Overview

For students to become proficient at any task, they must engage in extended practice and judicious review. The practice and review must be planful and spaced out over time to maximize its impact.

Definite Benefits of Practice

• Reinforce the basic skills needed to learn more advanced skills.
• Guard against forgetting.
• Improve transfer or generalization of learning to new and more complex content and context.

Specific Types of Practice and Review

Initial Practice

• Occurs under the watchful eye of the teacher.
• Involves numerous practice opportunities within the teacher-directed lesson to build accuracy.
• Includes immediate feedback after each item.

Distributed Practice

• Studying or practicing a skill in short sessions over time.
• Distributing practice over time (versus massing practice in one session) aids retention.

Cumulative Practice/Review

• Add related skills to skills previously taught.
• Provide intentional review of previously taught skills, strategies, concepts, vocabulary, or knowledge.
• Increase long-term retention.

Determine What, When, and How to Review

To maximize the benefits of practice and review, teachers must determine what to review. This means that teachers need to identify and select information that is necessary for further reading success. Judicious review requires that teachers continuously revisit important information over time and not remove information or items from review completely as students attain a high level of performance. The practice and review must be scheduled to ensure that it occurs over time in short sessions. Teachers can be creative and flexible with the practice and review activities.