What I've Learned From Teachers I've Never Met

Before my dive into the Science of Learning in the last year, I watched a few videos, followed a few teacher threads on X, and attended my district’s mandatory two professional development days. Now, I’m joining a book club while reading two other Science of Learning resources. This is in addition to the myriad of educational leaders’, researchers’, and journalists’ articles that I consume daily on Substack who share an incredible amount of knowledge in easy, digestible ways. With so many resources and ideas, I’ve learned to effectively implement what I can before tackling new, in-depth practices.

On my radar recently has been the idea to keep parents aware of my teaching practices and the evidence to support it. I haven’t had the gumption to email a newsletter yet, but have made a small step after reading Retrieval Practice: Research & Resources for every classroom by Kate Jones. In it, Jones shares a quizzing booklet created by British educator, Emily Folorunsho. The quizzing booklet has questions and answers, so parents don’t have to be experts to participate in their child’s learning. The quizzing booklets can be adapted for different classes and topics, too.

I used a similar format that Mrs. Folorunsho shared in the book and made it work for my American History class.

In my email, I asked for parents to quiz their child over at least 5 questions a few nights a week. In addition to attaching the Parent Quizzing packet to the email, I also sent a copy home with each student. Since we just completed our last unit, I included parent quizzes for all key topics for the entire year. Here is my copy of Parent Quizzes. Additionally, I added a log at the end for parents to keep record of how students perform. Next year, I plan to email this to parents much earlier in the school year and divide it up by unit or more likely by semester.

Now for the fun part: How can I reinforce what I sent home to the parents? This is where Dylan Kane’s Do Now routine makes its entrance. I shared in my email that students should expect to see the questions from the Parent Quizzes again in class. When Dylan Kane shared his routine including the templates for both the student answer document and the template for the questions, I’d found a great way to assess my students. Did I spend time changing the format? Absolutely not. To save time and energy, I made a copy and just added my own history questions. My students complete a Parent Quiz: Do Now once or twice a week. It’s a perfect fit since I asked parents to quiz students over at least 5 questions. Moreover, I can keep my students accountable for their home learning at school and it doesn’t take much time out of my class period.

This is a friendly reminder that even with all that teachers absorb on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, there’s probably something small we can implement that may have a big impact.