Repetition-based worksheet homework frustrates teachers and students alike. It often struggles to get results and you never know who's doing the work. Plus, the feedback to students comes very, very late.

There's an alternative. Try the Fast and the Curious EduProtocol, an idea from Marlena Hebern and Jon Corippo's book, "The EduProtocol Field Guide." It provides students with timely feedback. It's fun. It gives great repetitions. In short: it works!

What are EduProtocols?

EduProtocols are structured, flexible lesson frameworks -- "lesson frames" -- designed to make classroom instruction more engaging, efficient, and effective. They were created by Jon Corippo and Marlena Hebern, both former educators and leaders in educational technology.

Instead of being specific lesson plans for particular topics, EduProtocols are repeatable activity templates that teachers can use across grade levels and subject areas. The idea is that once students learn the protocol, they can focus more on the content and skills rather than the structure of the activity.

EduProtocols are:

• Reusable: Teachers can apply them over and over with different content.
• Student-centered: They emphasize collaboration, critical thinking, creativity, and communication.
• Efficient: They cut down on prep time for teachers and maximize time for student learning.
• Flexible: They work for multiple subjects and grade levels, from elementary to high school.

Some examples of other EduProtocols include (with links to additional resources):

• Iron Chef: A collaborative group project where each student contributes a part to a shared presentation.
• Cyber Sandwich: A partner activity where students research, summarize, and share information with each other.
• Sketch and Tell: Students draw a concept and explain it to the class.
• Thin Slides: Students each create a single-slide presentation with minimal text, then quickly present.

What is Fast and Curious?

The Fast and the Curious is one of the most popular EduProtocols, especially for building fluency with facts, vocabulary, or quick recall skills. It’s a high-energy, short-cycle review protocol that helps students learn fast — and keeps them motivated by treating practice like a game.

Here's why it works:

• It’s short and repeatable — takes 10–15 minutes, so it fits into almost any lesson.
• It leverages gamified tools students enjoy.
• It creates a safe cycle of failure and growth: mistakes aren’t the end, just the start of improvement.
• It builds confidence as students see scores go up within the same class period.

The focus is: "test light, feedback, test again" with an emphasis on repetitions to make permanent.

Often, the Fast and Curious EduProtocol is best for learning content that needs short, repeated exposures and quick recall. So that could include ...

• vocabulary words
• states/countries and capitals
• elements on the periodic table
• grammar rules
• order of operations practice in math
• historical dates and events
• human body systems and functions
• verb conjugations in world languages

Why would I use the Fast and Curious EduProtocol?

Well, for one, because it gives your students a ton of repetitions. Repetitions make permanent, and if there's certain content that students just need to internalize, Fast and Curious does a great job.

Second, it's fun! Often, the apps students are using to get repetitions are game-based. 

Third, it rewards and celebrates improvement. With each practice round, students can see their progress -- and measure it against other practice rounds that day (as well as on previous days). The improvement is tangible, and it motivates them to keep going.

Why wouldn't I use the Fast and Curious EduProtocol?

It's not perfect for everything. 

In fact, if you need to have in-depth discussions about something, this won't do it.

If you want to get students thinking critically, Fast and Curious isn't built to do that. It will equip your students with the skills and facts they might need to build to those higher levels of thinking, but it isn't made for that.

What are the steps of the Fast and Curious EduProtocol?

Here are the core components of the Fast and Curious EduProtocol ...

1. First try

The teacher gives students a quick assessment-type activity, but it's not formally assessing how much students know. Students often do this first quiz or activity without direct instruction from the teacher. It lets students "give it a go," trying to use context clues or previous understanding to figure out the answers to the new material. 

Tools to use -- The Fast and the Curious applies to any kind of instant "check for understanding" assessment tool, like: Kahoot with groups, Wayground (formerly Quizizz), Formative to draw answers, Socrative with open ended questions, etc. The benefit of using these tech-based assessment apps is the quick data it provides and the instant feedback for students. (More on that in a moment.) 

Why this works -- It plays into the idea that so many of your student "video gamers" will understand. When you get a new game, do you read the instructions first ... or do you try to figure it out on your own? Your students might just appreciate getting to give it a try before being taught formally. (I know mine did.)

2. Quick feedback

This is where Fast and Curious SLAYS traditional paper worksheets. Immediately, students see whether their answers were right or wrong, which beats the feedback loop of grading paper worksheets (one to three days before students get them back). Plus, the teacher gets to see -- in aggregate -- what questions students are missing and which ones they're getting right. It lets the teacher provide instant, data-driven feedback to students so they can correct course right away.

Types of quick feedback -- Teachers can always re-teach material that students seem to be struggling with. They can provide additional examples. If students are learning new vocabulary words, mnemonic devices to help them remember can be helpful. Even having students explain their own processes or ways of remembering and solving problems can be helpful to classmates.

Why this works -- So much of the research on best practices for effective feedback point to the importance of timely feedback. The teacher AND the students are receiving quick data to course correct. This drives quick improvement.

3. A second try

After students have received feedback and coaching from the teacher, they do the exact same quick assessment game they did before -- for a second time. 

Why this works -- It lets students apply their feedback and new strategies immediately, helping to lock them in long-term. Plus, it provides confidence, showing them that they can indeed get to the correct answer.

How long do I do the Fast and Curious EduProtocol?

According to EduProtocols author Jon Corippo:

"I'm going to go until we hit 95 percent. On a tough week, that might be on Thursday on the second round. On an easy week, that might be Tuesday on the first round. I'm getting more than one day back!"

Here's what he means by that ...

• Each day, students do the first try, get feedback, and then do a second try (as outlined above).
• Each day, when they do the first try, the teacher keeps an eye on the overall score of the class.
• If, eventually, the students reach 95 percent as a class on that first try, that's a good indicator that the class has reached collective proficiency on that material. 

In fact, when many teachers reach 95 percent accuracy as a class, they'll give all students an A in the gradebook for that particular task and move on. Here's why ...

• It's showing proficiency as well (if not better) than sending worksheets home would.
• Students are receiving better timely feedback than they would with paper worksheets.
• The game-based assessment app is doing all of the auto-grading for them.
• If the teacher wants, they can go into the individual student data, find specific students who haven't shown a level of proficiency, and follow up with them independently.

Where can I learn more about the Fast and Curious EduProtocol?

• How to Use the Fast and the Curious EduProtocol (Classtime)
• EduProtocol: Fast and the Curious (EdGenie)

And if you love EduProtocols, you might check out ...

• Transform Your Classroom with EduProtocols, ELA edition (Ditch That Textbook)
• 10+ FREE EduProtocol templates + ideas for using them in class (Ditch That Textbook)

BONUS: EduProtocols Plus is a membership with tons of resources, live events, streaming video, and more.