Success in high school is not just about hard work: it’s about working smart, using proven strategies that boost learning, memory, and motivation. Here are 10 powerful tips, distilled from years of classroom experience and research-backed methods, to help students achieve their full potential.
Tip 1: Use Retrieval Practice with the P.O.W.E.R. Method
Retrieval practice strengthens memory and deepens understanding. The P.O.W.E.R. method offers a step-by-step approach:
Prime the mind with mind maps and summaries.
Organize thoughts using mnemonics, diagrams, and structured notes.
Wrestle with challenging recall questions in a low-stakes environment.
Evaluate progress using self-assessment tools like traffic lights or digital journals.
Reinforce learning through hands-on, real-world tasks.
Clarity in teaching is essential. Share resources before lessons, use simple and organized slides, and avoid overwhelming students with too much or irrelevant information. Speak clearly and slowly, reinforce key terms, and use everyday language to explain complex concepts. Focused activities and careful resource selection also boost lesson effectiveness.
Variety in lessons keeps students engaged. Incorporate games like Splat, Mystery Word, Bingo, and True or False Walls to reinforce key concepts in a fun and interactive way. These activities not only motivate students but also enhance their recall and application of knowledge.
Learning journals promote reflection and metacognition. Students can track their progress, note areas for improvement, and set goals. Journals also provide valuable feedback for teachers and encourage ownership of learning.
Instead of focusing on one topic at a time (blocked practice), interleave different topics and question types. This improves problem-solving skills and helps students see connections between concepts. Interleaving has been shown to enhance long-term retention and adaptability.
QLA allows students to analyze their performance question by question, identifying specific strengths and weaknesses. This targeted approach helps students focus their revision on areas that need the most improvement, leading to more efficient study habits.
Encourage students to assess their own and each other’s work. This develops critical thinking, helps them understand marking criteria, and builds a deeper awareness of quality work. When done correctly, it empowers students to take responsibility for their progress.
Timely, specific, and actionable feedback is key to student improvement. Focus on what the student did well, what needs to improve, and how to move forward. Feedback should be an ongoing dialogue, not a one-time event, and should encourage growth mindsets.
Teach students how to structure their notes and study materials. Tools like mind maps, graphic organizers, and timelines make complex information easier to understand and remember. Organized learning enhances clarity and confidence.
Richard’s Award-Winning Book for High School Teachers
Tip 10: Motivate Students with Positive Reinforcement
Motivation is crucial for high performance. Use praise, rewards, meaningful goals, and real-life relevance to inspire students. Show them how their learning connects to their future ambitions, and create an environment where effort is recognized and celebrated.
These strategies, when combined, create a powerful framework for academic success. By embedding these tips into daily teaching and learning routines, students can build the skills, mindset, and confidence they need to excel.
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In my twenty years of teaching, I’ve come across numerous pedagogical techniques designed to boost student learning, but few have been as transformative as interleaving. This technique, backed by cognitive science, has the power to enhance long-term retention and application of knowledge: yet it remains underutilised in many secondary school classrooms. Today, I want to explore generalisable rules for interleaving (a structured approach that any secondary school teacher can apply) and one that, to my knowledge, has never been formally outlined before.Out of all of the blog posts I have written to-date, this one has taken me the largest amount of time to research, collate and delineate. I hope that secondary school teachers everywhere will find this guide to be highly practical and transformative. A full bibliography of the research I have cited can be found at the end of this article.
What is Interleaving?
Let’s begin by first exploring this fundamental question: What is Interleaving?
Interleaving is a cognitive learning strategy that involves mixing different topics or types of problems within a single learning session, as opposed to traditional blocked practice, where students focus on one topic at a time before moving on to the next. Research suggests that interleaving improves students’ ability to discriminate between problem types, enhances problem-solving skills, and leads to stronger long-term retention (Rohrer & Taylor, 2007). As many of my readers will remember from an earlier blog post of mine, problem-solving is often a key characteristic of lessons in which deep learning (as opposed to surface learning) takes place.
From my own experience, I first stumbled upon the power of interleaving when preparing my Year 11 students for their IGCSE Maths exams. Rather than structuring revision lessons in the typical topic-by-topic format, I began mixing algebra, geometry, and statistics problems within the same lesson. Initially, students found this challenging, but over time, their ability to recall and apply concepts in different contexts improved dramatically. This worked particularly well when students had finished several topics during their revision sessions, prior to me bringing it all together within interleaved lessons.
The Science Behind Interleaving
Cognitive scientists suggest that interleaving works because it forces students to retrieve and apply knowledge in varied contexts, preventing passive learning and improving memory consolidation (Bjork & Bjork, 2011). A landmark study by Pan et al. (2019) found that interleaved practice led to better exam performance in secondary school students, particularly in subjects like mathematics and science where problem-solving skills are crucial.
Generalisable Rules for Interleaving in Secondary School Classrooms
Despite its effectiveness, interleaving can be difficult to implement without a structured approach. Based on research and my own classroom experiences, I propose the following generalisable rules for effective interleaving in secondary education:
#1: Mix, Don’t Isolate
Traditionally, subjects are taught in blocks, but interleaving requires deliberately mixing topics within lessons or across study sessions. For example:
In a Maths lesson, combine algebra, probability, and geometry problems instead of teaching them separately.
