As teachers, we are constantly seeking ways to make learning more durable and meaningful for our students. We want them to not just memorize facts for a test, but to fully understand and retain what they’ve learned over the long haul. Cognitive science offers a powerful toolkit of strategies to achieve this, and with the help of AI, implementing these strategies has never been easier. In this post, I will explore how to utilize AI to embed three of the most effective learning principles, interleaving, spaced practice, and retrieval, into your unit planning.

The Cognitive Science: A Quick Introduction

Before we dive into how we can integrate this altogether with the help of AI, let’s briefly define our key terms.

• Spaced Practice (or Distributed Practice): This is the opposite of cramming. Instead of massing learning into one long session, spaced practice involves spreading out study and retrieval opportunities over time. As Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark (2006) note, this simple shift from massed to spaced practice can have a significant impact on long-term retention.
• Retrieval Practice: This involves actively recalling information from memory, rather than passively reviewing it. The act of retrieving information strengthens the memory, making it easier to recall in the future. This is often referred to as the “testing effect” (Roediger & Karpicke, 2006).
• Interleaving: Instead of practicing one skill or concept at a time (blocked practice), interleaving involves mixing up different, but related, topics or skills. This forces the brain to work harder to distinguish between concepts and select the appropriate strategy, leading to deeper learning and improved transfer of skills.

These three strategies work in concert to manage the limitations of working memory and facilitate the transfer of information into long-term memory. When students engage in blocked practice (aka cramming), they can quickly overload their working memory. Spaced practice and retrieval combat the brain’s natural tendency to forget by forcing it to repeatedly find and reconstruct knowledge, which strengthens the neural pathways and encodes that information more permanently. Interleaving supports this process by creating what we call “desirable difficulties”; it makes the initial learning feel harder because the brain can’t go on autopilot. Instead, it must actively compare and contrast strategies, which leads to a more flexible and durable understanding stored in long-term memory.

Now, with this background in place, let’s discuss the planning and design process. Then, I will outline how we can use AI tools to support this process.

Step 1: Mapping the Curriculum and Identifying Gaps

To do this, begin by mapping out the key concepts for both units in a Google Doc your curriculum. A formative assessment needs to be designed at the start of the “Foundational Algebra Concepts” unit. It is needed because it may reveal significant gaps in students’ understanding of arithmetic and fractions. This is essential information; these are not just topics to be reviewed once and forgotten, but skills that need to be practiced consistently throughout both units.

Now, its time to build out the backwards plan with the relevant curriculum standards, such as the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics. These standards define the non-negotiable learning targets; it’s what students must remember and be able to do at the end of both units and beyond. Through using the standards to build out the summative assessments first, the you can establish a clear destination. Thus, the end goal, defined by proficiency on the standards, becomes the anchor for the entire backwards planning process. Every daily lesson, formative assessment, and practice activity is now intentionally designed to build the specific skills and conceptual understanding required for success on that final, standards-aligned assessment.

Step 2: Designing Assessments with Interleaving and Spaced Practice in Mind

With a clear understanding of the curriculum and student needs, you can design the summative assessments for both units. They then work backward to create formative assessments and daily practice activities. This is where the magic happens. Instead of focusing solely on the new concepts, its critical to intentionally interleave older material with new material. For example, when students are learning to solve one-step equations, their practice sets will also include problems that require them to apply their knowledge of fractions and arithmetic.

Illustrating Interleaved and Spaced Formative Assessments

The formative assessments for Monday and Tuesday are designed to be quick, low-stakes diagnostic tools. Each assessment intentionally interleaves new concepts with retrieval practice of previously learned material. On Monday, as students are introduced to solving one-step equations with addition, they are also required to retrieve their knowledge of order of operations and combining like terms. This mixing forces students to discriminate between problem types and strengthens long-term retention. Tuesday’s assessment continues this pattern, introducing solving with subtraction while pulling in prior knowledge of integer operations and the distributive property.

There are several ways these formative assessments can be implemented in a classroom. I believe these assessments are ideal for implementation using mini-whiteboards. The teacher can display one question at a time, have all students solve it on their boards, and then, on cue, have everyone hold up their boards. This allows for a rapid scan of the entire class’s understanding, making it easy to spot common errors and provide immediate, targeted feedback. For a digital approach, tools like Snorkl, Wayground, Pear Deck, and Nearpod serve as excellent digital mini-whiteboards. By pushing these questions out to student devices, you can collect responses in real-time, display anonymous answers to facilitate class discussion, and gather valuable data to inform the next steps in your instruction, all while keeping students actively engaged in the retrieval process.

Leveraging AI to Streamline the Process

Now, let’s look at how AI can be a powerful partner in this process. Here are some example power prompts that our Algebra 1 teacher could use to generate content that aligns with their instructional goals. For some of these power prompts, you may want to upload a picture of the types of problems you would like the AI to utilize to develop not only the backwards planner, but also the formative assessments with interleaved content.

