Ten minutes after supper is enough for a daily practice quiz at home: a handful of questions on things school has already taught, the answer and the reason shown after each one, and then the evening carries on. Done on most days, that routine has better support in the research than one long sitting at the weekend, and it asks far less of a seven-year-old.
This guide is for a parent who does not teach: what to quiz, for how long, what to do with a wrong answer, how to keep it from becoming a fight, and when to stop. EdProcto's page for parents is built around the same routine: a kit chosen once for the child's age, and a new quiz from it every evening.
The research behind it is strong on quizzing and on spacing, and more modest on what a parent adds at home. Nothing here is a promise about grades.
Does a short daily practice quiz help a child learn?
Yes, for keeping in memory what has already been taught. Recalling something strengthens the memory of it more than looking at it again does. Researchers call this retrieval practice, and it has been shown in children as well as in adults.
Karpicke et al. (2016) worked with 88 children of about ten across three experiments. Each child studied 24 words, then re-read half and had to recall the other half from a hint: a category and the first two letters. On the final test the recalled words won each time: 55% remembered against 44% in the first experiment, and 42% against 28% in the second.
Goossens et al. (2014) had primary school children practise ten new words by recalling the meaning and ten by studying it again. A week later the words practised by recalling were remembered better on a recall test, though on a multiple-choice test there was no difference. Fritz et al. (2007) worked with pre-schoolers learning the names of soft toys: recalling the names at widening intervals doubled what they remembered, while offering a reward made no significant difference.
What these studies do not show
They do not show that ten minutes a day at your kitchen table will raise a school grade. These were controlled experiments on word lists, vocabulary and names, over minutes to a week. None was a test of a parent's routine at home.
Karpicke et al. (2016) also describe an earlier experiment of their own in which children of the same age, asked to recall with no hints, got back about 8% of the material and showed no benefit five days later. Where it worked, the children got 75% to 87% of the practice items right. A quiz your child mostly fails is not practice: the topic needs teaching first.
Why ten minutes a day and not an hour at the weekend?
Because practice spread over several days is remembered longer than the same practice done in one block. This is the spacing effect, and it is well tested: Cepeda et al. (2006) gathered 839 assessments of it from 317 experiments. They also found that the further off the final test is, the wider the best gap between sessions.
Sobel et al. (2011) tested it in ordinary classrooms: 39 fifth-grade children were taught some unfamiliar words bunched together and others with a week between sessions. Five weeks later they remembered the spaced words better.
So six ten-minute quizzes are not one hour cut into pieces. Each is a fresh attempt at recall after a gap: an hour on Sunday gives one such attempt, and six evenings give six. A ten-minute routine also survives a bad day, where an hour gets cancelled.
The limit: these studies compare bunched practice with spread practice, not daily with weekly for a child at home. What the evidence supports is the direction.
What should you quiz, and how many questions?
Quiz what the school has already taught, in five to ten questions. The quiz is for keeping knowledge, not for introducing it. New material is the teacher's job.
| Age | Good things to quiz | How many | Ready-made on EdProcto |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 to 7 | Counting, number bonds to 10, first sounds, opposites | 5 to 8 | Early years kits, most answered by tapping big buttons |
| 7 to 11 | Times tables, division facts, spellings, fractions of a number | 8 to 10 | Rule-made kits such as Times tables, with new numbers every evening |
| 11 to 14 | Percentages, negative numbers, science terms, vocabulary | About 10 | A quiz written from a page of the child's own textbook |
Keep to one idea a question, and stop at ten minutes by the clock, wrong answers included.
Mix the old with the new
Put older topics into every quiz, mixed in with this week's. Rohrer et al. (2015) gave 126 pupils in seventh grade the same maths problems over three months, either in blocks of one kind or mixed together. On a test nobody had announced, mixed practice gave higher scores both one day and 30 days after the last review, with effect sizes of 0.42 and 0.79.
A ten-question evening, worked
For a child of eight who is midway through the six and seven times tables:
- Six from this week: 6 × 7, 7 × 8, 42 ÷ 6, 6 × 9, 7 × 7, 56 ÷ 7.
- Two from last week: spell "because", spell "friend".
- Two from last month: 83 − 47, and a quarter of 20.
