Primary education and physical education

Note: Students should not be punished for not following their study schedules. This merely presents an opportunity to reflect and adjust.

2. Formative assessments

Encourage formative assessment strategies such as cumulative tests or frequent, low stakes quizzes to support regular check-ins and reflections.
Formative assessments require changes in study habits and make distributed practice essential, ultimately leading to better learning.
Teachers should begin each class with a review exercise or a small quiz -- preferably written, not multiple choice -- to encourage distributed practice and retrieval. The subsequent results can help teachers assess knowledge gaps and figure out where to focus future efforts.
Regular formative assessments help students secure items in memory and improve future knowledge recall.

3. Cumulative assignments

Distributive practice works best with cumulative, dynamic projects that include topics from multiple units.

An example of a final cumulative assignment that includes multiple components. Source: Teaching With a Mountain View
Homework requires students to retrieve what they learned earlier, creating additional layers of meaning in new material that connect to old material. This allows for greater retention and seamless distributed practice.
A math test could require written answers that connect back to an earlier English unit, or an art project could require knowledge of previous science units. The possibilities are endless, with many ways for teachers to extract the most meaning out of cumulative assignments.
Teachers might consider the following questions when creating cumulative assignments:

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  How do the themes in your current novel relate to a previous book?
  
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  What should students remember about a prior unit that would help them with the current one?
  
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  What concepts overlap between given subjects?
  
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  How can you build upon learnings with new information?