Ed Journey — Study Techniques Guide | edjourney.org
A 50-minute session in four ordered stages with minutes per stage: recall first, then read, then self-test, then schedule the next review.
Stage 1, minutes 0–10: closed-book recall. Write down everything you already remember about the topic without opening anything. This is active recall in its purest form and it exposes exactly which gaps the reading needs to fill.
Stage 2, minutes 10–30: targeted reading. Read only to answer the gaps you just exposed, not the whole chapter cover to cover. Twenty minutes is enough when the reading has a job.
Stage 3, minutes 30–45: self-test. Use fresh questions rather than the ones you already recalled in stage 1. The testing effect applies hardest here, when retrieval is effortful rather than familiar.
On narrow screens, swipe or scroll the plate sideways.
Stage 4, minutes 45–50: schedule the next review. Write the date on the page — day 1, day 3, day 7 — before you close the notebook. This five-minute step is what turns the spacing effect from a plan into a calendar entry.
The order is not interchangeable. Recall before reading primes attention; self-testing after reading converts familiarity into retrievable memory; booking the review while the session is still fresh is what makes the next interval actually happen.
A common failure is ending at stage 3 because the material feels learned. The feeling of learned is familiarity, and familiarity is what the forgetting curve erases first.
Further reading