Have you ever taught something, watched your students nail it in the moment, and then two weeks later they can’t remember a thing? That’s not a YOU problem or a THEM problem; it’s backed by cognitive science, and I want to walk you through why it happens and what to do about it.On September 23rd, we are starting a brand-new book study on Powerful Teaching: Unleash the Science of Learning by Pooja Agarwal and Patrice Bain.Join the Powerful Teaching Book Study HERE! (3 Hours of PD Credit) This book has some fantastic, research-backed strategies that can help all teachers! This is how you make the learning STICK! Listen to this episode: Powerful Teaching: 4 Research-Based Strategies That Help Learning Stick I’m breaking down four research-based strategies from the book Powerful Teaching.
The authors call them the Power Tools, and none of them require you to redesign a single lesson.How Learning Actually Works The book breaks learning into three stages: Encoding (getting information in), Storage (it sticking around in long-term memory, which is harder than we think), and Retrieval (pulling it back out when you need it).We spend most of our teaching time on encoding, understandably, but ask yourself: how much time do your students spend receiving information versus retrieving it? Those aren’t the same thing.
Here’s the idea from the book that stuck with me: familiarity can masquerade as learning.Students see something and think, “Yeah, I know that,” then close the notebook and realize maybe they don’t.Adults do this too; ever felt like you were following a book perfectly and then someone asks what you just read and you blank? That’s retrieval, and it’s our first Power Tool.
*Related: The Anxious Generation Book Study for Educators Power Tool #1: Retrieval Practice Retrieval practice means asking learners to pull information from memory, and it is not the same thing as high-stakes testing.It can be completely low-stakes and take thirty seconds.Instead of “let’s review yesterday’s lesson,” try “before you open your notes, write down two things you remember.” That tiny shift asks the brain to go find the information instead of just handing it back over.
A few ideas straight from the book: Brain Dump: blank paper, write everything you remember, no notes.Two Things: just ask students to retrieve two things.Under a minute.
Mini-quiz: low-stakes, doesn’t need to go in the gradebook.If you judge every attempt, you’ve turned “practice remembering” into “prove you already know everything,” and that changes the experience.*Related: From Overwhelmed to Intentional: Designing High-Impact Lessons That Actually Stick Power Tool #2: Spacing Spacing means bringing learning back after time has passed, the opposite of cramming.
Cramming does work short-term, but the real question isn’t “can the student perform tomorrow,” it’s “will they still know this later?” Something can improve performance in the moment without creating durable learning.Spacing doesn’t need a complicated calendar.Bring an old topic back one question at a time, in a warm-up two weeks later, in a new unit’s opener.
When students say “I forgot,” that’s expected, and the effort of retrieving after time has passed can actually strengthen the learning.The book calls this a desirable difficulty, not “make it harder for the sake of struggle,” but certain kinds of mental effort make learning more durable, even when performance looks worse in the moment.Power Tool #3: Interleaving Interleaving means mixing related concepts or skills that students need to learn to tell apart, rather than practicing them in isolated blocks.
Ten problems using Strategy A, then ten using B, then ten using C, and the student never has to decide which strategy applies; the worksheet already told them.Mix A, B, and C together, and now they have to figure out what kind of problem it is first.That decision-making is part of the learning.
This works outside math too: mixed literary device examples in ELA, mixed process examples in science, mixed phonics patterns in elementary.One of my favorite interleaving questions: “How did you decide which strategy applied?” Not just what’s the answer, but how did you know what to do? Power Tool #4: Feedback-Driven Metacognition Students aren’t always accurate judges of their own learning, and neither are we.Familiarity can create what the authors call an illusion of fluency: it feels familiar, so we assume we know it; then we’re asked to retrieve it and can’t.
A simple classroom idea: before students check an answer, have them rate their confidence, then check.Now you’re asking not just “was I right” but “did my confidence match my performance?” And feedback should mean more than a score; it should tell students why an answer was correct, where the thinking broke down, and what to retrieve again.That can happen through answer discussions, peer comparison, or self-checking, not four more hours of grading.
*Related: 20 Fresh, Low-Tech Ideas for Teachers They Work Together These four don’t live in separate boxes.Take a basic warm-up: three questions from yesterday’s lesson are already retrieval practice.Pull one from last week; that’s spacing.
Mix in two commonly confused concepts; that’s interleaving.Have students rate their confidence first; that’s metacognition and feedback.Same warm-up, no new app, just a few intentional decisions.
“But I Don’t Have Time For This” I hear you, between standards, pacing guides, and everything else on your plate.Here’s the challenge the book puts to us: covering more content does not necessarily mean students learn more content.If they can’t retrieve it later, what did we actually accomplish? That’s not “ignore your curriculum”; it’s the difference between “I taught it” and “they learned it.” And if retrieval only ever happens on high-stakes tests, of course it starts to feel threatening.
Make it normal, quick, and low-stakes, and “I don’t know yet” becomes information instead of failure.Try This Tomorrow Pick one point in your lesson where you’d normally review something students already learned.Before you review it, ask them to retrieve it first: “Write down everything you remember” before you show the slide.
Then review, and notice what they remembered, forgot, or thought they knew.That’s the whole book in one small move.Join the Powerful Teaching Book Study That’s exactly why I chose Powerful Teaching for our next ALL ACCESS Teacher Book Club study.
It begins September 23rd, runs six weeks, and each week you’ll read the assigned chapters and work through four focused discussion questions, not seventeen- four.Complete the study and earn a three-hour professional learning certificate.I’ve also built a bonus Powerful Teaching Classroom Toolkit for participants: a Power Tools quick reference, a retrieval practice idea bank, a spacing and interleaving planner, a student metacognition check, and a family guide for helping learning stick at home.
Join the Powerful Teaching Book Study HERE! Grab These Resources Get the book: Powerful Teaching by Pooja K.Agarwal and Patrice M.Bain Join the Powerful Teaching Book Study (ALL ACCESS Teacher Book Club, starts September 23rd) ALL ACCESS members, get credit for listening to this episode Not a member yet? Learn more about ALL ACCESS Shake Up Learning 2025.
Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Kasey Bell and Shake Up Learning with appropriate and specific direction to the original content on ShakeUpLearning.com.See: Copyright Policy.
Read More
