Here are my favorite back-to-school activities to strengthen learning
/By Pooja K. Agarwal, Ph.D.
Welcome back to school! For most of us (myself included), the whirlwind of lesson prep, meetings, professional development—and of course, teaching—is here. Keep reading for my favorite back-to-school activities to engage students with retrieval practice during the first week of class.
Reminder: Click here to register for our Science of Learning workshop. It’s on Zoom TOMORROW, August 14 from 1–4pm ET. Group discount: Register 5 or more people and use promo code SAVE15 for 15% off the total.
P.S. The Zoom workshop will not be recorded. Can’t attend? Read our new book, Smart Teaching Stronger Learning, and click here to download a free list of tips. Interested in hosting a workshop at your school? Email me at ask@retrievalpractice.org for details.
Join us on Zoom tomorrow!
Last chance to register for our interactive online workshop TOMORROW, Thursday, August 14 via Zoom from 1–4pm ET,
We’re bringing together 5 cognitive scientists and 50+ educators from around the world for back-to-school teaching tips. Because the workshop is discussion-based in breakout rooms, the Zoom will not be recorded.
We have a sliding scale for registration and get 15% off for groups of 5 or more registrants (promo code SAVE15).
Use retrieval practice the first week of class
I love the first day of class. The buzz, the nervousness, the fingers-crossed-it’ll-go-well feeling—I seriously love all of it!
It may (or may not) surprise you to know that my first day of class is full of retrieval practice. Even if you haven’t introduced content yet, use retrieval practice the first day or week of class. Here’s how, with quick activities you can adapt for K–12 students, higher ed courses, and all content areas:
Get students familiar with retrieval practice from day 1 with no-stakes trivia questions and warm up questions where everyone knows the answer (click here to download my free warm up slides)
Build a welcoming class culture with mnemonics to remember student names (spoiler alert: trying to memorize names with students’ LMS photos doesn’t work)
Jumpstart students’ prior knowledge with an engaging ungraded pre/post worksheet (check out an example of my worksheet online)
Boost students’ long-term learning from previous classes with a brain dump or two things activity in one minute or less
Make students’ break memorable with a simple question to model how we retrieve in everyday life
Don’t waste the valuable opportunity you have at the beginning of the school year to go over the syllabus and let students out early (I recently heard this referred to as a “silly-bus-day”). Ice breakers serve a purpose, but they can also get stale. For more tips, I highly recommend anything and everything by James Lang, including his book Small Teaching and his advice guide to a good first day of class. If you haven’t already, click here to watch a recording of our recent conversation about teaching and learning.
Key take away: Use the first week of class to pique students’ curiosity, support sharing without feeling put on the spot, and prepared to learn with the simplest and most robust research-backed learning strategy: retrieval practice.