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1. For In-Depth Curriculum Analysis and Diagnostic Planning

“Act as an expert instructional designer with a Ph.D. in cognitive science, specializing in mathematics education at the high school level. I am planning an Algebra 1 unit on ‘Solving Multi-Step Linear Equations.’ My students have just completed a unit on ‘Foundational Algebra Concepts,’ but formative data shows lingering difficulties with the distributive property when negative integers are involved, and operations with fractions.

Your task is to produce a Pre-Unit Analysis Briefing structured as follows:

1. Prerequisite Knowledge Deconstruction: Break down the core skill of ‘solving multi-step linear equations’ into its most granular prerequisite skills. List them in a logical learning sequence.
2. Cognitive Load Prediction: Based on the identified prerequisites and common student errors, identify the top 3-5 potential points where students are most likely to experience high cognitive load or make critical errors. For each point, provide a brief explanation grounded in cognitive science (e.g., “Working memory overload when tracking multiple negative signs during distribution”).
3. Diagnostic Question Generation: For each predicted cognitive load point, generate two distinct diagnostic questions you would use on a pre-assessment. These questions should be designed to precisely reveal a student’s specific misunderstanding.
4. Strategic Scaffolding Suggestions: Based on this analysis, recommend two high-impact scaffolding strategies to proactively address the predicted difficulties during the upcoming unit.”

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2. For Generating High-Quality Interleaved Practice Sets

“Generate a 12-problem practice worksheet for an Algebra 1 class titled ‘Mixed Practice: One and Two-Step Equations.’ The primary goal of this worksheet is to use interleaving to strengthen students’ ability to discriminate between different problem types and apply appropriate solution strategies.

Adhere to the following constraints:

• Problem Distribution:
  • 4 problems must be one-step equations.
  • 5 problems must be two-step equations.
  • 3 problems must require students to first use the distributive property or combine like terms before solving (retrieval from Unit 1).
• Number Complexity: Ensure a mix of integer, decimal, and fraction coefficients and constants throughout the worksheet to provide spaced practice on these foundational skills. At least 4 problems must involve fractions.
• Randomization: The problem types must be completely randomized to maximize the interleaving effect. Do not group them by type.
• Format:
  • Provide the worksheet first.
  • Follow with a detailed answer key that shows not just the final answer, but also the step-by-step solution for each problem.”

3. For Creating a Weekly Spaced Retrieval Plan

“Create a 5-day sequence of ‘Do Now’ retrieval practice activities for the start of an Algebra 1 class. The class is in Week 2 of the ‘Solving Two-Step Equations’ unit. The goal is to provide spaced practice on concepts from the previous unit (‘Foundational Algebra Concepts’) and the first week of the current unit.

The sequence should follow a principle of increasing difficulty and decreasing scaffolding throughout the week.

For each day (Monday through Friday), provide the following:

1. The ‘Do Now’ Question(s): 2-3 questions per day.
2. A Rationale: A brief (1-2 sentence) explanation for why these specific questions were chosen for this particular day, referencing concepts like ‘retrieving foundational skills,’ ‘interleaving with recent concepts,’ or ‘increasing desirable difficulty.'”

Conclusion: Next Steps

Integrating the principles of interleaving, spaced practice, and retrieval into your daily instruction might seem like a significant shift, but it begins with small, intentional steps. Your journey starts with a fresh review of your curriculum. Look at your units and curriculum and identify the foundational concepts that students consistently need to practice. The next important step is to diagnose prior knowledge, not just at the beginning of a unit, but continuously throughout each unit with low-stakes formative assessments with interleaved content in each. This data is your guide.

This is where the power of AI becomes a transformative tool if utilized correctly. You can begin crafting sophisticated prompts, like the ones we’ve explored as worked examples, to generate targeted practice problems and assessments. For even greater precision, you can upload your curriculum maps, standards, or even anonymized summaries of student performance data to get AI-powered support that is tailored to your specific classroom context and grade level. It will take practice, but the goal is for you to take these concepts and integrate them directly into your long-term planning. Remember, this is a dynamic process. As you gather formative assessment data over the course of a week, you can change your planning with the help of AI and redevelop the interleaved content based on how your students are performing, ensuring that your instruction is always responsive, strategic, and effective.

Last, and most important, use your professional judgement. AI may make errors and hallucinate. Therefore, it is essential to use your best professional judgement when you are doing work like we have discussed in this post. Do not take yourself out as the final decision-making in your long term and short term planning processes.

References

Kirschner, P. A., Sweller, J., & Clark, R. E. (2006). Why minimal guidance during instruction does not work: An analysis of the failure of constructivist, discovery, problem-based, experimental, and inquiry-based teaching. Educational Psychologist, 41(2), 75-86.

Roediger, H. L., & Karpicke, J. D. (2006). The power of testing memory: Basic research and implications for educational practice. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 1(3), 181-210.