Interleaving
Mix topics in one session — don’t block them.
What the Research Says
Most students revise by blocking — an hour on participation, an hour on values, an hour on hosting events. It feels productive and the topic seems clear by the end. Interleaving is the opposite: you jump between topics inside a single session. It feels worse at the time, and you’ll make more mistakes. But when the real exam arrives, you will be dramatically better at knowing which idea a question is testing — and that is usually the hardest part of the scenario-based Section B questions.
Evidence Base
| Study | Finding | Impact |
|---|---|---|
| Rohrer & Taylor (2007) | Students who interleaved topics scored 43% higher on delayed tests than blocked-practice students. | Same time spent — huge difference in exam performance. |
| Birnbaum et al. (2013) | Interleaved learners felt LESS confident during practice but performed BETTER in the test. | If revision feels too easy, interleave. |
| Bjork & Bjork (2011) | Desirable difficulties — including interleaving — create durable long-term learning at the cost of short-term performance. | Short-term struggle is the price of long-term gain. |
| Taylor & Rohrer (2010) | Benefit was largest when topics looked superficially similar — students learnt to DISTINGUISH them. | Most useful where students confuse related ideas. |
Step-by-Step Method
- 1Pick 3–5 related topics — topics that share a paper, a theme, or a question type. Similar enough that students confuse them.
- 2Make a mixed problem set — 10–15 questions drawn from all the topics. Don’t label which topic each question belongs to.
- 3Attempt each question cold — the first step is identifying what’s being asked. That identification is the skill you’re training.
- 4Mark after every question — note which topic area each one was. Pay attention to mis-identifications — those are the highest-value gaps.
- 5Rebuild a new mixed set tomorrow — same topics, different questions, different order. Over time, misclassifications drop.
- 6Expect to feel worse than blocked practice — that’s the right feeling. Your exam self will thank you.
Mix questions from the seven sporting values, the Olympic and Paralympic values, sportsmanship versus gamesmanship, and etiquette in one 40-minute session. Write 12 questions on separate slips: three from each area, shuffled. Before each question, ask yourself: “Is this about a named sporting value, an Olympic or Paralympic value, or about behaviour during play?” Students frequently confuse ‘Tolerance and Respect’ (one sporting value) with ‘Respect’ (one Olympic value) — the identification exercise in revision prevents losing marks on what should be easy questions.
Mix questions from barriers to participation, factors affecting popularity, and the hosting legacy of major events in one session. A scenario question such as “Ferndale Rovers FC is hosting a community open day. How might this help increase participation in their area?” draws on barrier solutions AND popularity factors simultaneously — exactly what a 6-mark ‘discuss’ question demands. Blocked revision never practises this combination. Interleaving does.
Common Pitfalls
- Interleaving before you know the basics. You need to know each topic individually first. Use interleaving once you’ve studied all four topic areas — not as a first-pass strategy.
- Giving up because it feels hard. Difficulty during interleaved practice is the signal it’s working. Persist.
- Mixing unrelated topics. Interleaving works best when the topics are related enough to be confused. Mix topics within the same exam — user groups, barriers, popularity factors — not with unrelated subjects.
- Not checking mis-identifications. The mistake is the data. If you mislabelled a question as being about ‘values’ when it was about ‘etiquette’, that confusion is exactly what needs fixing.
When to Use This
Start interleaving once you have studied all four topic areas at least once. In the final six weeks before the exam, replace most blocked revision with interleaved mixed sets. Particularly powerful the week before the exam when you want to simulate the scrambled order questions appear in on the actual paper.