Weekly Quizzes

In an attempt to make use of retrieval practice (also known as the testing effect), I have tried several strategies in my classes. In this post I am going to talk about why I have started using weekly review quizzes, how I run them, and reflect on the successes and failures.

Why quizzes?
The evidence that retrieval practice is an excellent way to learn is vast (http://markhamtl.wixsite.com/teaching-learning/single-post/2017/11/07/Retrieval-Practice). But retrieval is simply the act of brining something to mind, so do we need to use quizzes? Well, the answer is no, we do not need to, but I think, for Maths at least, they are the most effective form of retrieval.

Things like brain dumps are an excellent informal way to make use of retrieval, but in making a quiz I can tailor it to the topics that I know students need to review, and also, the individual aspects of the topic. They also allow me to comment on things such as mathematical layout, the importance of working and other key skills which cross all topics.

Another aspect of quizzes that I like is that I am hoping they will help students disassociate tests with grades a little. If they are doing low (or even no) stakes quizzes regularly, then it just becomes part of life, rather than something high pressure to worry about. I am not sure this has taken effect yet, but I am still hopeful!

How I run the quizzes
I am currently doing this with my S3 and S4 classes every week. They know that they will be having a quiz each week, and at the start of the year I explained my reasons for doing this. Firstly, there is writing the quiz. It is split into three sections: This Unit; Last Unit; Further Back.

First page of a weekly quiz. This quiz had three pages in total with 9 questions.

The questions from This Unit are related to our current work, and tend to be quite factual in content. Those from Last Unit are from the prior topic, and given our units last 2-3 weeks, this is relatively recent, and I use a past exam question for these, to get students applying the knowledge. Further back covers all the different things they have covered in Maths up to now. The questions are a mixture of factual recall and applied exam style questions, depending on how well they know the topic. I discuss how I choose the topics which will be in the quiz later on.

When students enter the room, I give them the quiz and they can start straight away. Normally they have about 30 minutes to complete as much as they can, or if more than half the class has finished I will stop early. This doesn't usually happen as I put a couple of challenging questions in to stretch them.

When I finish the quiz, I ask students to give each question a confidence rating out of 10. That is, if they are certain their answer is correct, give it 10, if they have no idea and completely guessed, give it 0. This does two things. If they guess and get it correct, it reminds them that this was more luck than judgement, and that they still need to review this material. If they give themselves a high confidence score and then get it wrong, they can benefit from the Hypercorrection Effect, which says we learn more from high-confidence errors than guesses.

Next I ask students to remind me of the two reasons we do weekly quizzes: to identify areas that still need work (formative assessment); to make use of retrieval which helps us learn (testing effect).

Now I read out the answers and students self mark their quiz. As Dylan Wiliam says, "the best person to mark a test is the person who just took it" (Hendrick, C. and MacPherson, R 2017), as they can learn from this . At this stage I simply read out the final correct answer. I do not take questions or explain any further.

I now write the question numbers on the board, and for each question I ask students to raise their hands if they got it correct. I quickly count and write this number next to the question number. I use this to inform the weekly quiz for the following week. If there are questions where the majority are getting it wrong, I will use a minimally different question the following week (same question, different numbers). If about half are getting it right, I will use something from the same topic, but a little bit different. If most are getting it right, I will replace the topic with something new (these new topics come from problems that arise in the daily review starters). After writing the number of students who got each question correct on the board, I ask students "Which topics do you think will come up in the quiz next week?".

If there are any questions that need me to go through more than just the answer (either students ask for it, or I identify a possible problem) I will show my worked solution on the board using my visualiser.

Finally I give students a copy of the Question Reflection sheet I designed after listening to the Mr Barton Podcast with Ollie Lovell (http://www.mrbartonmaths.com/blog/oliver-lovell-planning-running-a-maths-department-and-cognitive-load-theory/). I ask them to choose either their highest confidence error (a question they got wrong but assigned a high confidence rating to it) or a question they could not do or guessed. They then write the question on the front, and on the back the topic, their mistake and the full correct solution. This then gets stored with the other sheets in an envelope I gave them, and these form part of their revision materials (PDF version of Question Reflection Sheet, PPT version). If we run out of time to complete these in class, they have to do it for homework for the next day.

This Question Reflection Sheet is printed double sided, in A5. I have a collection of them in my room that I hand out when students make mistakes.

Reflections, Successes and Failures
This is already quite a different approach to how I started the year. I have formalised the choosing of questions a little so that troublesome topics keep coming up each week, as well as breaking it up into the three sections. The reflection sheet is also a new addition, and we shall see how well that works. I will have to make time in class for students to review them as well so they are not just  another piece of paper!

References
Hendrick, C and MacPherson, R (2017), What Does This Look Like In The Classroom?, John Catt Educational Limited, pp34-35