Tomorrow the same ideas come back as different questions.
What do you do when your child gets one wrong?
Show the right answer and the reason straight away, say little, and bring the question back on another day. A wrong answer in a practice quiz costs nothing and tells you exactly what to practise.
Hattie and Timperley (2007) reviewed the research on feedback and found an average effect size of 0.79 across at least 12 earlier meta-analyses. It can work in either direction, and the kind matters: feedback that gave the learner cues did the most, while praise, punishment and rewards did the least. Praise and rewards, the authors note, carry little information about the task. On timing, the review reports that correcting an error at once can speed up the first learning of a task, and that in one study waiting helped on hard items and not on easy ones. For number facts and spellings, at once is the sensible default.
- Wait for a real answer. A guess is fine.
- Let the screen say it. The right answer and one line of reason: "6 × 7 is 42. Five sevens are 35, and one more seven makes 42." In EdProcto's study mode the answer and its reason appear after every question, and the kits carry their own explanations, so the parent is never the one who says "wrong".
- Ask one thing, kindly. "Which sum were you thinking of?" Often it is a near neighbour, here 6 × 8.
- Have them say the right version once. Then move on, with no second explanation.
- Bring it back in two or three days, turned round: 7 × 6, or 42 ÷ 7.
What to say, and what not to say
Talk about what the child did, not about what the child is. The same review found that a remark aimed at the person, such as "good girl", tells a child little about the task, while praise that names what was done can help.
So "you counted on from seven, and it worked" beats "clever boy". Say nothing that turns a missed question into a verdict, such as "you knew this yesterday". A wrong answer is a fact about which question needs another go. It is never a fact about the child.
How do you keep the quiz from becoming a fight?
Set the frame once and then stay out of the marking. Rows start when a parent becomes the examiner, and fade when the parent has fixed a small routine and sits alongside it.
The research on parents helping with schoolwork points the same way. Patall et al. (2008) pooled the studies of parents' part in homework. Training parents to take part led to more homework being finished and fewer homework problems, and possibly to better results for primary-age children. Across the correlational studies, setting rules had a stronger link with achievement than other kinds of involvement, and involvement was negatively associated with achievement in mathematics. A correlation does not say why: parents may help most where a child already finds the subject hard. It is still a reason to be the timekeeper and not the maths teacher.
- Same time, same place. The fewer decisions, the fewer arguments.
- A timer the child can see. When it rings the quiz is over, even on a good run.
- Sit beside, not opposite. Read the question aloud for a young child. Do not supply the answer.
- No prizes for marks. A prize turns a wrong answer into a loss, and in the experiment by Fritz et al. (2007) a reward made no significant difference to what the children learned.
- Skip freely. Tired, hungry or upset: leave it. A missed evening costs nothing.
When should you stop?
Stop the evening's quiz when the timer rings or the child has had enough, whichever comes first. Change or stop the routine when it stops doing its job.
- Everything right, three evenings running. The set is too easy. Move up a kit, or swap in older topics.
- Fewer than half right. The topic has not been learned yet. Stop quizzing it and ask the teacher how it is taught.
- Tears or a row on most evenings for a fortnight. The routine costs more than it gives. Drop it for now, and tell the teacher what you saw.
- An older child who would sooner do it alone. A success. Hand it over, and read the record together once a week.
An older child who tests themselves is doing what the guide on making your own quiz from a chapter sets out for students.
How much difference can a parent's ten minutes make?
A modest one, and it is better to know that first. Nickow et al. (2020) pooled 96 randomised studies of tutoring from pre-school to the end of secondary school. The average gain was 0.37 standard deviations. Programmes with teachers as tutors averaged 0.50 across 18 studies. Programmes that gave parents training or materials to tutor their own children averaged 0.23 across 11 studies. The authors' explanation: with parents, and with sessions outside school hours, it is harder to make sure the tutoring happens at all. They also found little sign that tutoring once a week produces large gains.
Homework tells a similar story. Cooper et al. (2006) reviewed the United States studies from 1987 to 2003. Overall the evidence favoured homework, though every study had design flaws, and the link between time on homework and achievement was weaker in the primary years, up to about age 12, than in the secondary years.
