A quiz that teaches: retrieval practice in ten questions

1 Why a quiz can teach

Retrieval practice means asking students to bring something back from memory instead of reading it again. Our Library has a full retrieval practice card with the studies behind it and an evidence rating, so this chapter keeps to the parts that shape how you write a quiz.

The best-known demonstration is a 2006 experiment by Henry Roediger and Jeffrey Karpicke, summarized on its study card. College students read short passages, then either reread them or took recall tests with no feedback. On a test five minutes later, the rereaders did better. Two days and a week later, the tested students remembered much more. The rereaders also felt more confident, which is the trap: rereading feels like learning because the page looks familiar.

That experiment ran in a lab with adults. The Library card also lists a systematic review that counted only experiments run in real classes, from school to college, and a federal practice guide from the Institute of Education Sciences that rates "quizzes to re-expose students to key content" as Strong. You can read how we checked each one on the practice guide's card.

2 Why ten questions

Ten is a practical number, not a magic one. It is enough to cover a few ideas from this week and a few from earlier, and short enough that students finish, you go over the answers, and everyone is still in the lesson you planned.

Ten three-box questions also fit on one printed page in the quiz maker, with the answer key on its own page. That matters more than it sounds. One page means one sheet per student, no stapling, and a quiz you can run with five minutes' notice.

Here is a shape that works for most classes:

• Four questions from this week, the material you most need to stick.
• Three from last week, so it comes back before it fades.
• Three from earlier in the year, even from the first unit.

The maker's own sources are organized by skill and part: a times table, ten sight words, a set of word meanings, a reading passage's questions. To mix weeks in one quiz, use My list as the source and paste the ten lines yourself, one question and its answer a line, with a colon between them. You can keep a running list for the unit in a document and paste a different ten each time.

If ten feels long for your class, the maker also prints five. For a reading warm-up or a quick fact check, five questions done every day does more than twenty done once.

3 Three boxes, and when to ask for the answer instead

Three boxes is the maker's default layout: the right answer and two wrong ones, in a different place each question. It is quick to answer, quick to check, and it lets young students take part before they can write much.

The wrong boxes are not random. For math facts, sight words and word meanings, the maker uses the same two wrong answers Peabody's practice games use: a near miss and a common mistake, such as the next row of the times table or the digits turned around. That means a wrong pick tells you which mistake a student made. The guide to writing good distractors explains how those are built.

There is a limit worth knowing. Picking an answer is easier than producing one, and a review of testing studies by Christopher Rowland (see its study card) found recall formats helped memory more than recognition formats like multiple choice. So don't make every quiz three boxes.

• Three boxes for facts, young students, and quick checks you want to read at a glance.
• Fill the blank for the same questions with a line instead of boxes, once students know the material a little.
• Short answer for explaining, with writing lines under each question.

A good rhythm is three boxes the first time a set of questions comes back, then the same questions as fill the blank the next time. Changing the layout in the maker keeps the same questions.

4 Spacing: yesterday, last week, last month

A quiz on what you taught an hour ago mostly checks attention. A quiz on what you taught last week makes students work to bring it back, and that effort is where the memory gets stronger. Spacing the same material out over days and weeks is its own well-supported habit, covered on our spaced practice card.

Two easy ways to build spacing into a quiz routine:

1. Come back to the same set. Make a quiz on Monday. Give the same questions again on Friday and again in three weeks. The maker reprints exactly the same quiz from the same settings, so you don't need to save a file.
2. Mix old into new. In every quiz from your own list, keep a few lines from earlier units. They take seconds to paste and they keep old learning alive all year.

The spaced practice card also lists a classroom experiment with fifth graders, where vocabulary taught in two sessions a week apart was remembered better five weeks later than the same teaching done in one session. Its study card has the details.

5 The A and B versions trick

The maker can print Versions A and B. Both versions hold exactly the same questions. Version B puts them in a different order and moves the right answer to a different box in each question. If shuffling ever left B in the same order as A, the maker turns it by one question so the two always differ.

Teachers usually reach for this to stop neighbors copying, and it does that well: alternate A and B along a row and the answers next to each student are in a different place. But it has a second use that matters more for retrieval.

• A on Monday, B on Friday. Same questions, so students retrieve the same material twice, but the order and the boxes have moved, so they can't remember "the third one was B".
• A for the class, B for the retake. A student who was away, or who wants another go, gets the same content without the same sheet.
• A for the quiz, B for the warm-up a month later. It is the same set, coming back after a gap.

With the answer key on, the key page lists the answers for each version. The maker builds the quiz from a seed, so the same settings make the same quiz, the same versions and the same key on any computer. Press New questions when you want a fresh draw from the same source.

6 Go over it straight away, and don't record it

A quiz only teaches the right answer if students find out what it was. In the Roediger and Karpicke experiment the tests had no feedback, but in class there is no reason to hold back. Go over the answers the same lesson, while students still remember what they chose.

1. Students mark their own from the key you read aloud or project. It is faster than collecting, and they see their mistakes at once.
2. Ask for hands on each question: "Who chose the middle box?" The count tells you what to reteach.
3. Spend your time on the most-missed question, not on the ones everyone got.
4. Have students fix wrong answers in a second color, so their sheet shows what they need to look at again.

Then don't put it in the grade book. A recorded score turns practice into performance, and students start protecting the score instead of finding their gaps. Use what you saw to plan tomorrow.

Want to run the same quiz as a game instead of on paper? The maker's Play it live button opens the same questions in the live quiz host on the projector, with a room code students join. Sight words stay off that version, because the screen would show the word students are meant to hear.

7 A week of quizzes that teach

Here is one way a 3rd-grade class might fit retrieval quizzes into a normal week, using only free tools. Change the subjects to fit yours.

• Monday: a ten-question three-box quiz from the quiz maker on the times table you finished last week. Students mark their own; you note the most-missed fact.
• Tuesday: a five-question quiz on word meanings from the current reading, as fill the blank.
• Wednesday: an exit ticket with two questions from last month's unit, three boxes each, four tickets to a page.
• Thursday: no quiz. Students make flashcards of the facts they missed on Monday and answer each one before they flip it.
• Friday: Monday's quiz again as version B. Compare the hands-up count with Monday's.

That is about ten minutes a day, taken from review time you were already spending. To see every question the maker can draw on, by skill and grade, open what the quiz bank holds.