The Kids Aren't Doing the Check-Your-Understanding Questions!!!

"In every case where we implemented check-your-understanding questions, 15%-50% (usually 15%-25%) didn't do them.  This sounds bad.  But on the flip side, this meant that 50%-85% (usually 75%-85%) of students were doing the questions, and doing them for  he right reason and for the right person."
--Peter Liljedahl, Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics, p. 125.
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I'll be honest, in my experience, 75%-85% sounds a little (he said, sarcastically)... high.

On any given week in the Building Thinking Classrooms community, I see someone a̶n̶g̶r̶i̶l̶y̶ ̶v̶e̶n̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ gently suggesting that they, too, are perhaps experiencing a completion level n̶o̶w̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶c̶l̶o̶s̶e̶ ̶t̶o̶  ever so slightly below the reported 75%-85%.

So let's just call it what it appears to be.

For a lot of us, this has been an unfulfilled promise.

The kids aren't doing the check-your-understanding questions!!!

There.  We've all said it out loud.

Now, what, if anything, do we do about it?
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"75%-85% sounds too high by about THIS much."

Is It A Battle Worth Fighting?

The first time I read the chapter on homework/practice/check-your-understanding questions, my main takeaway was that Liljedahl's research and advice were intended to convey the message that homework might not be a battle worth fighting.  Certain negative outcomes, he found, were prevalent when practice problems were checked, certain other problems were prevalent when it was not checked, and the fewest problems were prevalent when they were re-branded as Check-Your-Understanding Questions (CYUs) and answer keys were provided.
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No matter what you do, there are going to be a lot of bad outcomes, but this version seems to have the fewest, seemed to be the message.

​I do think that's an important conclusion from the chapter - fight as hard as you want, but all you can do is re-arrange the bad outcomes.  There's a ceiling to how many kids will do this, we think we've found it, and it is time to accept that.

If a certain percentage of incompletion is inevitable, maybe it is time to focus on more fruitful practices.

"I wonder if Dr Doblar would prefer this bad outcome, or this other one?"

In the grand scheme of things, I've chosen to surrender.  I assign check-your-understanding questions (CYUs) as prescribed.  I provide answer keys as prescribed.  I don't check them as prescribed.  

By the book.

​And a bunch of the kids don't do them.

But...

There's more to love about check-your-understanding questions than meets the eye.
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BTC says "Thou ShalL Not Check" when it comes to CYU's, but it Never Says "Parents Shall Not Check"

I love this joke from comedian Daliso Chaponda where he says, "the Bible says you shall not steal, but nowhere does it say you shall not swap."  

Nobody loves a good technicality more than I do.

As much as I may have grown to be the bigger person and let accountability for CYUs go when it comes to checking them, I haven't quite reached the maturity level where I've stopped swapping​ checking for other accountability measures.

​One more subtle ways I seek to move the needle of accountability is that I make sure parents know check-your-understanding questions are being assigned.  There may be graphs showing that the class outcomes are worse if I check everybody's CYUs, but there are no graphs that show that one kid's outcomes are worse if his/her parents make sure he/she does them.
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One check-your-understanding question each day is marked to be worked for a guardian so they can see if the student is on track.

My check-your-understanding questions have ONE question per day marked for a guardian's signature.  The kids are to explain that CYU each night to a guardian, saying roughly, "this is what I learned in math today and this is how you do it."  Guardian signs. Done.

It is marked each day and I inform the parents at the beginning of the year and remind them now and then.

How many kids are getting the signatures?  Well, of course, I don't know, because thou shall not check.  My guess is that this tactic doesn't move the needle much in that regard.  Apples don't fall far from trees, as they say.
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"I may as well get started on these check-your-understanding questions.  My mom is going to make me do the rest of them once I get her signature, anyways."

Admittedly, however, increasing completion isn't my main motivation for adding that guardian signature line to my CYU's.

The bigger reason is that I have this at the ready whenever we have a parent-initiated "why isn't Suzie doing better in math" parent-teacher conference.

"Why don't we start by looking through Suzie's math binder and seeing how often she is getting her check your understanding questions done and signed.  While she gets the binder out, how is that nightly check in going?  Quite well, I've presumed, since you haven't emailed me that she doesn't understand it in quite some time."

*Flips through Suzie's binder*

"It would appear that we aren't taking advantage of all the opportunities to stay on track right now, so why don't we start there before we look into anything extra for Suzie."

The CYUs are my CYA, if nothing else.
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CYUs Free Me Not To Make Study Guides

At younger grades, where I've spent the bulk of my teaching career, parents loathe homework, but they love study guides.

And CYU's are my permission not to make them.

"I'm sure you don't, but if, by chance, you have any unfinished check-your-understanding questions from the unit we just completed, those are a great tool to use to study/practice for Tuesday's test.  The questions will be very similar and you even have an answer key!"

