Deliberate recall – don’t just leave it to chance

I’ve been planning for our new GCSE and discussing with other people how they teach the GCSE course.

I’m putting into the course structure, multiple, planned, deliberate recall points. This will either be application into another context, part of a test or part of a planned homework programme that are multiple choice quizzes.

See below for the overall structure and then when the repetitions will take place. Without homeworks, most topics will be recapped in some part between 3 and 8 times. Homework will increase that and will cover all content.

Research suggests that repetition (and forgetting time) increases the chance for long term retention.  If we know this we need to forget following the text book from the beginning to the end, and start planning for learning, not for teacher comfort or convenience. We need to plan for deliberate recall.