Total Recall
Purpose
Students recall academic content and the affective aspects they felt while learning the content.
Materials
- Notebook paper
Instructions
- Students fold notebook paper to create 4 quadrants.
- Students complete 4 Total Recall tasks associated with the lesson/unit content:
- Quadrant 1: List and describe 3 important words or facts.
- Quadrant 2: Sketch 1-2 important visuals.
- Quadrant 3: Connect this new content with something you learned in the past.
- Quadrant 4: Draw an emoji representing how you felt while learning this content.
- Collect students’ Total Recall responses and adjust instruction as appropriate.
Classroom Management
- Model the strategy using a think-aloud and/or provide an example for students to use as a guide.
Differentiation
- Promote access by allowing students to process the task with a supportive peer/adult.
- Promote response support by providing an idea/word bank for each quadrant’s task, allowing students to dictate responses to a scribe, and/or recording ideas using speech-to-text or word prediction support.
- Access language supports by proficiency level ->
Think It Up!
- Have students think more deeply about the concept by responding to a Think It Up prompt as an exit ticket or journal entry:
- Summarize your Total Recall ideas in 2-3 sentences.
- Draw a conclusion about the importance of this concept and why it is necessary to understand it thoroughly.
- Encourage students to use lead4ward’s Thinking Stems (English/Spanish) to frame their responses, if needed.
Read the video transcript
This instructional strategy is called Total Recall, and all students need is a piece of notebook paper. Have students fold the paper in half and then in half again so they have four quadrants to work with. Each quadrant is assigned to a separate task. In the first, they list and describe three important words or facts from the lesson. In the second, they sketch 1 or 2 visuals that stood out to them. In the third, they make a connection. And in the fourth, they draw an emoji that represents how they felt while learning it. Collect the sheets when they're done and use what you see to adjust your instructions. Simple setup, rich in data. Share with a colleague.
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