesson - assessment prompts!
 
Example:
 
Grade 3 Social Studies Unit: People and the Physical Environment
(Strand B: People, Places and Environments, Standard 2.2)
 
Lesson Essential Question:  What geographic features affect population density?
 
What do my students need to know and be able to do to answer this question?

  • Recognize and explain the characteristics of different landforms and bodies of water.

  • Recognize the characteristics and representations of a physical feature map

  • How to use a physical feature map and population density map of the same area of land to make assumptions about population density.

This list chunks the content of the lesson, which enables the teacher to create assessment prompts that are distributed after chunks of instruction throughout the lesson for student response in the form of distributed practice or summarizing. This allows the students to demonstrate what they have learned (or not learned). Guided practice and summarization is paramount to internalization supported by immediate feedback using collaborative pairs and teacher intervention.
 
Assessment Prompts for this lesson:

  • What distinguishes one landform from another?

  • How does the legend help you interpret the physical features on the map?

  • What assumptions can you make by comparing a physical feature map and a density map of the same area of land?  

Each of the above prompts requires students to relate to and internalize the content presented before moving on to the next chunk of content. Misconceptions and misunderstandings are addressed during feedback. Instead of asking the students whether they have finished a task, the teacher is asking if they have learned from it.
 
In math, distributed practice is often short and segmented but still reflects assessment prompts and use of collaborative pairs. Fewer problems are given, and more time is spent on error analysis and explaining a process in writing, i.e. how the problem was solved and areas of alert. Many math teachers go beyond requesting summaries where students explain what they have learned about a mathematical process. Students are asked to describe how to avoid errors or pitfalls and provide recommendations for other students, helping them to be successful at a task. Again, the practice is made personal and engages a much higher level of thought creating a stimulating challenge. Assessment prompts provide focus after each step in a process, to assure that all students are engaged in 'perfect practice' along the way. Collaborative pairs are an important during practice but should not be relied on by the teacher to assure that students are responding accurately. The teacher should check for understanding using more prompts that guide students to find the correct answers - not be told them. Individual white boards are useful tools for students who are learning a new math concept or steps in the process. The teacher can check for understanding before more practice is provided.

In conclusion, using the Lesson Essential Question to develop assessment prompts before planning the teaching strategies provides a more productive insight into how the content should be chunked for instruction and where distributive practice and summarizing should occur throughout the lesson. It takes the guessing out of how to provide 'perfect practice'.
 
Refer to Connecting Exemplary Practices in Acquisition Lessons for more information on this topic.