The Benefits of Knowledge Organisers
And why you are probably missing out
Why Volume of Facts on a Knowledge Organiser Matters
There are 2 reasons to have a knowledge organiser:
Identify the knowledge all students must know to be successful in your subject and/or later life.
Find ways to retrieve that knowledge, so that it remains accessible in long term memory.
Research on spaced practice and retrieval suggests that optimum gaps in retrievals are approximately 1 day, 1 week, 2 weeks, 4 weeks, 2 months, 4 months – longer doubling is less clear – so let’s assume 6 months.
This would suggest at least 6 retrievals during a school year, and then 1 or 2 retrievals in subsequent years.
So, nothing should really be on a year 7 knowledge organiser which you don’t need students to be asked to retrieve in year 10 and 11.
So, If a knowledge organiser has 30 pieces of knowledge, rather than 50, the difference is exponential.
First year 7 knowledge organiser: 30 facts, x 6 retrievals, x 2 retrievals in each of the 4 subsequent years = 420 quiz questions.
However, if we include something like plot points, our knowledge organiser now becomes say 50 facts. The same pattern of retrieval now gives us 700 quiz questions.
If we have 6 knowledge organisers per year, we can see how dramatically these numbers add up.
Planning Retrieval
The idea is that the team plan these retrievals in the spaced gaps once knowledge organisers are written. The number of facts will determine the number of questions in quizzes.
Year 7
If each knowledge organiser for each of 6 units has 30 facts, our total retrievals in year 7 is roughly going to be 180 x 6 = 1080.
We have 39 homework slots and say 121 lessons with Do Nows, giving us 160 quizzes. Let’s say we have 30 quiz questions in a homework = 1170. That means we would not need any Do Nows.
Because we have no faith that all students will do all their homework properly, having 5 questions per Do Now means we are likely to mop up those who don’t do their homework.
But if we have 50 facts on a knowledge organiser we need 50 x 6 units x 6 retrievals = 1800 quiz questions.
Homework would still account for 1170, leaving 630 for our Do Nows. This would mean 5 or 6 Do Now questions.
Year 8 is more challenging
Our 30 fact knowledge organisers for this year still come to 1080 quiz questions.
But we also need two retrievals of each fact from the year 7 knowledge organisers: 30 x 6 x 2 = 360. This gives us a total of 1440.
1170 will still be covered by homeworks. The remainder would be quizzed in 121 Do Nows, and 5 questions in each will more than cover it.
If we have 50 facts per knowledge organiser, we have 1800 quiz questions for the year 8 units. And have the retrievals of year 7 = 50 x 6 x 2 = 600, so 2400 in total.
1170 are done for homework, leaving 1230 in Do Nows. That means 10 questions per Do Now.
Year 9 is more challenging still
At 30 facts, there are 1080 quiz questions for year 9. But we add 360 for year 7 knowledge organisers and 360 for year 8. That gives a total of 1800. 1170 will be covered by homework, leaving 5 to 6 questions per Do Now.
At 50 facts, there are 1800 quiz questions for year 9. But we add 600 for year 7, and 600 for year 8 knowledge organisers. That gives a total of 3000. 1170 are covered by homework, leaving 1830 quiz questions to be done in 121 lessons. Now we need 15 questions per Do Now.
This is why the team needs to be very intentional about what facts are placed in the knowledge organiser.
My Experience
Most knowledge organisers I see in schools, in a range of subjects, contain 80 to 100 facts.
This is going to prove too many to retrieve properly to lead to long term memory. The numbers will just be too great. Unless…
Unless much of the retrieval is fast paced and spoken, without students having to retrieve slowly by writing.
How will you generate enough questions? Paste your knowledge organiser into ChatGPT a section at a time.
Ask it to generate:
Multiple choice questions with 3 plausible answers.
True/False questions.
Cloze/Gap fill tests.
In 10 minutes you could easily get through at least 40 retrievals, or do the same 20 twice.