A tutor sees a student for an hour a week and loses them for the other 167. The first question of every session is the same: how much of last week is still there? Most tutors find out by asking "do you remember what we did?", which gets a nod, and the nod is worth nothing.
A short quiz at the start of the lesson answers the question properly. It takes four minutes, it makes the material it tests more durable, it tells you what to teach in the next fifty-six, and after a term it is a record you can put in front of a parent. EdProcto's page for tutors is built around that loop: a quiz per lesson, a study link for the week between, and a record per student.
This guide sets out the check itself: what goes in it, why each part is there, and how to run it without adding to your preparation time.
Why start every lesson with a quiz?
Start with a quiz because recalling something strengthens the memory of it more than being told it again does. This is the testing effect, also called retrieval practice, and it is one of the best supported findings in the study of learning.
Roediger and Karpicke (2006) had students read prose passages and then either read them again or try to recall them. Tested five minutes later, the students who had re-read did better. Tested two days or a week later, the students who had recalled did substantially better, even though the re-readers had been the more confident of the two groups. The result that matters to a tutor is the delayed one, because a week is exactly the gap you work across.
It holds outside the laboratory. Adesope et al. (2017), in a meta-analysis of practice testing, found that it beat restudying and each of the other comparison conditions they examined. And tutoring is a setting where small, frequent checks fit naturally. Nickow et al. (2020), pooling the experimental studies of tutoring programmes from pre-school to the end of secondary school, found consistent and substantial gains, with a pooled effect of 0.37 standard deviations. The opening quiz is a way of making sure the hour you are paid for builds on something that is still there.
What goes in a four-minute quiz?
Six questions, answered from memory, with no notes open: three on last lesson, two from two to four weeks ago, and one from the start of the course. Forty seconds a question.
| Slot | From | Why it is there |
|---|---|---|
| Questions 1 to 3 | Last lesson | Did it survive the week? |
| Questions 4 and 5 | Two to four weeks ago | Is it still there once the first re-test has passed? |
| Question 6 | The start of the course | Nothing taught is ever finished with |
The older questions are the point. A check that only covers last week tells the student that each topic can be dropped once it has been tested, and they will drop it.
Which question shapes to use
Use shapes that make the student produce the answer where you can. Rowland (2014), pooling studies of the testing effect, found that initial tests requiring recall gave larger benefits than tests requiring recognition. Kang et al. (2007) found the same once feedback was given: a short-answer test led to better retention three days later than a multiple-choice test or re-reading the facts.
So for a tutor's check:
- A term to supply: a fill in the blank, marked by rule.
- A method: show your working, where each step earns its marks.
- A vocabulary set or a group of definitions: matching pairs.
- A concept with a known confusion: one multiple-choice question whose wrong options are the confusions.
Six questions do not need six shapes. Two or three, the same each week, mean the student spends the four minutes on the content and not on the format.
How far apart should the re-tests be?
Space them further apart the longer you need the memory to last. Cepeda et al. (2006) reviewed 839 assessments of spaced practice from 317 experiments and found that the gap between study sessions and the delay before the final test work together: the gap that gave the best retention grew longer as the delay to the final test grew longer.
For a student with an exam in three months, that argues against re-testing a topic every single week and for a widening pattern: the week after it was taught, then about three weeks later, then about two months later. The six-question layout above does this without a spreadsheet. Last week's material arrives in questions 1 to 3, comes back once in the middle slot, and returns in the last slot before the exam.
The review does not give one best schedule for school subjects, and nobody should pretend it does. What it supports is the direction: wider gaps for longer goals, and never a single test followed by silence.
What do you do with the answers?
Go through the misses straight away, and let the misses set the lesson. Feedback is where the learning from a quiz is secured. In an experiment by Butler and Roediger (2008), students who were shown the right answers after a multiple-choice test, at once or later, recalled more correctly on a delayed test and repeated fewer of the wrong options they had read. Hattie and Timperley (2007), reviewing the evidence on feedback, stress that its effect depends on its kind and on how it is given, and that it can work in either direction.
For a tutor the workable routine is short.
- Mark at once. The student sees what was right and what was wrong before the memory of answering has faded.
- Ask about each miss before explaining it. "What were you thinking here?" finds the misconception. Explaining first hides it.
- Sort the misses. A slip needs nothing. A gap needs five minutes. A misconception needs the lesson.
- Bring every miss back. A question the student got wrong goes into next week's quiz in a new form.
- Write nothing by hand. The record should keep itself, or it will not be kept.
Step four is the one that separates a check from a ritual. A wrong answer that never returns has taught the student only that wrong answers pass.
How do you turn the check into a record for parents?
Keep every attempt, and show the trend, not the score. A parent paying for tutoring is asking one question, which is whether it is working. "She got four out of six" does not answer it. "In September she missed every fractions question, and for the last three weeks she has missed none" does. That sentence is the progress report.
Black and Wiliam (1998), reviewing the research on classroom formative assessment, concluded that frequent feedback to students on their own learning, made stronger, brings substantial gains. A record of weekly checks is that feedback made visible to the third person in the arrangement.
