Using Brain Dumps to Improve Recall

Lately, I have been using brain dumps in class as a learning strategy.  This tool (as explained at Retrieval Practice) is a simple way to enhance student learning.  Quite simply, students write what they know about a specific topic, without using any resources. 

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psychiatry.

I stress with the students that they shouldn’t worry about spelling and grammar and should just get out whatever is in their heads about the topic even if it doesn’t come out in a way that makes sense.  I want them to get as out many ideas as possible.

By revealing what they recall immediately after being exposed to information, students show what is sticking with them.  It also allows me to see misunderstandings, giving me a chance to correct those.

I have also used brain dumps in successive days.  It’s interesting to see what sticks with them from one class to another.  With brain dumps, I feel more confident that the students are recalling from day-to-day.  Without the successive brain dumps, not as many students would show retention of key ideas.

Brain dumps will become a more regular practice in my classroom, as it seems to improve students’ recall, is simple to implement, and doesn’t take much time.


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If you have had success with brain dumps or this post has generated some thoughts of your own, please share in the comments. I would appreciate hearing from you.

Reflection on the Students’ Holidays

In the week prior to Thanksgiving, in my daily check-in, a student shared she was not looking forward to Thanksgiving. 

This prompted me to have a conversation with her. She opened up a little, sharing she didn’t appreciate her father’s

girlfriend. This was putting a damper on her holiday and time off from school.

So, as I enjoyed my time with family over Christmas, I recalled this interaction with my student. 

The holidays can be hard for many and for many different reasons. As teachers, we don’t know what our students are

experiencing over these breaks. We don’t know what weighs them down as they come into our classes each day either.

But we can get to know them a bit, offer support, and give them respect as fellow human beings. I hope that each day, I do better and better doing this for my students. 

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If this post has generated some thoughts of your own, please share in the comments. I would appreciate hearing from you.

Gamification: Learning, Engagement, and Classroom Culture

The excitement and anticipation were tangible and took me by surprise.

In my pursuit of gamifying the classroom, students were working as teams to complete a variety of activities at stations, ranging from sketchnotes, to summaries, to Instagram stories.  Each time they completed an activity, the teams would earn a badge and a certain amount of dice based on the quality of their work.  The roll would be hit points against one of the villains in our year-long class game.

Over the course of the three days of stations, students were engaged with the activities, were working together, and were understanding the information.  They were eager to receive the badge but even more excited to roll the dice.

Teams started cheering for themselves as they scored hit points and weakened the enemy.  Then teams started cheering for one another.

Towards the end of the third period, students knew that the next roll of the dice might finish off the
villain.  As I looked over a team’s work, other teams stopped working.  As I looked up from examining the work, I saw the whole class crowding around us.

I was taken aback.  They were all there waiting to see if this roll would throw them over the top.

There was almost a collective holding of their breathe as the team prepared to roll.  The anticipation was high as they rolled….as I totaled the roll.

When I announced the total, the classroom erupted.  The roll was high enough to defeat their nemesis.

This was the experience I was hoping for through gamification.  Students were engaged and learning, practicing skills and learning important concepts.  They were also collaborating with one another.  What threw this over the top, however, was the camaraderie amongst all the members of the class. 

I was excited to see them all pulling for one another.  I feel there were great gains in developing our classroom culture as well.


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If you have moments when you’ve expereinced the power of gamification or, if this post has generated some thoughts of your own, please share in the comments. I would appreciate hearing from you.

An Argument Writing Battle Royale

Students don’t always like to spend a lot of time revising their writing. So, in the midst of creating an argument writing piece, I sought an engaging way for students to be more thoughtful about their revision.

After deciding how I would do this, I put students into groups of three and declared that they were teams.  They needed to help one another improve their writing to prepare what I dubbed the “Battle Royale.”

Students were hooked and took the role of giving and receiving peer feedback to heart.  Over the course of a class period, students read one another’s writing and gave feedback about both structure and content.  Students were listening carefully to one another and making many revisions to their work.

"Writing" by akrabat is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 

The next time we met, I gave students 10 more minutes to prepare by giving feedback and revising their writing.  They were then ready for the “Battle Royale.”

Each student was assigned two numbers.  The roll of a die determined which student would take a turn.  In separate turns, the student chose by the die copied the introduction, a body paragraph, or the conclusion of their writing and pasted to a designated spot in shared Google Slides.  Once all were pasted, all students read all examples and selected the one they felt was the strongest.  Whichever team had their paragraph chosen as the strongest overall won the round and rolled a die to determine how many points the round was worth.

We proceeded that way so that multiple examples of each type of paragraph were shared by each team and a winner was declared.

Students not only worked well together by giving feedback in their groups, but they also had multiple exposures to other students’ work.  Seeing so many examples gave them greater insight into how they might revise their work further (which was the next step).

Approaching feedback and revisions in this manner resulted in students improving their writing more than they would have if a peer had given feedback in a more traditional way.  So, I will not hesitate in using this approach again.


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If you have an effective way for peer  writing feedback or, if this post has generated some thoughts of your own, please share in the comments. I would appreciate hearing from you.

Gamifying Argument Writing

Many opportunities to strengthen their ability to support claims with evidence and reasoning, to revise, to speak, and to listen - all while engaging in a game.

Through my desire to add gaming elements to my classroom, I came across an argument writing activity over the summer. The procedure was simple, too. (I thought I noted from where I found the activity but cannot find that now. I will update the post when I do find that again.)

After students had spent time finding evidence to support a claim and had crafted their reasoning/explanations to connect the evidence to the claim (We were focusing on the UN Sustainable Development Goals.), students were ready to receive some peer feedback and strengthen their ability to support a claim.

Students were put into groups of three.  The goal was to move up the ladder - so to speak - and earn your way to the top by having strong reasoning to explain the evidence.

After the two students on the side each presented a claim supported by one piece of evidence with their reasoning, the middle student evaluated the strength of the others’ work based on a set of criteria.  The evaluator gave feedback to both students and declared whose they felt was stronger. 
Students then revised their reasoning based on the feedback.

The stronger work would move forward to be the evaluator at the next table, the weaker work would move down a table to compete again, and the evaluator would slide into one of the side chairs to compete at the same table.

I was able to give feedback to students as well, both after they presented and while they were revising.  When I noted students dropped a couple of places, I gave more feedback so that they could try to strengthen their work.

I had initially placed the students at tables so that students who had a greater command of supporting a claim had to move forward more tables to get to the top. Students who struggled more with this skill started closest to the top.  I reasoned that this gave all more of a fair chance to get to the top.

The results were great.  Students were very engaged and received much feedback.  Most students remained within one or two tables of where they started, except for those whose skills were the strongest.  They advanced forward the most.  The students seemed to appreciate both the competition and the feedback, which encouraged them to revise their work and improve.

I will certainly do this activity again, as I saw great benefits.  It may be able to be used in other ways with different skills or content.

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If you have gamify writing or, if this post has generated some thoughts of your own, please share in the comments. I would appreciate hearing from you.