In today’s digest, we want to give another overview of ways that teachers are implementing learning strategies in their classroom. Teachers continue developing creative ways to use the different learning strategies in their instruction and we thought for our 100th weekly digest it would be nice to highlight five recent teacher implementations. Plus, during the last two Twitter chats (#LrnSciChat) the question came up on whether we could put together examples of how teachers are implementing the strategies. Thus, in today’s weekly digest, we would like to highlight more recent teachers’ blog posts on implementing retrieval practice, spaced practice, concrete examples, and dual coding. If you are a teacher who developed yet another way to implement one of the strategies, feel free to add a comment below. Enjoy!

1)      Low Stakes Quizzing and Retrieval Practice Part 1 by Tom Needham, @Tom_Needham

This is a blog post by an English teacher who described his implementation of retrieval practice to boost skill acquisition in English. There are two posts dedicated to this. In his first post, the one in the link above, he provides an introduction into quizzing and gives and examples on how he uses it. In his second post, he goes into greater detail on his implementation.

2)     Retrieval Practice Challenge Grids for the Classroom by Kate Jones, @87History

Retrieval practice meets spaced practice meets game-like setup in Kate Jones’ History class. She has developed the Retrieval Practice Challenge Grid. The grid consists of questions that when you answer them correctly are worth points. Questions refer to material that was taught recently, but there are also questions that cover material from a couple of weeks ago (hello, spaced practice). We love this innovative implementation of learning strategies.

3)      Dual Coding – What, Why And How by Vicki Barnett, Research Lead at Notre Dame High School

For the most part this blog post gives an overview on Dual Coding. However, in the last section the author provides an example on how she uses Dual Coding in her History class. This can be a good starting point for other History teachers.

4)      A More Concrete Classroom by Blake Harvard, @effortfuleduktr

In the beginning of February, Carolina has blogged about “Concreteness Fading: A Method To Achieve Transfer”, but what would this look like as a concrete strategy in the classroom? One example was given by Blake Harvard who developed a work sheet that emphasizes concreteness fading. You can read all about it in this blog post.

5)      Spaced Practice in Practice by A Classroom of One’s Own

Here the author gives an overview of the different ways spaced practice, quizzes, and interleaving can be combined in practice. Useful examples and work sheets are provided as well.

Every Sunday, we pick a theme and provide a curated list of links. If you have a theme suggestion, please don’t hesitate to contact us! Occasionally we publish a guest digest, and If you'd like to propose a guest digest click here. Our 5 most recent digests can be found here:

Weekly Digest #95: Metacognition

Weekly Digest #96: Why Teachers Blog

Weekly Digest #97: Benefits and Pitfalls of Mindfulness Interventions in Schools

Weekly Digest #98: Science of Learning Initiatives

Weekly Digest #99: In Defense of Inquiry Learning