So do not measure yourself against a trained tutor. Regularity is the part most likely to go wrong, which is the case for a routine small enough to keep. More time is not the lever: the gains above came from recalling, spacing and feedback, none of which needs a long sitting. What the routine can give is taught facts that stay put, a clear view of the ones that have not, and something exact to tell the teacher.
How does EdProcto run the ten minutes for you?
EdProcto is the best tool for this routine because it does the two jobs a parent who does not teach cannot easily do: it supplies a new set of sound questions every evening, and it gives the answer with its reason the moment the child responds. Those are the conditions the research above keeps returning to: fresh recall, and feedback that carries information.
A kit for their age. The kits run from the early years to secondary school, and each names the ages it is for: counting and first sounds at four to six, times tables at seven to nine, percentages from ten.
New every evening. The rule-made kits change their numbers, words and pictures every time, so practice cannot turn into memorising last night's answers.
Shapes a small child can use. Count the objects and tap the number, listen and point, spell it with letter tiles, picture match and build the pattern. Trace the path, for pre-handwriting, takes a finger along a road on the screen.
Their own schoolbook. EdProcto's home page takes a pasted page of the textbook, and Procto AI writes the questions from it in the words the school uses.
A record you can read. What they got right, what they missed and what to try again.
The rule-made drills for counting, tables, spelling and facts are free without limit, and the Free plan includes 20 questions a month written from your own pages. The Learner plan raises that to 100. The pricing page lists what each plan holds.
Quick questions
How long should a daily practice quiz for a child be?
Ten minutes at most, and five to ten questions. For a child of five or six, five minutes is long enough.
Is a short quiz every day better than one long session a week?
The evidence favours spreading practice out, and Cepeda et al. (2006) reviewed 317 experiments on it. No study we read tested daily against weekly for a child at home, so treat it as a well-supported direction, not a measured rule.
What if my child gets most of the questions wrong?
Then the set is too hard to be practice. Drop to an easier kit or an earlier topic, and tell the teacher which one it was. It says nothing about the child.
Do I need to know the subject myself?
No. With a ready-made kit the answers and the explanations come with the questions. EdProcto's page for parents shows the three steps: pick a kit for their age, hand over the device, and read what to practise next.
References
- Cepeda, N. J., Pashler, H., Vul, E., Wixted, J. T., & Rohrer, D. (2006). Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks: A review and quantitative synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(3), 354–380. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.132.3.354
- Cooper, H., Robinson, J. C., & Patall, E. A. (2006). Does homework improve academic achievement? A synthesis of research, 1987–2003. Review of Educational Research, 76(1), 1–62. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543076001001
- Fritz, C. O., Morris, P. E., Nolan, D., & Singleton, J. (2007). Expanding retrieval practice: An effective aid to preschool children's learning. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 60(7), 991–1004. https://doi.org/10.1080/17470210600823595
- Goossens, N. A. M. C., Camp, G., Verkoeijen, P. P. J. L., & Tabbers, H. K. (2014). The effect of retrieval practice in primary school vocabulary learning. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 28(1), 135–142. https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.2956
- Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007). The power of feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77(1), 81–112. https://doi.org/10.3102/003465430298487
- Karpicke, J. D., Blunt, J. R., & Smith, M. A. (2016). Retrieval-based learning: Positive effects of retrieval practice in elementary school children. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, Article 350. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00350
- Nickow, A., Oreopoulos, P., & Quan, V. (2020). The impressive effects of tutoring on preK-12 learning: A systematic review and meta-analysis of the experimental evidence (NBER Working Paper No. 27476). National Bureau of Economic Research. https://doi.org/10.3386/w27476
- Patall, E. A., Cooper, H., & Robinson, J. C. (2008). Parent involvement in homework: A research synthesis. Review of Educational Research, 78(4), 1039–1101. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654308325185
- Rohrer, D., Dedrick, R. F., & Stershic, S. (2015). Interleaved practice improves mathematics learning. Journal of Educational Psychology, 107(3), 900–908. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000001
- Sobel, H. S., Cepeda, N. J., & Kapler, I. V. (2011). Spacing effects in real-world classroom vocabulary learning. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 25(5), 763–767. https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.1747