Contact: mkohl@mt.gov

+1 Makes So Much Sense

Of special interest to: Grades 4-12 teachers 

Re: A routine to help students remember information from a presentation or film

According to the smart folks at Harvard University's Project Zero, "Research has shown that engaging students in memory work immediately after the presentation of information helps learners to retain that information more effectively." So they came up with the +1 Routine, which "provides learners with a structure for identifying key ideas and committing them to memory."

To quote the +1 instruction sheet: 

After reading a text, watching a movie, listening to a lecture, or being presented with new information or ideas in some manner, a group of learners does the following:

Recall In 2-3 minutes and working individually, each learner generates a list of key ideas that he or she recalls from the presentation that he/she feels is important to hang onto. Learners do this from memory rather than reviewing notes or material.

Add (+) 1 Learners pass their papers to the right. Taking 1-2 minutes, each student reads through the list in front of him/her and adds one new thing to the list. The addition might be an elaboration (adding a detail), a new point (adding something that was missing), or a connection (adding a relationship between ideas). REPEAT this process at least two times.

Act Return the papers back to the original owner. Learners read through and review all the additions that have been made on their sheets. At the same time they may add any ideas they have picked up from reading other’s sheets that they thought were worthwhile.

You can read more about how and when to implement this routine here. I thought +1 was so clever that I incorporated it in a lesson plan I included in our new footlocker, Montana's First Peoples: Essential Understandings. 

You can learn more about Project Zero, Thinking Routines, and find additional tools to "scaffold and support student thinking" on the Project Zero website.