Your New Best Friend
Yesterday, you taught students the significance of the Proclamation of 1763 or the first three elements in the periodic table, or the communicative property.
Today, you ask a simple review question, asking students to recall the information they learned the day before. Some know it well, others a bit, and a bunch have no idea. We should expect this outcome, because we know that humans forget information quickly and they need a lot of retrieval practice (review) to lock it in their long-term memory.
So if we are thinking about this task in the right way, the purpose is not to “test” students, the purpose is to give students the opportunity to take one small, significant step toward “knowing” the information.
Now put your student hat on. You are sitting there and you don’t remember the answer to the question that has been asked. What should you do?
You should consult your knowledge organizer.
What is a knowledge organizer?
A knowledge organizer is a one-page (front and back) document that includes the critical knowledge that students must know by the end of a unit of study. You can download a free example of one of mine here.
Knowledge organizers are formatted in a way that is easy for students to follow. And they contain categories to help students recognize connections among information and connect new information to schemas they already possess.
As you can see, I like to print mine on colored paper (a different color for each unit) so that they are easy for my students to find (and easy for me to see on their desks). And if my students are working on their computers, I also link the knowledge organizer at the top of the student handout.
When I ask students retrieval practice questions, I train them to try to answer each question from memory and then to consult the knowledge organizer to make sure their answers are correct and complete.
It sounds so simple, but it's a very powerful tool.
A knowledge organizer is equitable (students can use it or not, depending on their needs) and empowering (students know where to go if they don't know.)
Knowledge organizers are the best friend I (and my students) never knew we needed, but now cannot live without.
If you want to get started using knowledge organizers in your class, I can help you.
In the next edition of this newsletter, I will explain how to use knowledge organizers to introduce new knowledge so that it sticks.
Sincerely,
Ben Katcher
