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Redefining revision as continual practice

Low stakes quizzing

Recall activities at the start of every lesson are a feature in many high performing schools. It's not surprising because revising facts from previous lessons can have a big impact on knowledge retention and attainment over time. The teacher decides ten questions in advance of the lesson to post on the board for students to consider when they enter the classroom. So called, "starter", "engagement on entry" or "do now" activities.

While this is effective, wouldn't it be more effective if those ten questions were differentiated for every student? If those ten questions were from all the topics taught so far, not just the last lesson? If those ten questions were an infinite number so that all students remain on task until the teacher is ready to start the next phase of the lesson? That's what Smart Revise Quiz does.

Quiz

The research

Daily review is one of the ten Rosenshine principles. By beginning each lesson with a short review of previous learning, daily review can strengthen previous learning and can lead to fluent recall.

Diagnostic multiple choice questions can be used to identify misconceptions easily. For example:

What is 5 + 5?

Diagnostic answers would include 0 (the student used subtraction), 1 (the student used division), 25 (the student used multiplication) and 10 (the student understands that the + symbol means addition).

Regular low stakes quizzing is also excellent for addressing the forgetting curve, helping students to retain more knowledge over a longer period of time.


Rosenshine, B. (2012) Principles of Instruction: Research-Based Strategies That All Teachers Should Know. American Educator, 36(1), p12-39.

Murre, J., Dros, J. (2015) Replication and Analysis of Ebbinghaus’ Forgetting Curve

Space, interleave, personalise

Smart Revise Quiz automatically selects questions for each individual student ensuring spaced, interleaved and personalised learning. The position of the possible answers is randomised so that students cannot simply remember where the correct answer is. Unlike other quizzing tools, Smart Revise learns about each student as they answer the questions. That means after using Quiz for a few hours, no two students will have exactly the same experience in the future which is ideal for differentiation.

Note, if you want all students in the class to attempt the same questions instead of a personalised playlist, use Tasks instead.

Quiz is always ready when you are. There is nothing to do to set up a low stakes quiz. Students simply select Quiz from their course dashboard. The Quiz never ends allowing the teacher or student to stop the activity whenever they want.

Diagnostic

Where possible, multiple choice questions designed to be diagnostic allowing a teacher to understand why a student might have given an incorrect answer to a question. For example, "What is 5+5?" Possible diagnostic answers could include 0 (the student subtracted), 1 (the student used divisison), 25 (the student used multiply) or 10 (the student understands addition).

Hand-crafted

The questions in Quiz are not generic questions, instead each is linked to a specific bullet point in a specific course specification. There are no silly or "all of the above" answers in Quiz. Negative questions where students are asked "which of these is not..." can also be difficult to comprehend, so are also avoided as much as possible.

When a student answers a question, Quiz presents helpful advice about the correct answer and quietly compiles a personalised revision checklist of topics that a student should focus on to maximise their learning and success in exams.

For teachers

  • Enable or disable Quiz mode for their classes.
  • Choose the topics students have access to.
Topic filtering
  • Use the Quiz - Analytics - Usage report to see how many questions have been answered.
  • Use the Quiz - Analytics - Question analysis report to see the top ten most and least well answered questions.
  • Use the Quiz - Analytics - Class matrix report to see an overview of accuracy and mastery for each topic for each student.

For students

A student can use Quiz at any time independently of their teacher and have confidence that Smart Revise is prioritising what they need to learn using algorithms to address the forgetting curve and work towards mastery through spaced learning techniques.