You Probably Don't Understand Interleaving
Ok, ok, I didn’t understand interleaving.
I used to see it as a way of spacing my curriculum - do some creative writing, interrupt it with Macbeth, then head over to A Christmas Carol before coming back again to Macbeth. Sound familiar?
That is spacing.
To make it interleaving, you need to find the similarities (and perhaps differences) between the two topics. For example, what are the similarities between the characters of Macbeth and Scrooge?
Both worship a golden idol - Scrooge’s is wealth, Macbeth’s is kingship and the building of a dynastic inheritance.
Both are men who eventually abandon their female partners - having initially loved them, their love of their idols replaces their love for their partner.
Both are childless and obsessed with fatherhood.
However, Scrooge is able to redeem his past sins, while Macbeth is doomed to keep repeating them.
Scrooge turns to Christianity while Macbeth rejects it.
Both live lives which their authors treat as cautionary tales, to educate their audience.
Both are taught lessons by the supernatural and both ask the supernatural for help.
Both of them see ghosts of their best friends, though Scrooge views Marley with humour and Macbeth views Banquo with fear.
Both these ghosts of friends are used by the author’s to ask us to counterpoint them to the main characters.
While Scrooge tries to escape his fate, Macbeth rushes to embrace it.
The idea behind this interleaving is that it leads to a richer understanding of both topics. So, the topics themselves have to be relatable.
Interleaving is not just the placing of such topics side by side, but the deliberate comparison involved.
You could do the same with other characters, themes and quotes.
And of course, with other texts. How easy this would be comparing the anti-capitalist agenda of Priestley’s An Inspector Calls and Dickens’ A Christmas Carol!
Apparently, interleaving allows students to remember 7% more, or gain 7% higher marks in an exam. In English, that’s pretty much a full grade.
Here’s a beautiful summary diagram:
It comes from The Do’s and Don’ts of Interleaving, by Inner Drive.