Spaced Practice Strategies

There are several ways that you can introduce interleaving/spaced practice into your classroom THIS WEEK!

Fast Fours

An easy way to start having your students do spaced practice without turning your course upside down is to give them "fast fours" as entry cards or review problems. There is no change to the structure of your class, or the order in which you present material.

A "fast four" is four quick review questions on any topic covered over the past two years of curriculum:

Above is an example of a fast four for grade 10 academic math. Two problems are grade 10 curriculum, while two are from the grade 9 curriculum. Thanks to Sheri Hill, Lindsay Kueh, and Adrian Rawle of the Halton District School Board for the image.

The goal of fast fours is to:

• practice basic skills on a regular basis (skills that show up across units)
• practice recently-acquired skills (within a current unit)
• practice "expired" skills (specific to a past unit)

Taking up the fast fours in class - right after they are completed - gives students the opportunity to engage in math talk with other students, and gives them immediate feedback on their work. This also gives students the opportunities to see connections between different topics or strands.

Fast fours can be done once, twice, or three times a week, depending on how you set up your class. Whatever you choose, consistency is key - the more practice students have at retrieving skill sets, the more comfortable they will become with problem solving.

Lagged Homework

Like fast fours, lagged homework does not require you to change the structure of content delivery in your course. However, the practice tasks you give students (either in-class or for homework) DOES change in structure.

In short, lagged homework is the practice of assigning homework (or independent practice, if you don't typically assign homework) that not only reflects what you are currently doing in class, but also what you have already covered in past classes. There are a few models for doing this:

Now-and-Then

Now-and-Then lagged homework completely separates what the students are currently doing in class, with what they are practicing independently. For instance, all homework assigned this week might be on topics that were covered in class last week.

Benefits to doing this include extending students' exposure to concepts over time, allowing them to see connections between what they have been learning, and what they are currently doing in class. It also nicely differentiates - giving more time to struggling students to solidify concepts, while allowing stronger students to be more engaged in the more advanced topics currently being covered in class.

This structure comes from a post by Henri Picciotto - you can read more on it here.

2-4-2

This is a more layered way of giving homework, that involves assigning:

• 2 questions from today's lesson
• 4 questions from previous lessons:
  • 1 from the previous class
  • 1 from the previous week
  • 1 from earlier in the course
  • 1 from last year's course
• 2 higher level thinking questions, that could include:
  • Conceptual questions
  • Reasoning
  • Explaining an answer
  • Problem solving

As with fast fours, consistency is the key to having students benefit from lagged homework. While students might struggle initially with having to "reach back" and access prior knowledge, this too is a skill, and will get easier in time.

The 2-4-2 structure comes from a post by Steve Leinwand - you can read more on it here.

Take some time to create either some fast four entry cards, OR a lagged homework schedule, for one of your classes.

The following links might be useful:

• Curriculum expectations (if you are reaching back into the previous year, or planning a unit)
  • Grade 1-8
  • Grade 9-10
  • Grade 11-12
• Template for a fast four entry card
• Template for 2-4-2 homework schedule

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