Learning Names and Modeling Spaced Retrieval Practice

“There’s a lot of failure in success.” -me, obviously paraphrasing someone else that I cannot recall

I said this to one of my classes on day two of modeling retrieval practice to learn their names. And, while I’m not big on all encompassing quotes, I do feel as though this represents an important aspect of what we want our students to understand about learning and memory. 

I’ve been asked by teachers when and how I introduce facets of learning strategies to my students. So, here’s an answer to those inquiries. Of course, it’s tailored to my population (around 90 9th-12th grade students in AP Psychology) and is tweaked often, but I see this as a valuable activity that kills at least two birds with one stone. I mean, you’ve got to learn your student’s names and you need to introduce learning strategies that are important for student success. 

So, when do I begin introducing my students to learning strategies? Day one. 

How do I introduce my students to learning strategies? I model it through the process of learning their names. 

This process takes, on average, five minutes per class; utilizing more time in the earlier days and quickly tailing off to just a couple of minutes by day four and five. Here’s the process with commentary on what I say to my students throughout the week or so of learning their names:

Day 1 – Initial attendance call and asking students the name they prefer to be called. Students create a name tag.

I think it’s important that students are called by a name that they like. I’m sure you don’t know (and why would you?) but my first name is Augustus. I tell my students that I obviously didn’t go by Augustus in school or I’d still be stuffed in a locker somewhere. So, while in school, I was always called Blake, my middle name. I understand those that wish to be something other than their first name. Also, I emphasize with students to not let me call them the wrong name…correct me (politely) whenever I accidentally mispronounce or completely use the incorrect name. Every human deserves to be called the name they want to be called. And no status, or role, or age gap really changes that for me. At this point, I also have students make a name tag like the one seen below:

The name they wish to be called should be large and their last name should be smaller. When I first started this I only asked for first names, but sometimes when I went to the online gradebook, I couldn’t find students because their name on the card didn’t match up with their ‘official’ name and I didn’t know their last name. For most of the process, I have students place this card in front of them during class as a ‘cheat sheet’ for me at the beginning. I take them up at the end of class and have them pick them up at the beginning of class the next day. Eventually, as you’ll see, I have them turn these down so I cannot use them as a crutch…sort of a diminishing cues retrieval practice. 

At this point, my discussion of learning strategies centers around why I need to practice to learn my 90 students names. This is not implicit knowledge. This learning is effortful, like much of the school work they will experience in my class and all of their other classes. So, I am setting up a system to effectively study a little every day to eventually know all of the names. I cannot rely on simply rereading the class roster over and over again and expect quality results (like students rereading their notes before an assessment). I need to really put forth effort and risk getting student’s names wrong in order to eventually get them correct. It’s okay if I don’t know their names for the first week or so of class…that is to be expected. But if we get to a month in and I still don’t know their name, that’s a problem and it’s my fault. Much of studying is the same way. I expect students to not know everything by memory after they first encounter them in class and they’d rather get it incorrect on low or no stakes formative assessment during class or during their personal studying opportunities than find out on the summative assessment they don’t know some information. At that time, it may be too late to correct any misconceptions or fill any gaps in their knowledge. 

Day 2 – Students place their name tag in front of them face down to start class. I use the printed class roster to try and match students with their names…and fail miserably for the most part. After this, I have students put their name tags up for the remainder of class so I can reference them.

Again, there’s a lot of failure in success and this is where students begin to see the real work of studying and the failure that may accompany it. In a class of thirty, I may remember five or so at this point…and that’s ok. Again, it is to be expected that I don’t know all of their names after first meeting them yesterday. I point out that I do have the class roster to use as a way of making this retrieval a matching attempt. I am not just blindly coming up with names, but I know that someone in this class is named ‘Michael’…but who is it?

