Retrieval Practice: A Power Tool for Lasting Learning

When I was getting certified in elementary education during college, I distinctly remember being terrified about having to develop and teach a two-week-long history unit on Christopher Columbus in a 5th grade classroom. I hated history. In my experience, history was simply the memorization of names, dates, and facts that I didn't much care for. As a student teacher, I literally cried in my undergraduate methods course. How could I teach a subject I despised?

In retrospect, I don't think I taught the unit very well. I remember presenting the original log from Christopher Columbus's journey, and having students compare it to the edited version in their social studies textbook. I gave a few lectures on the exploration and discovery of the "new world," I created worksheets (we all love those, right?), brought in a guest speaker who portrayed Queen Isabella in costume, and ended the unit with recaps and reviews of what students learned.