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Many people can recall when they crammed for an upcoming test by spending a large number of hours in a row studying; this is a classic example of blocked practice. On the other hand, spaced practice is taking that time and dividing into multiple sessions that are spread out over time. The practice sessions are then spaced apart from each other.
For example, if a student has a number of vocabulary words to learn for an upcoming class. The information will stick better in the student's mind if they review those words three times,on three different occasions with a day or two break in between each session, compared to reviewing those words three times on the same day.
It is important to note that the reviewing/studying will take the same amount of time to complete, but one will occur lumped together and one will be spaced out. Just as important, the learning achievement has been shown to be much higher when the practice is spaced!
An example to highlight this is shared below:
In one study, high school students learned French vocabulary words via three classroom exercises that involved retrieving and using their knowledge of French: the exercises occurred back-to-back on the same day or they occurred once per day over three days.
Each lesson was 10 minutes long, so students either completed 30 minutes of exercises in one class session, or 10 minutes of exercises per day over three days. Several days after the lessons were completed, all of the students were given an unexpected test. Contrary to what we might expect, students who completed the exercises across three days performed better than the students who completed the exercises on the same day. In other words, even though the two groups of students spent the same amount of time learning the material, the group that spaced out that time over different days learned it significantly better.
Text and image from: https://pdf.retrievalpractice.org/SpacingGuide.pdf
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