Weekly Digest #107: Spiral Review
In a previous weekly digest, we showed you several ways in which teachers have implemented spaced practice in their classrooms. In today’s digest, we are showing you examples of spiral review, which can be described as a specialized form of spaced or distributed practice that is extremely popular in elementary classrooms in the United States. While there are many for-purchase spiral programs on the market, we are not endorsing any particular product. Each of the posts below describes ways in which you can incorporate spiraling in your classroom, without purchasing any materials. These posts are included for the diversity of ideas included and we encourage you to view them as jumping off points and not as prescriptions for what you should do. You can also read our post about spacing here.
1) The Spiral: Why Everyday Mathematics Distributes Learning by The University of Chicago @EMAuthors
Our first resource describes the research supporting distributed (and spiral) review in a very condensed way. Once again, this site contains a program that you can purchase and we are not endorsing that program because we have not reviewed it. However, this page itself contains an excellent review of the literature.
2) Spiral Review in the Classroom by Kristin with @OneStopTeacher
Image from Pixabay
This post is written by a teacher who uses spiral review in her classroom in a number of ways. The post is a good summary of spiral review with very concrete ideas for how to incorporate in a structured way.
3) The Importance of Spiral Review for Effective Student Learning by Jodi Durgin @CFClassroom
In this article, Jodi Durgin talks about the use of spiral review to avoid the interruption in curriculum to prepare for standardized testing. She again has some great concrete ideas for using spiral review in an elementary classroom. She sells her materials, but also provides some free samples for you to get an idea of how you could create materials (although you don’t HAVE to create complex materials in order to spiral).
4) 4 Reasons You’re Wasting Your Time on Spiral Review… And What You Can Do About It by Rebecca Davies @thirdwheelteach
Rebecca Davies does an excellent job talking about how some individuals implement spiral review because they are required to or because it’s the “hot new thing”, but they don’t necessarily do so in a way that is based on research. She walks through several common mistakes in implementation and provides alternatives.
Image from Pixabay
5) How to Make Spiral Review Work for You and Your Students by Jennifer Findley @TeachtoInspire5
Jennifer Findley walks through some very tangible pieces of advice for how to implement spiral review for math and other subjects in an organized manner that supports student success. One of the great things about this piece is her consideration of different learner needs and how to address them.
Every Sunday, we pick a theme and provide a curated list of links. If you have a theme suggestion, please don’t hesitate to contact us! Occasionally we publish a guest digest, and If you'd like to propose a guest digest click here. Our 5 most recent digests can be found here:
Weekly Digest #102: Leading women in STEM fields
Weekly Digest #103: Note-Taking Strategies
Weekly Digest #104: Media Multitasking