Spaced Practice
Overview
Spaced practice is a learning strategy that deliberately spaces out learning or study sessions over varying periods of time, with the purpose of increasing retention, understanding, and long-term knowledge acquisition. Often called ‘distributed learning' or ‘distributed practice', this spacing effect can benefit learning across content areas, and can support studying practices as well as other forms of learning. Providing repeated practice opportunities that are spaced apart in time is more effective than the same number of practice opportunities closer together in time. The mental breaks between learning sessions may support students' Attention and create opportunities for memories to better consolidate into memory, while increasing the number of repetitions across different time points or contexts can create more memory cues, supporting encoding and retrieval from Long-term Memory. The time between learning sessions should be long enough to make retrieval effortful but not so long as to make retrieval unsuccessful, and can vary between seconds to months depending on content and context.
Example: Use This Strategy In in the Classroom
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Additional Resources
Additional examples, research, and professional development. These resources are possible representations of this strategy, not endorsements.
Factors Supported by this Strategy
More Instructional Approaches Strategies
Read-alouds are an important part of developing young learners' foundational reading skills, and can occur both in the classroom and at home with the family, supporting the development of a strong Home Learning Environment.
Retrieval practice requires students to access information, or get information “out” from Long-term memory in order to support better retention and understanding.
A strengths-based approach is one where educators intentionally identify, communicate, and harness students' assets, across many aspects of the whole child, in order to empower them to flourish.
