Two Things, No Notes: A Retrieval Practice That Sticks

Renata Salas

Welcome to the show, everyone! I'm Renata Salas, and I'm here with Colin Whitfield. And Colin, I want to start with a scenario that I think every teacher listening has lived through. It's the last three minutes of class. You look at your students, and you say those classic, well-meaning words: "Okay everyone, take a moment to review your notes from today before the bell rings."

Colin Whitfield

Ah, yes. [chuckles] The universal signal for students to pack their bags, stare at the clock, and mentally check out for lunch. It feels like teaching, but scientifically speaking, it's a bit of a black hole, isn't it?

Renata Salas

It absolutely is! But recently, I've been completely transforming those last three minutes with a ridiculously simple, almost counterintuitive strategy called "Two Things." Instead of telling them to look at their notes, I say, "Put everything away. No books, no notebooks, no laptops. You have ninety seconds to write down exactly two things you remember from today's lesson." That's it. Two things, no notes.

Colin Whitfield

[thoughtfully] No notes. That's the crucial pivot, isn't it? You're moving from recognition to actual retrieval. This strategy actually comes from Dr. Pooja Agarwal. She wrote about it in ASCD’s Educational Leadership back in her May 1, 2020 article, "Retrieval Practice: Power Tool for Lasting Learning." She frames "Two Things" as a simplified, bite-sized cousin of "free recall"--where you'd normally ask students to dump *everything* they know onto a blank page. Free recall is great, but it can feel incredibly daunting for a student, and honestly, it takes up a lot of class time. "Two Things" keeps the barrier to entry low enough to do every single day.

Renata Salas

And keeping that barrier low is key, because as teachers, we are always starved for time. But Colin, does such a tiny task actually do anything for their long-term memory? It feels almost too simple to work.

Colin Whitfield

The data on this is actually massive. Dr. Agarwal points back to a landmark 2006 study by Roediger and Karpicke. They looked at college students and compared those who just reread material to those who had to retrieve it. After one week, the students who simply reread the texts remembered about 40% of the material. But the group that had to retrieve it--even without feedback--remembered 61%.

Renata Salas

[gasps] Sixty-one percent versus forty? That is a twenty-one percent jump just from the act of pulling the information out of their own heads instead of looking at it again!

Colin Whitfield

Exactly. And there's a real psychological tension here. Rereading *feels* incredibly productive. It's smooth, it's comforting, it gives you this warm glow of familiarity. You look at the page and think, "Oh, I know this." But that's an illusion. Retrieval, on the other hand, feels difficult. It's clunky. You scratch your head, you struggle. But that exact cognitive struggle--the effort of rebuilding that neural pathway to pull the memory from storage--is what actually cements the learning. The struggle is the trigger for long-term retention.

Renata Salas

It's so true. And I actually tried this in my third-period middle school ELA class just last week. We were analyzing character motivations in *The Giver*. With three minutes left, I had them close their books. I said, "Write down two characters who changed in chapter four." I set a timer for ninety seconds, and I just walked the room. I wasn't grading them, I wasn't collecting them. I was just scanning. And Colin, the diagnosis you get in those ninety seconds is gold. I realized half the class was writing down Fiona, but for a reason she actually changed in chapter *five*, not four.

Colin Whitfield

That is brilliant. [warmly] You immediately saw the gap. And the beauty is how concrete and adaptable those prompts are. You can write them on the board in ten seconds: "two steps in solving a two-step equation," "two things about the water cycle," or "two vocabulary words from today's chemistry lab."

Renata Salas

Yes! And the real-world results of this are stunning. Dr. Agarwal did some incredible collaborative research with Patrice Bain, a sixth-grade social studies teacher. They used these kinds of retrieval strategies in Bain's classroom, and when chapter tests rolled around, students scored 94% on the material that had been retrieved through these mini-tasks, compared to 81% on non-retrieved material. And that gap stayed consistent one to two months later! Agarwal calls it a "letter grade of difference."

Colin Whitfield

[reflective] A full letter grade. From a ninety-second routine that requires zero prep. Now, the biggest hurdle for teachers trying this tomorrow is the temptation to over-complicate it. Do not grade this. Do not collect it and take home a stack of eighty sticky notes to score on a rubric. If you do that, you'll abandon it by Friday. Just let them write it on a scrap of paper, scan it for your own formative feedback, and throw it in the recycling bin. If you want to mix it up, after a few days, turn it into an entry ticket: "Before we start today, write down two things you remember from yesterday, no notes."

Renata Salas

That's such an important tip. Lower the stakes so they feel safe to struggle and fail. And you know, this idea is really scaling up across all age groups. I was reading a piece by Jennifer Gonzalez on her Cult of Pedagogy site from April 27, 2025, called "Retrieval in Action." She features Dr. Janell Blunt, who uses a version of this in her college Intro Psychology courses. She has students write their "two things" on mini-whiteboards and hold them up simultaneously. So this isn't just for middle schoolers or social studies; it works all the way up to lecture halls.

Colin Whitfield

Absolutely. Mini-whiteboards, scrap paper, or even just telling your partner "two things." The medium doesn't matter. What matters is that we stop feeding students the information over and over, and start asking them to reach inside and pull it out.

Renata Salas

So, to everyone listening: try it tomorrow. Ninety seconds, two things, absolutely no notes. See what actually stuck from your lesson—you might be surprised by what you find. That's our show for today. I'm Renata Salas.

Colin Whitfield

And I'm Colin Whitfield. Happy retrieving, everyone.