Teaching can be a frustrating experience. We have all been there when we ended a lesson confident that we had taught well only to be reminded the next day during bell work that their grasp of the concept was as fleeting as a summer breeze. Perhaps you, like me, have found yourself lamenting, “How could they possibly forget this?! We just went over it!”
What makes this moment so frustrating is that you remain convinced that the students really did understand. You planned a formative assessment, and the students really did demonstrate moments of comprehension throughout the lesson and showed visible signs of assimilation. The frustration rather is rooted in the realization that the knowledge ‘learned’ was not readily available when the students needed it next. The teacher is frustrated not because students did not learn, but instead because they did not remember. Learning requires memory, and the true test of learning is retrieval.
Learning is an acquired skill. An acquired skill that is not learned effectively by massed practice. As the authors of Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning argue, frequent “retrieval practice”–“recalling facts or concepts or events from memory”– is far more effective for learning than cramming.
The authors assert two benefits from learning that employs frequent retrieval practice:
⇾It offers a better sense for what a student knows or doesn’t.
⇾By forcing the brain to reconsolidate memory, connections can be made with known material, making recall easier in the future.
The practice of retrieval works to interrupt forgetting. The authors explain how frequent, formative, low-stakes assessments can serve as one form of retrieval practice—strengthening students’ memory of learned material.
My favorite tool of retrieval practice is narration. Narration is a pedagogical tool developed by the late-nineteenth century British educator, Charlotte Mason, and it is a powerful retrieval strategy that can be used in every subject and grade.
Born on the northwest coast of Wales in 1842, Charlotte Mason built and structured her educational philosophy around a teaching practice known as narration. Simply put, narration is the retelling of what has just been read, displayed, lectured, or listened to by the student from memory. It requires the student to tell back, after a single reading of a text, what they had just heard. It is a teaching practice that welcomes students to practice retrieval.
Unlike frequent, formative, low-stakes quizzes, narration invites students to retrieve and reproduce knowledge in a similar format to how the material was initially taught. If you were teaching the Civil War, you would rely more on stories than quizzes. At frequent intervals along the way, you would ask the students to tell back the story. This works well with a class: Different students will remember different details, and your students can work together to reconstruct a detailed account of the story you told. This telling back is a form of retrieval practice that not only allows students to demonstrate learning but actually serves as one of the primary tools for cementing learning in the minds of the students. This is an instance where cognitive science has caught up to an older wisdom. That is, in accordance with oral traditions of the past, the process of imparting knowledge through story on frequent occasions over periods of time fortifies memory.
Like any other retrieval technique, narration works to strengthen retention and evaluate student comprehension. Consider this:
Imagine, when students are instructed to tell back from memory the reading or lecture of the Battle of Gettysburg, the teacher not only gains a valuable and quick assessment of which students were comprehending the significant details and meaning of the story, but also identifies the gaps in students’ learning. These gaps can be promptly addressed and rectified.
Additionally, the challenging task of organizing and articulating details of the story in a student’s mind demands effort. This effort works to fortify the pathways in the brain for the knowledge to be retained and built upon.
This retrieval practice is not for the faint of heart. The benefits of narration go beyond learning. It requires grit, perseverance, attention, diligence, and effort on the student’s end, and it asks no less of the teacher. Narration is not only a litmus test of the virtues of the student, but it actively teaches those virtues. This is a rich payoff indeed!.
After practicing narration with my American history students this year, I asked my class to tell back General Grant’s journey throughout the Civil War in their history journals. I gave this assignment a few weeks after the unit. Their responses were incredibly fulfilling. Students wrote from memory, and most wrote between three and four notebook pages of Grant’s actions from his early victory at Fort Henry to the surrender of General Lee at Appomattox Courthouse. While it took time to read their responses, it paled in comparison to the joy and pleasure I received in seeing their memory of learned material.
The Classical Classroom 