S5 E12 - The Secret Weapon for Effective Retrieval Practice

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Curriculum organisers are powerful tools for implementing effective retrieval practice in the classroom. These simple three-page documents provide clarity for teachers about what to teach while helping students understand exactly what they need to focus on during retrieval and review activities.

• Originated from Joe Kirby's "knowledge organisers" at the Michaela School in London
• Provide clarity for teachers on what content to cover without dictating teaching methods
• Include student-friendly vocabulary definitions, key understandings, and questions with answers
• Connect to assessment through achievement standards and language functions
• Help break down instruction into manageable parts following Rosenshine's principles
• Enable teachers to evaluate what students already know to make connections to new learning
• Support students' cognitive load by organising content clearly
• Can be used to scaffold language development for all students, especially EAL learners
• Include simple rubrics with A-E performance descriptors as success criteria

Creating curriculum organisers for each unit will help you deliver concise, strong, targeted teaching right from the start. While implementing evidence-based practices has its complexities, understanding what students need helps us engineer success for them and for ourselves.

For more information about today's episode, visit www.jocelynseamereducation.com

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Episode Transcript

Jocelyn (00:00):
Hello and welcome to the Structured Literacy Podcast.
I'm Jocelyn and I'm recordinghere in Tasmania on the lands of
the Palawa people.
In today's episode, I want tofollow up on my previous
Research to the Classroomminiseries where we explored
retrieval practice and regularreview to support student
learning.
If you haven't listened to thatseries yet, I'll link to it in

(00:22):
the show notes on our website atjocelynseamereducation.
com.
Today I'd like to share somepractical insights about how you
can implement effectiveretrieval practice in your
classroom, beginning the processof planning with what I call a
curriculum organiser.
For those of you who've beenwith me for a while now, you'll

(00:44):
know that I'm always looking forways to bridge the gap between
research and the classroom, andthis is one of those tools that
has made a real difference in myown teaching.
For really strong retrievalpractice to work, we need to
know right from the start of ourplanning what our learning
objectives are.

(01:04):
Now that might sound obvious,but when we can clearly and
simply articulate what we wantstudents to know by the end of a
unit, we set ourselves and ourstudents up for success for the
entire unit of work.
One of the ways I'vesuccessfully done this in my own
teaching is to use a simpleknowledge organiser for every

(01:28):
unit I taught.
These organisers stated the keyvocabulary with
student-friendly definitions,included questions that could be
used for retrieval or reviewthroughout the unit (with the
answers, so you're not searchingfor them when you need them),
and they also noted the languagefunctions and features that
needed to be developed to enablestudents to effectively

(01:50):
communicate their learning.
Where did this idea come from?
Well, the term knowledgeorganiser was coined by a
teacher named Joe Kirby from theMichaela School in London.
This school is known for anumber of reasons, one of them
being some controversial methods, such as having silent hallways
, and the Principal has beencalled Britain's Strictest

(02:13):
Principal.
But much of what they talkabout is simply responding to
what we know about how peoplelearn.
We learn in calm, orderlyenvironments, we learn when
teaching and learning is directand clear, and we learn best
when we're able to review andrevise what has been previously
taught and learned.
In 2015, Joe Kirby wrote a blogpost called Knowledge

(02:37):
Organisers, which I'll link toin the show notes, where he
talked about specifying subjectknowledge in great detail.
I also think it's a really goodidea and I extended mine out to
be curriculum organisers byconnecting to some other things.
If we know what we wantstudents to learn, if we know

(02:57):
what good performance looks like, then we know how clear we need
to be in our instruction.
Curriculum organisers providewonderful clarity for teachers.
When I was working inleadership, I would provide new
teachers with curriculumorganisers that outlined the
content that needed to becovered in instructio n.
Other than our school'sinstructional model, which was

(03:21):
an explicit teaching model, Iwasn't telling them exactly how
to teach or requiring them toteach everything exactly as I
would, but when it came to thecontent, they knew exactly what
to cover and teachers weregrateful for that clarity.
Instead of spending hourstrying to distill a broad amount
of knowledge and skill intowhat they were going to teach,

(03:44):
they had it right there in frontof them and were able to take a
shortcut.
They knew what good performancelooked like because it was
articulated in the organiser,and they knew what students
needed to know by the end of theunit.
Another benefit of curriculumorganisers, particularly for
older students in Years Five andSix and beyond, is that they

(04:04):
can form part of a self-reviewand self-quizzing tool.
Having specific questions andanswers presented, along with a
list of core facts andvocabulary helps students to
know exactly what they need tofocus on.
But remember we're not askingthem just to read these things
over, they need to be used forretrieval.

(04:24):
Now let me give you a concreteexample of what might go into a
curriculum organiser.
When I created these, I used asimple three-page format and not
three full pages, there wasplenty of white space, so it
wasn't all overwhelming.
We're also not talking about a12-page document or a 20-page
document for every unit.