And, I reiterate some of what I talked about with them on day 1; why I’m attempting to retrieve names, why I’d rather fail now to succeed later, why this is very similar to how they should study, et cetera. Also, on day 2, I introduce the idea of spaced practice. Rather than just cramming the practice of learning their names into one day, I should space out that practice across many days for a few minutes. That will lead to better results. Allow time for forgetting. If not, I might create a false sense of how many names I know. And, of course, when cramming for assessments, students do the same thing. They study for an hour or two the night before a test and believe they know it and are surprised the next day when they cannot recall the answers on the test and say something like, “but I studied for two hours last night!” Cramming may lead to better immediate results, but spacing study attempts is much more efficient and effective for long term retention of material.

Day 3 – Repeat the steps in day 2.

There’s not a lot of change in how day 2 and day 3 are run. Students should (hopefully) see me get more names correct in day 3s attempt to match names from the roster with the student. This stimulates some discussion of how multiple retrieval attempts across time (spaced practice) will demonstrate improved results; still not perfect, but improvement is a step in the right direction. 

Day 4 – Instead of students getting their name tag, attempt to pass them out from a random order. Then, depending on how I feel, I may ask them to either keep their name tag up or keep it turned down for the remainder of class. 

Once again, students should see me struggling a little less and seeing more success in retrieving names. Passing out the name tags in a random order may seem like a small change, but I become accustomed to seeing their names in order and that biases who I try to match the name tag with. By seeing them in a random order (another context), it increases the difficulty, but also strengthens the connections between name and student. This begins the discussion of studying material in different contexts. It’s one thing to know the definition of a term because you’ve read the term and definition five times…it’s another thing to see that term used in a paragraph and have the ability to know what it means within that context. Eventually, this leads to a talk about near and far transfer of learning, which is incredibly important for understanding and application.

Day 5 – Have students get their name tag and immediately turn them down so I cannot see them. I attempt to recall their names without any help, using only my brain.

This represents a shift in how I am attempting to retrieve the information of student’s names. Up to this point, I have been drawing from a list of names or the name tag…basically recognition of information (like matching or multiple choice questions). Today, there is no help. Instead of recognition, now I am using recall. This is, cognitively, a much more difficult task. I may forget some of the names that I knew yesterday, but that is okay. Again, forgetting happens. I will be better off in the long run by gradually increasing the difficulty of this activity. This also opens up talk of which is truer assessment of one’s knowledge, recognition questions or recall questions. I may be able to ‘cheat’ by guessing on recognition attempts, but it is much more difficult to do so with recall questions. I can either answer the question or I cannot. And, while this may be an uncomfortable realization, I’d rather find out now than later. 

Day 6 – No name tags. No roster. I ask students to sit in a different seat and beside different students at the beginning of class when I try to identify all the students by name.

Okay. This is the real deal. All crutches I might have been using are now gone. And, I’ve made it more difficult by having students sit in different seats, surrounded by different students. This continues the conversation of attempting to retrieve information in different contexts. If I can retrieve their names today, I can feel pretty confident that I really have that information (How many times have you known the name of a student when they are sitting in your classroom but draw a blank when you see them in the hallway? Different contexts). Similarly, if students can retrieve and use/apply content in different contexts, that is a good indicator they really know their stuff.

Usually, by this point, I am at 100% and students ceremoniously throw their name tag in the trash…although some strangely choose to keep theirs. Thus concludes my modeling of spaced retrieval practice to learn my students’ names. I usually have one final discussion with them where we think back on the different steps from day 1 to day 6. They see me struggling at the beginning but getting better with more attempts. They see me having mental crutches at the beginning (class roster printed and name tags up) and slowly see those crutches removed. They see that my ‘studying’ of names doesn’t have to take long; only taking around 5 minutes every class meeting. There are so many positives that come out of this that, I believe, help to create a nice classroom environment for learning and demonstrate to students how cognitively messy learning can/should look.

What do you like/dislike about this?

How would you adapt/modify this for your classroom?

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Feature image by Erik Mclean: https://www.pexels.com/photo/vintage-classroom-with-rows-of-wooden-desks-and-chairs-9258380/