By Pooja K. Agarwal, Ph.D.

I hope the school year is going well for everyone. If you’re new to my newsletter and website, welcome!

I’m really proud of the online library I’ve built over the past 10 years with research-based activities, book club resources, and templates for teachers to transform student learning. I also just added 20+ PDFs of all my research publications to the Google Drive folder. They used to be scattered all over the place and I’ve made it easier to find them. I added them on my website at retrievalpractice.org/about, too.

Click here to download my 100+ free resources directly from Google Drive, which are also available on my website at retrievalpractice.org/library. If you don’t know where to start (it’s a lot), keep reading for an overview of everything you’ll find in my Google Drive.

DOWNLOAD MY FREE RESOURCES

Download book club resources, templates, and more

Screenshots of practice guides on the science of learning by Dr. Pooja K. Agarwal

I’ve been building my library (aka Google Drive folder) with free teaching resources by cognitive scientists since 2014. Here’s a run down of everything you can download and share:

50+ book club resources for Make it Stick, Powerful Teaching, and Smart Teaching Stronger Learning
20+ PDFs of my research publications
20+ Practice Guides by cognitive scientists, including translations in multiple languages
5+ professional development slide templates
10 recommended research articles
A downloadable spreadsheet of 50 classroom experiments on retrieval practice

Screenshot of Google Drive folders and documents

My library includes free resources from my recent book, Smart Teaching Stronger Learning, including the entire introduction, top 10 tips from the book, and a curated list additional readings. I also have free keynotes and webinar recordings on my YouTube channel, including additional teaching tips from the book’s contributing authors.

All of my resources are licensed under Creative Commons. That means you can download and share them, as long as you don’t use them for commercial purposes. Please give credit to yours truly (Dr. Pooja K. Agarwal).

Don’t see something you were hoping to find? I always welcome ideas, input, and feedback. Please don’t hesitate to email me at ask@retrievalpractice.org. Thank you for downloading, sharing, and transforming teaching with the science of learning!

DOWNLOAD MY LIBRARY

Learn more about learning:

Download our database of retrieval practice research in real classrooms

Want a quick way to access classroom research on retrieval practice? Download our database of 50 experiments and read a detailed literature review by cognitive scientists.

Four quick activities to help students retrieve and reflect

Encourage student reflection with these four retrieval practice activities (no prep and no grading!): Start, Stop, Keep; Rose, Thorn, Bud; Flash Forward; and Five Words. Quick, simple, powerful.

Make flashcards more powerful with these 3 tips

Lots of students use flashcards. But using flashcards doesn't guarantee they're using retrieval practice. In fact, students could be wasting their time. This week, we share three research-based tips to make flashcards more powerful. Help students study smarter, not harder.

Forget about study guides. Use Retrieval Guides instead.

Do you use study guides in your classroom, where key information is in outline form and students fill in the blanks during a lesson? Turn your study guides into Retrieval Guides without additional prep, grading, or class time! Download our Retrieval Guide Template for successful long-term learning.

Do you ask yourself, "How can I find time for retrieval practice?" If so, you're asking the wrong question.

Do you sometimes wonder how you'll ever find the time for retrieval practice during your lessons? You're not alone. That being said, you're also asking the wrong question. Read on and learn how to use retrieval practice to save time, not spend it.

Retrieval Tic Tac Toe: A no stakes, no anxiety game for retrieval practice

Classroom games can encourage retrieval. But they can also raise student anxiety when they're competitive or time limited. Check out this new teaching strategy: Retrieval Tic Tac Toe. Created by college students, adaptable for any classroom or content area. Have fun!

Download our Retrieval Warm Ups and make retrieval no big deal

Retrieval practice is a powerful strategy for learning, but sometimes it intimidates students. Download our Retrieval Warm Ups and make retrieval no big deal. They're a perfect way to show students that we retrieve all the time, without even thinking about it. To flip retrieval practice from a negative feeling to a positive strategy, sometimes all it takes is a little warming up!

Bake a cake with retrieval practice, formative assessment, and summative assessment

Cake, cake, cake! This sweet delight illustrates how we can best support learning in the classroom: with retrieval practice, formative assessment, and summative assessment. But how are these ingredients similar and different? Why isn't learning a bake off, cupcake war, or throw down? And why isn’t retrieval practice a call for more tests?

Boost note-taking. Try Retrieve-Taking!

There's a lot of discussion and research about students' study habits outside the classroom, including re-reading, taking notes, and highlighting. Students tend to use these strategies inside the classroom, too. In either setting, are students retaining what they're trying to learn? Potentially, but not always. Read more for our boost on note-taking, which we call retrieve-taking.

Boost learning quickly with Two Things!

How can we use retrieval practice to break up our lessons, quickly and easily, without pausing to facilitate class discussion or collect papers? Use a retrieval strategy we simply call "Two Things," a no-quiz activity for your classroom.

But what about multiple-choice questions?

When we talk about retrieval practice, here's one question that frequently pops up: Does retrieval practice with multiple-choice questions boost learning? Here's the quick answer, based on cognitive science research: Yes! Read on for research, recommendations, and this week's multiple-choice retrieval practice.

Brain Dump: A small strategy with a big impact

With the end of the semester within sight, we feature a small strategy that makes a big impact on student learning – based on decades of cognitive science research. In scientific lingo, we call it "free recall."

NEW book: Smart Teaching Stronger Learning

Read my new book, Smart Teaching Stronger Learning. Whether you teach K–12 students or graduate students, or you’re new to teaching or a long-time educator: If you want to improve student learning, this book is for you.

Practical tips to reduce student test anxiety

How can we support students during exam time and reduce test anxiety? Learn more about my research on student test anxiety and get quick lesson ideas to reduce anxiety with retrieval practice. It might sound counterintuitive, but the more students practice retrieval, the more comfortable they become with high-stakes tests.

Worried about AI? Here are 8 flexible prompts for retrieval practice

Retrieval practice doesn’t require more class prep for us or ChatGPT for our students. Here are 8 no-prep prompts for retrieval practice I’ve developed over my 10+ years of teaching. I’ve also included a variety of new resources I highly recommend.

Download these 5 free resources to unleash learning

The world has changed and teaching has changed. One thing hasn't changed: The importance of learning and the frustration of forgetting. Here are 5 new resources and downloads, all free, all by cognitive scientists, all to empower you to unleash the science of learning.

Think-Pair-Share? Think again!

Whether you teach at an elementary school or a medical school, you've probably heard of the instructional strategy, think-pair-share. Don’t skip the “think” step! Read on for research-based tips on incorporating retrieval, spacing, and interleaving to make think-pair-share an even more powerful strategy in your classroom.

Teaching Tips

Download my 100+ free teaching resources

By Pooja K. Agarwal, Ph.D.

Download book club resources, templates, and more

Pooja K. Agarwal, Ph.D.