(04:45):
It's simply too much to manageand create.
The first page focused onvocabulary and concepts.
So for a Year Three physicalsciences unit on heat, I'd
include student-friendlydefinitions of terms like heat,
produced, transfer and motion.
I'd also include vocabulary forexperiments, those terms that

(05:08):
come up again and again acrossthe years, regardless of when
you're teaching them or what thecore content is.
Words like observation wereincluded.
Then I'd list keyunderstandings we wanted
students to have, such as heatcan be made in different ways,
such as through friction, motion, burning or electricity.
I'd include understandingsabout science as human endeavour

(05:32):
and notes about the scienceskills the students would
develop in that unit, such asmaking predictions and planning
investigations.
In this way, I made sure that Iwasn't missing any of the key
elements of the curriculum.
When we break things down likethis, we can see just how much
content there is to cover, andone of the things that makes

(05:56):
teaching successful is when weclearly and purposefully work in
a way that supports students'cognitive load.
With a curriculum organiser,you can evaluate each element
and think about what yourstudents already know and what
they still have to learn.
The more knowledge and skillsthat need to be developed, the
more carefully we need toconsider cognitive load, because

(06:20):
working memory is so easilyoverwhelmed.
You as the teacher are in thebest position to determine how
to support your students'cognitive load.
Having a one-pager with all thecore concepts and skills really
helps jumpstart the process ofdesigning responsive instruction
.
It enables you to know whatkinds of things should go into

(06:43):
retrieval or review activitiesin the unit.
Page two of my curriculumorganisers stated the elements
of the achievement standard thatneeded to be addressed.
This created a clear linkbetween assessment and
instruction and because I'vetaught many students with
English as an additionallanguage, I also included the

(07:06):
language functions that neededto be taught.
For me, one of the goals ofinstruction is to make every
lesson a language lesson.
Vocabulary is a huge part ofthat, but so is syntax.
If we want our students toeffectively and efficiently
communicate their knowledge, weneed to give them the tools and

(07:27):
structures to do so.
For the heat unit, I includedthree functions: Questioning,
and giving the students sentencestarters like "what will happen
if.
Predicting, with sentencestarters such as "I predict that
, etc.
and explaining, "through thisinvestigation we have seen that,

(07:50):
or the results of thisinvestigation show that.
Studentsoften struggle to explain
concepts, explain their thinkingand draw connections between
the two.
So providing them withscaffolds to explain their
findings helps them communicatemore clearly.
We all have to use some form ofA to E grading in Australia,

(08:15):
and these language structurescan help you teach students the
skills that help them movebeyond the C, because part of
what makes an A or a B grade isoften how well the students can
explain their thinking and inhow much detail.
So teaching these languagestructures to everybody simply
makes sense .

(08:37):
when When teaching in schoolswith high EAL populations
populations, I also includednotes about general grammar that
we might need to teach, such aspresent tense, which is a
feature of scientific textstexts, and common adjectives to
facilitate description.
Finally, the third pagecontained a simple rubric based
on the curriculum.

(08:58):
This rubric had specific partsof the achievement standard
listed and descriptors of whatperformance looks like from A to
E, with clarification about theterms used.
And remember that all theelements of these rubrics should
be student-friendly so thatthey can learn to use this as
success criteria.

(09:19):
So how does all of this relateto retrieval practice?
I hear you ask.
Well, when you know what youwant students to learn and what
you want them to do and you havethe simple questions and
answers, you have your reviewwritten.
And there are different levelsof knowledge we're trying to
build, it's not all about justmemorising simple facts, but

(09:43):
that's where it starts.
Of course, we want students tobe able to develop deep
knowledge, to transfer thisknowledge and the skills they've
learned to solve problems.
But if we don't develop thatknowledge first, they are not
going to be able to solve thoseproblems and problem-solving
tasks then become a nightmare.

(10:05):
Retrieval practice begins withthe basics, but it shouldn't end
there.
If you take nothing else awayfrom this episode, I really want
you to hear me when I say, asteachers we need to be very
clear on what we want studentsto learn and we need a mechanism
to break everything down intosmall parts.

(10:27):
As Rosenshein describes in hisPrinciples of Instruction, break
things down into small partsand teach them one at a time to
mastery.
We also need to link existingknowledge with new knowledge,
which means we have to know whatthe student's existing
knowledge is, not just assume it.
With a curriculum organiser,you're able to evaluate each

(10:51):
item and determine what theexisting knowledge is that the
students have, so that you canmake these links clear.
And this will differ from classto class and school to school.
So no program writer can createthis for you and it just become
a take and teach resource.

(11:12):
Yes, we can help you withorganising ideas, but you are
the one who has the knowledgeabout your students.
Explicit teaching is about morethan just delivering the program
effectively and with fidelity.
It's also about reallyunderstanding the components of
instruction that make everythingwork.

(11:33):
So when you're thinking abouthow to help your teams and
students achieve even greatersuccess, consider creating a
curriculum organiser of no morethan three pages, not with teeny
tiny writing, but withreasonable size writing that
doesn't hurt your eyes and lotsof white space that makes it all
feel achievable.

(11:53):
If you do this for each unityou teach, you will then have
what you need to have concise,strong, targeted teaching right
from the start.
May the force be with you as youembark on this work of explicit
teaching.
I sometimes say that it's notrocket science, but when we

(12:15):
think about it, there iscomplexity to learn.
When we truly understand whatit takes for students to learn
and feel comfortable in theirlearning, we can engineer
success for them and for us.
And while every student has theright to learn using
evidence-informed practice,every teacher has the right to

(12:44):
have the help to make thathappen.
If that's what you're gettingout of this podcast, I'm so
pleased.
Until next time, happy teachingeveryone.
Bye.