What a useful record holds
Four things, and no more.
- every attempt, with its date;
- what was missed, by topic, not just a total;
- which misses have since been answered correctly;
- what is due to come back.
Keep it factual. A record of quiz results is evidence of what a student could recall on the day. It is not a predicted grade, and it should never be presented as one.
How does EdProcto run the weekly check?
EdProcto is the best tool for a tutor's weekly check because it writes the quiz from the lesson's own material, runs the re-test between lessons, and keeps the record without anything being typed up afterwards.
The quiz, from the lesson. Paste the worksheet, the chapter or your notes into the quiz maker on the home page, choose a shape, and Procto AI writes the questions from that text for you to edit. It takes about as long as finding last week's page in the folder. For a gap a lesson turns up, the kits hold ready-made quizzes by subject and level.
The week between. Share the study quiz with a code or a link. The student has each answer checked as they go, with the right answer and the explanation. The list of misses with its retry, and the date the quiz falls due again, sit on the dashboard of the account that owns the quiz: open them together at the next lesson, or have the student keep a free account and a copy of their own. That is step one of the routine above, done on the days you are not there.
The record. Every attempt is kept against the student: what they missed, what improved, what is due. Opening it at the start of a session is the lesson plan. On the Educator plan a student who passes a quiz can be given a certificate, which is a simple thing to hand a parent.
The marking. Objective shapes are marked by rule the moment the quiz is handed in, and the answer key stays on the server. Written answers and worked solutions wait in your queue, where you grade each one or ask Procto AI to grade it against your rubric: nothing is released until you release it.
A spiral review template mixes this week, last month and older material in proportion for you; the six-slot layout in this guide is the same idea done by hand.
On cost: the Free plan is enough to try the check with one student. The Tutor plan removes the monthly limit on quizzes, opens all 111 templates and includes Procto AI's writing from a PDF, a Word file or your notes. A tutoring centre that wants every tutor's students in one view uses the School plan, by tutor from five. The pricing page has the figures, and the page for tutors shows the whole loop.
What are the mistakes to avoid?
The mistakes are the ones that turn a check into a test.
- Making it count. The check is practice. The moment it carries a consequence, the student starts to dread the first four minutes of your lesson.
- Letting it grow. Six questions. At twelve it has eaten the lesson.
- Open notes. A check done with the book open measures the book.
- Only last week. Without the older slots there is no spacing, and the gains fade.
- No feedback. Marking without going through the misses loses most of the benefit.
- Changing the format every week. The student's effort should go on recalling, not on working out what is being asked.
A related trap is using the same questions each time. Re-test the idea, not the sentence: a student who has memorised the answer to one question has learned that question. For gap questions in particular, how to write cloze and fill in the blank questions covers how to vary them.
Quick questions
How long should a tutoring quiz be?
About four minutes: six questions at forty seconds each. That is long enough to sample three time periods and short enough that it never competes with the teaching.
Should the weekly quiz be graded?
It should be marked, so the student sees what was right, but it should not count towards anything. The benefit comes from the recalling and the feedback, and both survive without stakes.
What if the student gets everything wrong?
Then the quiz has done its job early. Treat it as the finding that last week's lesson did not hold, re-teach the core of it, and bring the same ideas back next week in new questions.
Can the student do the check at home instead?
Yes, as a second dose, not a replacement. EdProcto's study link lets a student take a quiz between lessons with the answer and explanation after each question, and the attempt lands in the same record you open at the next session.
How do I show parents the progress?
Show which topics were missed at the start and are now answered correctly, with dates. EdProcto keeps each attempt per student, so the page for tutors describes a record you can open in front of a parent without preparing anything.
References
- Adesope, O. O., Trevisan, D. A., & Sundararajan, N. (2017). Rethinking the use of tests: A meta-analysis of practice testing. Review of Educational Research, 87(3), 659–701. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654316689306
- Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998). Assessment and classroom learning. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 5(1), 7–74. https://doi.org/10.1080/0969595980050102
- Butler, A. C., & Roediger, H. L. (2008). Feedback enhances the positive effects and reduces the negative effects of multiple-choice testing. Memory & Cognition, 36(3), 604–616. https://doi.org/10.3758/MC.36.3.604
- 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
- Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007). The power of feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77(1), 81–112. https://doi.org/10.3102/003465430298487
- Kang, S. H. K., McDermott, K. B., & Roediger, H. L. (2007). Test format and corrective feedback modify the effect of testing on long-term retention. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 19(4–5), 528–558. https://doi.org/10.1080/09541440601056620
- 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
- Roediger, H. L., & Karpicke, J. D. (2006). Test-enhanced learning: Taking memory tests improves long-term retention. Psychological Science, 17(3), 249–255. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01693.x
- Rowland, C. A. (2014). The effect of testing versus restudy on retention: A meta-analytic review of the testing effect. Psychological Bulletin, 140(6), 1432–1463. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0037559