Two Things, No Notes: A Retrieval Practice That Sticks

Welcome to the show everyone I'm Renata Salas and I'm here with Colleen Whitfield And Colleen I want to start with a scenario that I think every teacher listening has lived through It's the last three minutes of class You look at your students and you say those classic well meaning words Okay everyone take a moment to review your notes from today before the bell rings Ha ha yes the universal signal for students to pack their bags stare at the clock and mentally check out for lunch It feels like teaching but scientifically speaking it's a bit of a black hole isn't it It absolutely is But recently I've been completely transforming those last 3 minutes with a ridiculously simple almost counterintuitive strategy called 2 things Instead of telling them to look at their notes I say put everything away No books no notebooks no laptops You have 90 seconds to write down exactly 2 things you remember from today's lesson That's it 2 things no notes Huh no notes That's the crucial pivot isn't it You're moving from recognition to actual retrieval This strategy actually comes from Dr Pooja Agarwal She wrote about it in ASCD's Educational Leadership back in her May 1st 2020 article Retrieval Practice Power Tool for Lasting Learning She frames two things as a simplified bite sized cousin of free recall where you'd normally ask students to dump everything they know onto a blank page Free recall is great but it can feel incredibly daunting for a student And honestly it takes up a lot of class time Two things keeps the barrier to entry low enough to do every single day And keeping that barrier low is key because as teachers we are always starved for time But Colin does such a tiny task actually do anything for their long term memory It feels almost too simple to work The data on this is actually massive Dr Agarwal points back to a landmark 2006 study by Roediger and Karpike They looked at college students and compared those who just re read material to those who had to retrieve it After one week the students who simply re read the texts remembered about 40 of the material But the group that had to retrieve it even without feedback remembered 61 61 versus 40 That is a 21 jump just from the act of pulling the information out of their own heads instead of looking at it again Exactly And there's a real psychological tension here Rereading feels incredibly productive It's smooth it's comforting it gives you this warm glow of familiarity You look at the page and think oh I know this But that's an illusion Retrieval on the other hand feels difficult It's clunky You scratch your head you struggle But that exact cognitive struggle the effort of rebuilding that neural pathway to pull the memory from storage is what actually cements the learning The struggle is the trigger for long term retention It's so true And I actually tried this in my third period middle school ELA class just last week We were analyzing character motivations in The Giver With three minutes left I had them close their books I said write down two characters who changed in Chapter 4 I set a timer for 90 seconds and I just walked the room I wasn't grading them I wasn't collecting them I was just scanning And Colleen the diagnosis you get in those 90 seconds is gold I realized half the class was writing down Fiona but for a reason she actually changed in Chapter 5 not 4 That is brilliant You immediately saw the gap and the beauty is how concrete and adaptable those prompts are You can write them on the board in 10 seconds Two steps in solving a two step equation two things about the water cycle or two vocabulary words from today's chemistry lab Yes and the real world results of this are stunning Dr Agarwal did some incredible collaborative research with Patrice Bain a 6th grade social studies teacher They used these kinds of retrieval strategies in Bain's classroom and when chapter tests rolled around students scored 94 on the material that had been retrieved through these mini tasks compared to 81 on non retrieved material and that gap stayed consistent one to two months later Agarwal calls it a later grade of difference A full letter grade from a 90 second routine that requires zero prep Now the biggest hurdle for teachers trying this tomorrow is the temptation to over complicate it Do not grade this Do not collect it and take home a stack of 80 sticky notes to score on a rubric If you do that you'll abandon it by Friday Just let them write it on a scrap of paper scan it for your own formity feedback and throw it in the recycling bin If you want to mix it up after a few days turn it into an entry ticket Before we start today write down two things you remember from yesterday No notes That's such an important tip lower the stakes so they feel safe to struggle and fail And you know this idea is really scaling up across all age groups I was reading a piece by Jennifer González on her Cult of Pedagogy site from April 27 2025 called Retrieval in Action She features Dr Janelle Blount who uses a version of this in her college intro psychology courses She has students write their two things on mini whiteboards and hold them up simultaneously So this isn't just for middle schoolers or social studies it works all the way up to lecture halls Absolutely Mini whiteboards scrap paper or even just telling your partner two things The medium doesn't matter What matters is that we stop feeding students the information over and over and start asking them to reach inside and pull it out So to everyone listening try it tomorrow 90 seconds two things absolutely no notes See what actually stuck from your lesson You might be surprised by what you find That's our show for today I'm Renata Salas And I'm Colin Whitfield Happy retrieving everyone