🧒 In one sentence
Coming back to a lesson the next day, a few days later and a week later, with the book closed, makes it last far longer than one long session the night before.
Knew it on Friday, gone by Monday
On Friday your child knew all ten spelling words. You checked: every single one, perfect. On Monday, half of them have vanished. Nothing went wrong over the weekend. This is simply how memory works.
New memories fade quickly at first, then more slowly. Psychologists call this the forgetting curve, and it was first measured by Hermann Ebbinghaus in the 1880s. The steepest drop comes in the first day or two after learning.
The usual answer is to repeat the material many times in one go, usually the night before a test. It works for the next morning, and then the curve takes over again. There is a better way, and it doesn't take more time. It just uses the same time differently.
That way is called spaced practice (also spaced repetition or distributed practice): coming back to the same material several times, with gaps in between.
If you haven't read it yet, start with our guide to the illusion of learning. It explains why cramming and rereading feel so convincing.
What spaced practice is (and isn't)
Spaced practice is not studying more. It's spreading the same amount of studying over several shorter sessions.
- Massed practice: one 45-minute session the evening before the test.
- Spaced practice: three 15-minute sessions spread across the week.
Same total time, very different results a few weeks later.
Spacing also isn't the same as plain repetition. Saying a word ten times in a row is repetition. Coming back to that word tomorrow, then again in a few days, is spacing. The time gap is what makes the difference: by then the memory has started to fade, and pulling it back makes it stronger.
Each review pulls the memory back up, and after every review it fades more slowly. That's why the gaps can grow longer each time. (A simplified illustration, not real data.)
What the research shows
The (The finding that we remember things better when we study them in several sessions spread out over time than in one long session.) is one of the most studied findings in psychology. One large review pulled together 317 experiments from 184 articles (Cepeda et al., 2006). It also found that the best timing between sessions grows with how long you need to remember: a short gap for next week's quiz, a longer one for the end of the year.
It works for children, not just university students. In a Canadian study, 39 ten-year-olds learned eight new words during regular lessons (Sobel, Cepeda and Kapler, 2011). Some words were reviewed straight away, others a week later, and five weeks on everyone was tested.
Five weeks later, how did the words reviewed after a week compare with the words reviewed straight away?
Make your prediction, then tap an answer to check!
Other studies point the same way:
- Five to seven year-olds, science lessons. Children who had lessons about food chains spread over time were better at applying what they learned to new examples than children who had all the lessons at once (Vlach and Sandhofer, 2012).
- Across ages. Spacing benefits have been shown in elementary and middle school children, and even in preschoolers (Carpenter et al., 2012).
Sleep: the night shift
Reviews spread over several days have a helper working in between: sleep. While we sleep, the brain replays what we learned that day and strengthens it, and it seems to favour what it expects to need again.
In one study, sleep boosted memory for word pairs only when people knew a test was coming (Wilhelm et al., 2011). In another, people who learned foreign words in the evening and relearned them after a night's sleep needed half as much practice, and remembered much more a week and even six months later, than people who relearned them the same day (Mazza et al., 2016). It works for children too: 10 to 14 year-olds remembered about 20% more word pairs after 12 hours that included sleep than after 12 hours awake (Potkin and Bunney, 2012).
Spacing helps even without sleep, but gaps that include a night get an extra boost.
A simple review schedule
There is no single perfect schedule, so don't worry about exact days. A pattern that works well for most school material is to review soon, then leave longer and longer gaps:
| Review | When | How long |
|---|---|---|
| Learn it | Day 1, in class or with homework | as usual |
| 1st review | the next day | 5 minutes |
| 2nd review | about 3 days later | 5 minutes |
| 3rd review | about a week later | 5 to 10 minutes |
| 4th review | about two weeks later | 5 to 10 minutes |
If a review goes badly, that's useful information, not failure: shorten the next gap. If it goes perfectly, the next gap can be longer. The ideal timing is just long enough that your child has started to forget, but not so long that they have completely forgotten.
One rule makes every review count: close the book first. A review means trying to recall, then checking, not reading the page again. Spacing and self-testing work best together, and our 2-minute check is an easy way to run each review.
How to use the free review calendar
- After school, write down one thing learned today. "Times table of 7", "Parts of a flower", "Past simple of irregular verbs".
- Fill in the review dates across the row: next day, in 3 days, in a week, in 2 weeks.
- On each review day, close the book and try. Say it, write it, or draw it.
- Mark how it went with a smiley: remembered, partly, forgot.
- Forgot? Look at the material again and add an extra review in a day or two.
