We Can’t Afford to Ignore Spaced Learning

Does this sound familiar?

“It's October 1. We're going to start learning our multiplication facts, boys and girls. By Thanksgiving, you'll be multiplying like pros and ready to tackle whatever comes next.”

This instructional approach, known as “massed learning”—where students practice one concept several times over a short period and then move on to a new skill—isn’t effective or efficient. It doesn’t help students maintain and retain knowledge.

As the school year draws to a close, teachers must review topics covered earlier to prepare for year-end testing. However, many students struggle to recall content learned at the beginning of the year, forcing teachers to spend valuable instructional time re-teaching rather than reviewing. Then students become frustrated when they don't recognize the content they studied months ago and need more time to relearn it.

Learning retention is particularly important in math, as mathematical concepts build upon themselves, both within the school year and from year to year. Students learn content sequentially, and that content gets progressively more complex. For example, you can’t master multiplication if you struggle with addition.

How do we avoid this phenomenon when most elementary school math curricula approach teaching and learning the one-and-done way?

?Spaced Learning Outperforms Massed Learning

We don't build skills in art, language or sports by following massed learning. For example, language apps ask learners to practice the same skills for five to ten minutes daily. Learning something in one concentrated session won't make you an expert, nor will you retain the information if you fail to revisit it.

?Our brains need time for learning to settle and consolidate, allowing information to move from short-term to long-term memory. Then, we have to be able to recall the correct information. (Sometimes we recall an error initially because our wiring wasn't straight yet.) But if we do that recall practice enough, we can get the wiring right and move on to the next skill.

Research shows that spaced learning—distributing short teaching lessons on a given topic over time—allows teachers to review previously taught content by extending and applying the concepts in new contexts.

Using my earlier example, spaced learning would allow students to encounter multiplication in small chunks, organized by fact families or by strategy, allowing them the time to master each smaller content segment before moving on to the next multiplication facts or related division facts.

Research Shows Spaced Learning Works

Studies prove that spaced learning helps students learn faster and retain information better, according to researcher Dr. John Hattie. In our book Visible Learning for Mathematics, we summarize studies that include more than 165,000 students—showing spaced learning practices yield higher learning and retention rates. In other words, students who are taught using the spaced learning approach can increase their pace of learning by 50%—and realize up to 1.5 years of learning in one year. This is particularly important for students who are not yet working at grade level.

Some Spaced Learning Approaches Work Better Than Others

The way spaced learning curricula are designed and practiced matters, too. Hattie and other researchers suggest that the frequency of opportunity for practice increases the learning rate in a spaced learning model.

Students don't necessarily need to spend inordinate amounts of time practicing. They do need opportunities to demonstrate what they know and to receive feedback on their work. Researchers John Donovan and David Radosevich suggest that spaced learning helps students retain learning and also helps them make connections between what they already know and the new concepts they’re learning. More complex concepts and tasks may require longer periods of deliberate practice than simpler ones, too.

Unfortunately, most math curricula fail to follow this evidence-based learning approach. This leads administrators and teachers to grow frustrated with lessons that do not support long-term learning. Stubbornly low math achievement test scores frustrate them even more.

ORIGO Stepping Stones 2.0: Curricula Incorporates Spaced Learning

Looking back, as a young teacher I used snippets of spaced learning theory in my practice. Teaching math and science, I recognized opportunities to integrate math skills into science lessons, providing applications for measurement and graphing in small doses over time, even though the content resided solely in our math textbook. ?However, for many educators, the reality is that reorganizing curricula to align with spaced learning models isn't feasible due to constraints in time and flexibility.

Recognizing this challenge, ORIGO Education designed its Stepping Stones 2.0 curriculum grounded in spaced learning research, with the goal of empowering educators to help students "maintain and retain" throughout the school year and beyond.

Using ORIGO’s four-stage approach to instruction, teachers can play a pivotal role in developing students’ fluency of skills over time. They:

• Introduce the skill or strategy using concrete and pictorial models. These contexts give students meaning and relevance.
• Reinforce through games and activities, helping students internalize their thinking. Teachers then help students connect visual models to symbolic representations in the practice stage, a missing link that’s often overlooked.
• Practice skills using symbols. Teachers help students develop accuracy and speed during this stage through frequent, short practice sessions.
• Extend skills to new problems that include larger numbers.

By embracing a math curriculum that allows teachers to introduce concepts in small doses, we can make their jobs easier and support student learning through practices that help them better absorb concepts, retain information, and acquire new skills

Changing the Way We Look at Math Instruction

I'm deeply committed to educating school leaders about spaced learning and the positive effect it has on student achievement, particularly in mathematics, a subject essential for all.

By adopting spaced learning, we can make math more accessible for students and begin to move the performance needle forward. By breaking down instruction into smaller chunks of information and encouraging regular skill practice, spaced learning relieves the pressure on students to grasp new concepts instantly.

We can’t afford to ignore spaced learning. By equipping educators with evidence-based tools and practices to teach math in a way that resonates with students, they can focus on teaching rather than reteaching, and boost achievement for all students.