It’s become the standard opener to a lesson: students sit down to complete a “do now” retrieval practice quiz.
Quizzing is a useful way to help build a certain type of necessary factual knowledge (often termed “declarative knowledge”). These facts are foundational, so it is important that they become automatic for students.
But while declarative knowledge is necessary, it does not, on its own, create full understanding.
For instance, a student may be able to use their knowledge organiser to confidently label the “crust”, “epicentre” and “tectonic plates” on a diagram of a volcano for their “do now” quiz. But, just minutes later, they might mistakenly say that volcanoes only erupt through the top vent.
The retrieval practice quiz - right or wrong?
Getting a quiz question right does not guarantee understanding, nor does it lead to successful application of knowledge. In fact, sometimes quizzes can even mislead us.
Imagine that two students are asked the quiz question “What year was St Paul’s Cathedral rebuilt after the Great Fire of London?” The first student offers the correct answer: 1711. This was based on her remembering the date from her knowledge organiser.
The second student gets the quiz answer wrong, but when talking to her teacher, she explains that she thought the answer had to be “around 1700” because she knew the Great Fire of London happened in 1666, that Christopher Wren was commissioned to rebuild the cathedral soon after and that the build did not take long to complete.
Going by their responses to the quiz, it appears the first student is more knowledgeable than the second. But once we dig a little deeper, it becomes clear that this may not be the case - the rich understanding that the second student possesses simply didn’t feature on the quiz question.
So, what does this mean for the retrieval quiz? Should we reconsider starting every lesson with one?
Many schools use “do now” quizzes as much for their settling effect as for how much they will enhance students’ memory of curriculum concepts. Such learning routines matter and, as a positive habit, quizzing could help to improve classroom culture.
However, from a teaching and learning point of view, having a blanket policy of starting every lesson with a retrieval quiz might not be as helpful as we think.
Perhaps subjects like physics, with specific equations to memorise, or maths, where lots of practice of algebra problems is needed, lend themselves well to a shedload of daily quizzes. The same might not be true in other subjects, like history. Indeed, in some subjects an unthinking use of quizzes may even push out more effective teaching activities that could be just as helpful in developing calming routines.
So, let’s be honest about why we are really starting a lesson with a quiz. If we are quizzing primarily to get pupils quiet and settled, we need to be open about that.
And let’s be judicious about how we use these quizzes, remembering that a decent quiz score, based on the recall of a couple of key dates, is not necessarily an accurate reflection of a students’ understanding.
To maximise the benefits, consider the following points when planning to start a lesson with a quiz:
- Ensure that students use their quiz answers in further activities throughout the lesson, so that isolated facts are connected into more meaningful understanding.
- Make feedback on errors and misconceptions meaningful - a brief comment, along with a score, is unlikely to be enough to promote understanding.
- Don’t enforce a quiz when extended reading, skilled practice or discussion would generate more purposeful learning outcomes.
- Talk to students about the purpose of quizzing - covering the benefits and the limitations - so they take them seriously and don’t resort to meaningless guessing.
Alex Quigley is the national content and engagement manager at the Education Endowment Foundation. He is a former teacher and author of Closing the Writing Gap, published by Routledge