In Science, integrate questions on biology, chemistry, and physics in practice exercises.
In English, interleave different types of writing tasks (e.g. descriptive writing, persuasive essays, and analytical responses) within the same lesson.
In my experience, I have found that interleaving works best if you can connect the separate topics in some way, or if the topics themselves are closely related. In certain cases, project work in groups can lend itself well to interleaved exploration, provided that source material has been directly taught beforehand.
#2: Vary the Practice
Students should not only mix topics but also engage in different types of questions and formats. This can be achieved through:
Interleaved homework: Assign practice problems from multiple topics rather than focusing on just one.
Mixed-question assessments: Instead of unit-based tests, include questions from previous topics to reinforce cumulative learning. If you really must use unit tests, then try to include interleaved questions, or at least some questions that assess knowledge gained in previous units.
Diverse activities: Use a combination of retrieval tasks, discussion-based learning, and problem-solving exercises.
#3: Space it Out
Interleaving is most effective when combined with spaced practice (also known as distributed practice), where content is revisited periodically rather than crammed in one session. This can be structured as follows:
Weekly review sessions that incorporate topics from the past month.
Do Now tasks at the beginning of lessons that include mixed-topic retrieval questions. Live-quiz apps can be utilised if you wish to incorporate a more lively, competitive and upbeat way of implementing these.
Revision timetables that revisit concepts in a cyclic manner.
Learning journals that are filled in, and checked, on a regular basis.
For more information about the Spaced Practice Effect, and how to implement it (beyond the advice I have given in this blog post), then check out this excellent guide by Benjamin Keep.
#4: Scaffold the Difficulty
Interleaving is challenging, and students often find it frustrating at first. To ease them into it:
Start with low-stakes quizzes that mix concepts gradually.
Provide worked examples before asking students to attempt mixed questions.
Allow for collaborative problem-solving before independent practice.
Scaffolding is an interesting and distinct domain of pedagogy in its own right and must not be ignored when designing an interleaved curriculum. Within a lesson, or sequence of lessons, my suggestion for good implementation would be as follows:
Use direct instruction, starting easy then gradually increasing the level of ‘cognitive load‘. Unfortunately, direct instruction has been tarnished with a bad reputation in recent years due to the move towards ‘student-centered’ learning, exploration and phrases such as ” Don’t be a ‘sage on a stage'” and “Don’t ‘spoon feed’ the students” being bandied around school staff rooms (I’ve heard them all!). However, the research suggests that direct instruction, especially when the teacher is mindful of Dual Coding strategies, has a significant and positive effect on learning outcomes.
Go through interleaved worked examples.
Allow students to work in small groups to complete mixed questions.
Provide opportunities for independent practice.
#5: Explicitly Teach the Strategy
Students often resist interleaving because it feels harder than traditional blocked practice. However, just as with metacognitive strategies, we should be encouraging our learners to think about how they think. It’s crucial to explain:
Why it works: Share kid-friendly summaries of research evidence on its benefits (use this blog post if you wish).
How it mimics real-world application: In exams and real life, problems don’t come in neatly organised sets. If you are able to, then provide past-paper questions to demonstrate the fact that the students will be assessed, one day, in an interleaved way.
How to use it independently: Encourage students to interleave their own revision by mixing topics in flashcards, self-quizzes, and study sessions.
Interleaving in Action: My Experience
When I first implemented interleaving, I noticed initial pushback from students. They were used to structured, predictable learning sequences and found interleaved practice to be more demanding. However, after just a few weeks, their ability to transfer knowledge across topics improved significantly. By the time mock exams arrived, they were better equipped to handle unfamiliar questions and apply concepts in novel ways.
For example, in my IBDP Maths AI class several years ago, I introduced interleaved problem sets that combined differentiation, probability, and trigonometry in a single assignment. Students initially struggled but later reported that the varied practice helped them identify links between topics: a crucial skill for higher-order problem-solving.
Final Thoughts: A Call to Action
Interleaving is a powerful, research-backed technique that every secondary school teacher should consider. While it may require a shift in lesson planning, the long-term benefits in terms of deep learning, retention, and problem-solving ability are well worth the effort.
What are your thoughts on interleaving? Have you tried it in your classroom? Let me know in the comments!
Bibliography
Bjork, E. L., & Bjork, R. A. (2011). Making things hard on yourself, but in a good way: Creating desirable difficulties to enhance learning. Psychology and the Real World: Essays Illustrating Fundamental Contributions to Society, 56-64.
Pan, S. C., Tajran, J., Lovelett, J., Osuna, J., & Rickard, T. C. (2019). Does interleaved practice enhance foreign language learning? The effects of training schedule on vocabulary learning. Journal of Educational Psychology, 111(8), 1172–1181.
Rohrer, D., & Taylor, K. (2007). The shuffling of mathematics problems improves learning. Instructional Science, 35(6), 481-498.