Pin the calendar on the fridge or next to the desk. Five minutes a day is enough, and children like ticking off the boxes.
✂️ Free printable
Spaced review calendar
1 page · 167 KB
One landscape A4 page with eight rows: write what was learned, the four review dates, and a smiley for each try. Print a fresh one every couple of weeks.
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See what you’ll get →Spacing in everyday homework
You don't need extra worksheets. Spacing works with what your child is already learning.
Old cards come back on a schedule: tomorrow, this week, next week. The calendar on the fridge keeps track.
Spelling and vocabulary. Instead of practising the week's list every evening and then never again, mix in a few words from last week and the week before. A quick five-word quiz in a car or while waiting in the line is a great way to incorporate spacing.
Times tables and number facts. Once a table is "done", keep it alive: two or three older facts at the start of each homework session. A deck of flashcards with "this week" and "older" piles makes it easy, and our 12 tricks for learning multiplication tables give you plenty of quick questions to rotate.
Foreign languages. Words learned in September return in October. Flashcard apps for older children schedule reviews automatically; for younger children, a box of paper cards sorted into "tomorrow", "this week" and "next week" works just as well.
History, science and geography. After each lesson, write two or three key questions on a card. Before the next lesson on that subject, answer the old questions first. Before a test, the cards become a ready-made review.
Reading and stories. Ask your child to retell a book a few days after finishing it, and again a week later. Each retelling brings back details and connections.
The 2-minute warm-up
A good habit for any subject: start every homework session with two minutes on something from last week. Books closed, one quick question, then on to today's work.
How it looks at different ages
Elementary school (about 6 to 10). The adult makes the schedule. Keep reviews short, playful and spoken: a five-minute quiz game, "teach it to the dog", a drawing from memory. The paper calendar works well from about second grade, especially with stickers or smileys.
Middle school (about 11 to 14). This is the best age to hand over the calendar. Plan the first week together, then let your child fill it in. A useful question when a test is announced: "Which days will you review it before then?"
High school. Teenagers can plan reviews across all their subjects, and flashcard apps with built-in spacing (such as (A free flashcard app that works out when each card should come back, showing hard cards more often and easy ones less often.)) suit vocabulary-heavy subjects. The hardest part is starting early enough; a test date in the calendar with review days counted backwards helps.
University and adults. The longer you need to remember something, the longer the gaps can be. For a final exam months away, reviewing topics every week or two keeps them alive without much effort.
Common worries
"We don't have time." Spacing doesn't add time; it moves it. Three short reviews during the week replace one long, stressful evening before the test.
"My child gets bored repeating things." Change the format, not the material: a quiz in the car, a drawing, explaining it to a younger sibling, a quick game of "what's missing?". Short sessions also help; stop before boredom sets in.
"It feels harder than cramming." It should. Recalling something you have half-forgotten takes effort, and that effort is what makes the memory last. Researchers call it a desirable difficulty. A struggling review is a working review.
"The teacher only gives the test date a few days ahead." Spacing still helps: use the days you have. And the weekly habit of reviewing last week's lessons means your child is never starting from zero.
"Should we study late the night before the test?" Better not: sleep is part of studying. A short review in the evening, a full night's sleep and a quick check in the morning work better than staying up late, because cramming cuts the very sleep that locks the material in.
Key takeaways
- Children forget fastest in the first day or two after learning. That's normal, not a sign that something went wrong.
- Spaced practice spreads the same study time over several short sessions with gaps in between.
- A simple pattern: review the next day, after about 3 days, after a week and after two weeks.
- Close the book first: every review is a recall attempt, then a check, never just rereading.
- Sleep helps: gaps that include a night's sleep give memory an extra boost, so protect sleep before a test.
- Weave old material into everyday homework, starting each session with two minutes on last week's work.
Frequently asked questions
What's the best gap between reviews?
It depends on how long your child needs to remember. For a test next week, gaps of a day or two work well. For things to remember all year, gaps can stretch to a week or more (Cepeda et al., 2006).
Is spaced repetition only for memorising facts?
No. It helps with facts, vocabulary and number facts, but also with understanding: in the food chain study, young children who had spaced lessons were better at applying ideas to new examples (Vlach and Sandhofer, 2012).
Do we need an app?
No. A paper calendar or a box of index cards does the job. Apps help older students with large amounts of vocabulary.
If you'd like to help your child hold more in mind while they learn, our guide to improving your child's working memory has simple games for it, and Curious and Calm helps the whole school routine feel calmer.
Enjoy learning!