​"For what I am sure is the great majority of you who have done them all, they're still great to review and to try again since it has been a few days if you're looking for resources to prepare."

If you're a kid who wants cram all at the end, or a parent who wants to force yours to cram all at the end, you're in luck!
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"I'm telling you, he's just going to say that all these check-your-understanding questions are​ the study guide."

CYU's are a great "closing Activity" option

Liljedahl refers to consolidation, note-making, and check-your-understanding questions as "closing activities."  They the activities intended to help a student move from a messy, group-based understanding to a tidier, individually-owned understanding.  

I plan all three every day. 

I don't always get to all three every day, but I plan them.

I'm also starting to inch my way toward more flexibility with which ones I use each day and how.  There are days where the thinking tasks goes so well, and I can manage everything through hints and extensions well enough that we don't need to consolidate.  

I also have - and have always had - a complicated relationship with notes.  And to be honest, most of my students avoid the note-making practice as much as they avoid the check-your-understanding questions.  Most 6th graders aren't using notes after making or taking them, so I often question why we spend so much time giving them notes in traditional classrooms, or providing time to make them in Thinking Classrooms.

But check-your-understanding questions are always beneficial.

And while I can't make them do CYUs at home, I can very easily make them do CYUs at school as long as I make the time, actively observe, and hold them accountable for their use of this time.

In short, CYUs don't get done at home, but they do get done in class when I can provide the time.
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"We're stuck in class, so we have​ to do these, bro!"​

​Retrieval Practice > Check-Your-Understanding Questions

One of the biggest reasons I don't stress about the fact that most of my students aren't doing CYU's is that, frankly, they're learning at high levels without them.

One of the biggest reasons that they're learning at high levels without them is that I start every day with a heavy dose of retrieval practice. 

CYUs are all about memory.  The thinking tasks is designed to build understanding, consolidation and note-making are designed to formalize the vocabulary, conventions, and organization behind that understanding, and CYUs are designed to help students remember the skill and move the student toward automaticity. 

CYUs, then are designed to combat the inevitability that is... forgetting.  

I write often that forgetting is normal, that we should expect it, that we should teach students how it works, and that we should build systems that make forgetting and remembering a guilt-free, routine experience in classes of any sort.

Since forgetting is predictable, we know much about predicting it.  Namely, we know how quickly and how often we should deal with it:
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Image taken from: https://teachlikeachampion.org/blog/an-annotated-forgetting-curve/​

According to the "forgetting curve," we should expect students to forget half of new learning within the hour.  If treated, presumably by completing CYUs at home that afternoon, students should arrive to class the next day with a little more than half committed to memory, and without that treatment, we should expect less than 40%.

That's not a huge difference.

Obviously we'd prefer the 55% from students who did the CYU's, but either way, there is going to be a lot of reviewing to be done the next day.

"Why is he making us do these check your understanding questions in class when we haven't even had our hour to forget yet?"
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Retrieval practice is a must.  We're going to need to do it whether kids did their CYUs or not​.  The kids who did, we would expect, will have a 15-20% head start, but that's it.

In truth, if memory is what we seek (and it should be), retrieval practice is far more effective for getting there than CYUs or traditional practice sets.

​When it comes to affecting long-term memory, retrieval practice > check your understanding questions.
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TLDR - So what's the Plan?

In summary, even though the lack of CYU completion still frustrates me, I've built a system where the kids still do really well.  It goes like this.

1. I give CYU's each day - with answer key - as prescribed.

Frankly, that's it when it comes to CYUs. 

That said, there are a few more details and some downstream thinking that go into that system, too:

1. When time allows, CYUs are started in class.
2. One of my CYU's has a "guardian signature" line underneath it, and the expectation for kids and guardians is that they have a 2-5 minute discussion at home each evening where the student shows the guardian what they learned at school today and how to do it.
3. If the student wants to do more CYUs, great.  If the guardian wants to make the student do the rest of the CYUs, great.  If neither party has that motivation, not great, but not fatal and not within my control.
4. I don't check the CYUs or the signature the next day.
5. I do plan retrieval practice the next day, and on subsequent days according to the forgetting curve.
6. CYUs double as an end-of-unit study guide.
7. In the event that a student is doing poorly and a parent wants to blame me for that, we have a "let's open your student's binder and see how the check-your-understanding questions and expected at-home nightly discussion is going" conference.  The CYUs are my CYA.

Winston Churchill often quoted as having said "democracy is the worst form of government, except for all of the other ones."  An easy way to summarize Liljedah's chapter on check-your-understanding questions, I think, is unchecked CYUs are the worst system for homework and practice, except for all the other ones.

The kids aren't doing the check your understanding questions!

I know they're not.

And I'm not stressing about it.

Because they're learning at high levels anyways.

In the end, I've just accepted it and reallocated my time, effort, and frustration to the other practices.

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