Each week, the digital notice boards across our school offer useful tips drawn from neuroscience to help students stay on top of their revision, manage stress, and learn something new. One of these is “interleaving”, a highly effective study technique in which students mix different but related topics within a single study session.

It is best to choose topics that relate to the same subject—such as alternating between calculus and matrices in Further Maths—as this helps create “anchor points” to connect new information. Each time this information is revisited, it becomes more established in long-term memory.

“Interleaving” may feel challenging at first, but this is precisely why it is so useful. It differs from the traditional study method known as “blocking”, where a student focuses on only one topic at a time. While “blocking” may seem easier, it’s less effective for long-term retention because the brain is not actively challenged to switch between concepts and recognise patterns.

For best results, students should avoid mixing too many topics at once, as this can become overwhelming. Similarly, it is important to have a solid grasp of the basics before attempting to interleave a subject. Leaving too much time between sessions is also not advisable, as this increases the risk of forgetting information.

Instead, students should develop regular interleaving within their chosen subject. The extra effort greatly enhances memory retention and better prepares students for exam conditions. After all, exams are not structured in the precise order in which topics were taught, so we must train our brains to make links, and consistently put our knowledge storage and retrieval to the test.