A printable retrieval practice grid for daily revision
Write nine questions in the grid before you start: three on today’s work, three on last week’s, three from earlier in the course. Answer them from memory, then mark them. It takes about ten minutes and it fixes the standard problem with revision, which is that September’s topics quietly evaporate while you are busy with February’s.
Last updated 20 August 2026 · Written and checked by the GCSEwiz team
What is on the sheet
- A three-by-three grid across today, last week and last term
- An answer strip to fill in from memory before you check
- A score box, so a fortnight of sheets shows a trend
1 sheet · A4 portrait · black and white
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Retrieval grid
Write the questions first. Answer them closed book. Mark them honestly.
| When from | Question | My answer, from memory | Right? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Today 1 | |||
| Today 2 | |||
| Today 3 | |||
| Last week 1 | |||
| Last week 2 | |||
| Last week 3 | |||
| Last term 1 | |||
| Last term 2 | |||
| Last term 3 |
The "last term" row is the one that hurts and the one that matters. If you cannot think of three questions from earlier in the course, that is your answer about how well it is holding.
Ten minutes a day beats an hour on Sunday
The grid is small on purpose. It has to be something you can do after your homework without any negotiation, because the benefit comes from doing it most days rather than doing it thoroughly once.
Nine questions, closed book, marked honestly. That is the whole routine, and over a term it quietly holds together material that would otherwise need re-learning from scratch in the spring.
Where the questions come from
Your own notes, the specification, the end-of-chapter questions in the textbook, or last week's homework. It genuinely does not matter much, as long as you write them down before you start rather than making them up as you go, which lets you quietly avoid the hard ones.
Keep the sheets. After a fortnight the "last term" column becomes a list of the topics that are actually fading, which is worth more than any confidence rating you could give yourself.