The REAL Reset: Math Moves That Matter – Tuesday Edition

Teaching on Empty: It's Testing Time Series

Part 4: I forgot how to do this!

The REAL Story

It is always a few days before testing when you start pulling out the review packets. Hopefully you are doing more collaborative math tasks since you joined this newsletter, but anyhoo. You pull up a review problem, something your students have seen at least a dozen times, and you ask someone to get you started because you already know they know how to do this. You just want to smooth any rough edges.

But instead the room goes quiet. Not the thinking kind of quiet. The blank kind, the kind that shows up when students see something they have never seen before or have absolutely no idea what it is. And just as you feel the very impulsive "for the love of God, guys, do not do this to me" beginning to roll off your tongue, someone finally shouts "I forgot how to do this," and three other students immediately co-sign like it is a group announcement.

So you take a breath, walk back to the board, and start explaining it again. Because what else are you going to do. A few students nod along, a few copy whatever you write, and at least two have completely checked out. By the time you finish the problem it feels like it may have landed, but you thought that the last ten times you taught it. It is like the never ending cycle in math. You teach, students seem to get it, you move to the next problem, and again, they forgot how to do it.

Here is what is actually going on.

Those students did not forget the math. They forgot it the way you forget how to get somewhere you have only ever been to as a passenger. You know how you have been riding as the passenger princess everytime to a destination so when you finally have to drive there yourself, you have to think a little harder because the view from the passenger side window is familiar but not from the driver seat.

The moment support is present, the brain stops working as hard to retrieve on its own. Your students have been doing math all year with a teacher nearby, ready to prompt, redirect, and fill in the blanks the second things get uncomfortable. They have never had to pull that math up cold, alone, with nothing but a test booklet in front of them. That is not forgetting. That is a retrieval muscle that never got trained, and it is the main reason why productive struggle, entry points, and strategies that help students move through problems on their own are truly non-negotiable. They are a must.

But it is the end of the year, and there is only so much you can do right now. Be sure to make note of what needs to change for next year, but in the meantime here are some right now moves that will help your students with retrieval before testing.

💡 3 moves that wake up the retrieval muscle before test day

1️⃣ Retrieval warm-ups with no notes and no help.​
​Before you do anything else in class, put three problems on the board that students have already seen and give them five minutes to work through them in complete silence. No partner talk, no notes, no prompting from you. They can’t ask any questions, therefore no hand raises. The room should feel like a test because that is exactly what you are preparing them for. The discomfort students feel in those five minutes is not a problem to solve. That is the point. After the five minutes, then you discuss specific strategies and techniques that would have helped them move the thinking forward to get them better prepared for testing.

2️⃣ "Start somewhere" as a non-negotiable classroom norm.​
​The "I forgot how to do this" moment is partly a habit of learned helplessness that gets reinforced every time a teacher steps in too fast. Before test week, make "start somewhere" the only rule. It does not matter if students write down the wrong operation, draw a diagram, or just restate the problem in their own words. Something on paper is the standard. When starting is the expectation regardless of whether they feel ready, the blank stare has nowhere to live. Students who know they are required to put something on paper will put something on paper. And something is always better than nothing, because you cannot fix a blank page but you can absolutely fix a wrong answer.

3️⃣ Brain dump before the first problem.​
​Before students see a single problem, give them two to three minutes to write down everything they remember about the specific topic being reviewed. No prompts, no word banks, no examples on the board. Just what they can retrieve on their own. This move does something the warm-up does not. There is a big difference between retrieving the math with a problem in front of you and retrieving it from nothing. When a student sees a problem, the format, the numbers, and the structure are all doing some of the work for them. A brain dump removes all of that. If they can write down the steps, the vocabulary, and an example before a single problem appears, they are exercising the retrieval muscle in its purest form, and a muscle that gets that kind of workout before the test is going to be a lot stronger when it actually counts.

The Close

The "I forgot how to do this" moment is not a memory problem. It is a practice problem. Your students have spent all year retrieving math with you right there, and now you are a few days out from a test where no one is coming to help them. These moves are about students exercising a muscle they rarely use independently, which is retrieval. And like any muscle, it does not get stronger from watching someone else use it. It gets stronger when they have no choice but to use it themselves.

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Tiffany Smith, Ed. D., Your Culturally Responsive Math Specialist

Founder, Education Evolution, LLC | Creator, The REAL Framework™ | Creator of Mind the Gap Curriculum™

"Here’s to classrooms filled with real growth, real talk, and REAL results."

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