When I asked teachers to define interleaving for Chapter 4 of Smart Teaching, Stronger Learning, LC offered an image I keep coming back to: interleaving is the crazy quilt pattern of learning. Each piece is unique, and together they make something beautiful. That image fits this week’s conversation, too. Each teacher brought a different piece, and the best part was watching them stitch those pieces together by replying to one another. Defining it in our own words Each prompt in our book club begins the same way: close the book and retrieve. This week, teachers first recalled spaced practice from Chapter 3 and then described interleaving. That meant they had to compare two ideas side by side, which is interleaving in action. Their definitions were sharp. SM described interleaving as mixing concepts and skills as we encounter them in the real world, rather than practicing them in blocks. MJH offered a distinction I’ll be borrowing for a long time: spacing spirals back to ideas over time, while intentionally comparing and contrasting them. JS said interleaving helps students notice differences and similarities and explore variations on a theme. And SS asked the question many of us were probably thinking. She understood how the two strategies differed in concept, but she is seeking to understand how they differ in practice. That honesty made the conversation better. Here’s a test that came out of it, and it’s one I now use when planning: Do students know which skill is coming next? If they do, the practice is blocked. If they have to figure it out, it’s interleaved. Spacing is about when we return to a skill. Interleaving is about how we mix skills within a practice session. And when we mix old skills into today’s work, we’re doing both at once. AK, a colleague from beyond our school, stretched her Chapter 1 metaphor of finding a document in the pile on her desk. In blocked practice, she said, the pile holds only one type of paper. Interleaved practice is different: students have to recognize which skill is required among many. That recognition is exactly what interleaving builds. What interleaving looks like in classrooms In first-grade word study. JS shared her Word of the Day routine. Students explore the many meanings of words like call: a phone call, calling the dog, the umpire’s call. They notice that a word can name a thing or describe an action, and that adding -s or -ing changes how it works in a sentence. Her upcoming suffix unit will bring back earlier Words of the Day. Students will add -s across short vowels, digraphs, bonus letters, and glued sounds, so they have to think about each word’s pattern, not just add an ending. In Orton-Gillingham lessons. SM pointed out that interleaving is built into every OG lesson. Mixed sound decks, blending drills, and sentence dictation ask students to switch between patterns, like alternating long and short vowels. She was honest that this takes more effort and can feel hard, and that the effort is what builds fluency and automaticity. She also tried something new: a Word Wall game show for a fifth grader that mixed verbs from the current grammar unit with nouns taught earlier. The mix revealed something important. The plural rules had faded. If the practice had stayed focused on verbs, no one would have noticed. Mixed practice shows us what’s solid and what needs another visit. In fourth-grade math. MJH is working with a student whose class has moved on to adding and subtracting fractions. She noticed his foundation wasn’t secure yet, so she is intentionally bringing back unit fractions and equivalent fractions and asking him to compare them to benchmark fractions. It was hard for him, and then he had a lightbulb moment connecting unit fractions to benchmarks. They keep revisiting it through cooking and baking, where real recipes never announce which fraction skill comes next. In world language. LC described “teach and let it simmer,” which reframes forgetting as a step toward relearning. Her first graders meet vocabulary through songs, stories, movement, and real objects, like passing around a pumpkin or smelling something wonderful and naming it in Spanish. As colors, numbers, family members, and body parts recur across games, students have to switch between categories and retrieve the right words. That switching is interleaving. The best part: teachers talking to teachers The third prompt asks everyone to respond to at least one colleague. This week, the replies became their own layer of learning. LC read JS’s Word of the Day post and was reminded of the old Electric Company episodes that teased a special word for the next show, a week later. A routine students look forward to and return to is spacing with joy built in. MJH replied to LC’s sensory vocabulary work and imagined how students might love the challenge of retrieving the right word for delicious versus disgusting: ¡Qué rico! ¡Qué asco! That’s interleaving in a single moment. Two contrasting words sit side by side, and students have to choose. JS responded to SM’s mixed dictation with an idea of her own. Even though her first graders haven’t formally learned long vowels, she contrasts them with short vowels to preview what’s coming. Her insight: teaching non-examples alongside examples helps students understand what each pattern is and how it’s used. I didn’t plan any of those connections. They grew because teachers had time to read, think, and respond. A first-grade teacher learned from a world language teacher. An interventionist learned from a classroom teacher. A Spanish teacher found inspiration in a phonics routine. That kind of cross-pollination rarely happens in a one-time workshop. What I’m noticing as a facilitator Our book club structure has been quietly practicing what the book preaches. Every prompt asks teachers to retrieve before they read on. Chapters return weeks apart, so ideas are spaced. And this week, the prompt asked teachers to hold two strategies side by side and tell them apart, which is the core of interleaving. The questions teachers raised were just as valuable as the answers. SS’s question about what interleaving looks like in practice pushed all of us to get clearer. The best professional learning makes room for questions like that. Up next: Metacognition, and a conversation in person Our final chapter explores metacognition: thinking about our own thinking. Teachers are already heading there, with students sorting flash cards into “I know it” and “not yet” piles, rating their confidence before an entry ticket, and doing quick self-checks like Point to your capital. Point to your end mark. Then, next Wednesday, we’ll gather in person for a short conversation to bring it all together. After weeks of asynchronous learning, I can’t wait to be in the same room. I’m curious which strategies teachers will say they’re keeping, and what they’ve learned from each other along the way. AK raised a question I’d love every grade-level team to explore: when is the right time to shift from blocked practice to interleaving? Blocked practice helps when a skill is new. But when students succeed on a page of the same problem type and stumble when skills are mixed, that may be the signal. They can do the steps, but they can’t yet tell when to use them. So I’ll leave you with the questions I’m carrying into Chapter 5. When your students practice, do they know which skill is coming next? Where could a little mixing reveal what’s solid and what’s fading? And how might we help students notice those things for themselves?
