Retrieval practice has become ubiquitous in schools because it is easy to implement, and the outcomes are easy to observe and measure. As a teacher educator I am lucky enough to visit classrooms in many different schools and retrieval practice strategies are far more evident than they used to be. Often used as a settler activity at the start of the lesson, a retrieval practice activity might be called a ‘Can do task’ or ‘5-a-day’. The students are quizzed on topics they were taught last lesson, last week and last term. The actual activity can vary but there are some schools where every lesson must begin with some sort of retrieval practice activity. I will explore the issues with this approach later on. There are benefits to retrieval practice. Retrieval helps bring to mind what has been taught (Weinstein et al., 2019) and if the teacher carefully chooses the questions based on what they gauge in the classroom and by marking students’ work, they can attempt to address gaps
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