Little and often: why cramming doesn’t work
Three hours on one topic the night before? Feels like hard work. But three 20-minute goes spread over a few weeks will stick way better. Teachers call this spaced practice.
Why it works
When you come back to a topic after a gap, you’ve forgotten a bit. So you have to work to remember it, and that effort is what makes it last (see the forgetting curve). Cramming might get you through tomorrow’s test, but a week later it’s gone.
This isn’t just a theory. A 2025 study that pulled together loads of classroom experiments found students who spaced out their revision did clearly better than students who crammed the same amount.
The easy plan
- Revise a topic today.
- Quiz yourself on it after 1 day, 1 week and 1 month.
- Start every session with 5 minutes on an old topic.
💡 Don’t stress about the exact days. Research shows the perfect timetable doesn’t matter much. What matters is that you come back to it.
What a week could look like
- Mon: Learn density. Quick quiz on Energy from last month.
- Tue: Quiz on density. Learn internal energy.
- Thu: Quiz on internal energy. 3 Electricity questions from last week.
- Next Mon: Density again.
Use these on the site
- Revision activities: the free printable kit has a ‘come back to it’ tracker
- Revision checklist: colour it in, then re-colour it every two weeks
- Quizzes for your quick catch-ups
Where this comes from: Mawson and Kang (2025), a review of spaced practice in classrooms, summarised by ACU Inspire; Latimier, Peyre and Ramus (2021), a review of spaced self-testing.
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