Spaced learning advocates say it is the key to creating meaningful, long-lasting knowledge – but what does the wider research say, and how can it be used in the classroom?
Spaced learning - also known as distributed practice - is an approach designed to improve retention of information by getting the brain to return to, review and consolidate information over extended periods.
This means that the teaching of a new skill or concept happens at intervals, spaced apart to encourage children to recall what they’ve learned and commit it to long-term memory. This is in contrast to traditional “massed” or “clustered” practice, in which pupils cover new learning in a single lesson, or where revision focuses only on one subject topic in a single block of time.
Advocates of spaced learning argue that it improves both memory and understanding, as the brain is able to consolidate information through repetition. It involves thinking about ideas in different ways at different times and making connections between different concepts.
Helping students to understand how spaced learning works and to plan their study schedule across the year for maximum benefit.
Revisiting old topics alongside new ones in class to encourage interleaving, in which students explore the similarities and differences between ideas.
Giving frequent low-stakes quizzes with questions taken from old and new material, to enable students to engage in retrieval practice and to encourage them to keep studying previously explored topics.
Setting homework assignments that revisit old topics to space out learning and allow the students time to practise what they know independently.
She explained that long-term learning for this could be improved if practice is broken down into “short, 10-minute sessions over a number of days and weeks, rather than spending a few days looking at this intensively and then only revisiting this when children come to look at the concept of time again, 12 months later”.
The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) is an independent charity dedicated to breaking the link between family income and educational achievement.
To achieve this, it summarises the best available evidence for teachers; its Teaching and Learning Toolkit, for example, is used by 70 per cent of secondary schools.
The charity also generates new evidence of “what works” to improve teaching and learning, by funding independent evaluations of high-potential projects, and supports teachers and senior leaders to use the evidence to achieve the maximum possible benefit for young people.
