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6 Steps to Spiralling Your Math Class – Discussion
What was your big take away from this particular lesson?
What is something you are still wondering?
Share your thinking below.
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41 Replies
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One thing that I’m wondering about is how to do spiraling when your district requires common summative assessments. I agree that spiraling is the best way to teach, just wondering how to implement them in an environment in which every teacher must give the same summative assessment on the same day.
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Ooh…I have the same question(s).
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I am in the same boat! Common assessments are a requirement.
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Me too
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Yup!
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Me too!
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My biggest take away is to know your curriculum. I’m still wondering how I will accomplish this and make sure that my students are ready for quarterly assessments on certain strands.
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Are you feeling like you want to dive into some content learning courses? Let us know what you’re after and we will try to help!
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Speaking only for myself: I know my course and my content, and I’ve been doing the spiralling course, and I would love to see an ideal example of it. Does that make sense? I haven’t finished the spiralling course, though, so I don’t know if it’s at the end.
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Garret, I agree with you that I would like to see an “ideal” example of the spiraling with perhaps a video of actual lessons that have spiraling and/or written plans with the spiraling content. I think it would help me get a better mental picture of how it would look.
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Many questions/thoughts: I am curious how/if spiraling will help students who are 2+ levels below the grade level standards. Should I dig into the elementary standards when I spiral? (I’m at 8th grade)…and how do I keep advanced kids engaged while I try to fil in the “super gaps” that other students have? Does spiraling have a positive effect on chronic absenteeism? (Am I digging too deep with that one?)
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The steps that stuck with me the most were #4 and #6. I realize that it’s important to plan when I want to spiral and to chunk those concepts. Using check-ins is something that sounds doable and easy to implement once I know what needs to be spiraled. Thank you for these great ideas.
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I really like the opportunity to interleave the assessments even if you aren’t able to spiral the curriculum yet. The 6 steps give me a framework to start looking at my curriculum and start organizing it into a spiral.
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I am most interested in the logistics of how you started spiraling. I agree with your six steps and am eager to learn more.
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I love it, but I have a question for kids with learning disabilities. Have we found that this works well for kids with memory or retrieval difficulties?
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Great question.
My first wonder is how the current approach of single unit / mass practice is working for this group.
For me, it wasn’t… so I was willing to try and I found it to be more telling of what they truly knew and needed to continue working on.-
I think the current model lends itself to the illusion that they are learning and retaining. I’m just worried what happens when that illusion is no longer there? Does that make sense?
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I also wonder about students with learning challenges. I teach at a private school and while I have some students working at grade level…I have others at least one or two levels behind…it is difficult to figure out how to best meet the needs of all students.
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I also had the question regarding district summative assessments. Ours are based on textbook units and attached to a district pacing guide. I always wonder how I can get to the stuff the district exam favors in a timely manner.
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I loved seeing the picture of a “week”. Although…Tuesday was marked as Proportional Reasoning and yet you said that that was your Mastery/check-in day.
I also love the Mastery Day and thought it was interesting you did it on a Tuesday. For the most part, I hear Friday is that day. Regardless of the day, I like this idea and that 1/2 the class the students would spend mastering what was not mastered on last week’s check-in. Love, Love, Love and would like to try interleaving assessments when we return to school.
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My biggest takeaway is the importance of knowing what you need to teach. The ability to spiral starts with not only knowing what to teach, but how to teach it, how to support students because common misconceptions are prepared for, and how it connects with other learning. I wonder how this can be accomplished with districts that keep common local assessments. Assessment perspectives would have to change to a diagnostic mentality of “this tells me where you are at currently, and what more do we need to do to get you to mastery?” (which is where they should already be, but you know)
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I really like the idea of a check in day each week to really stay on top of whether students are getting the concepts or not and revising your plans according to that assessment. You would really have a clear picture of each student’s strengths and areas needing improvement to draw on sooner than if you waited until mid way through a traditional unit.
I also liked the weekly graphic in the video. Hoping to get a better sense of how spiraling looks in a week at a glance.
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Thinking that steps 4 and 5 are going to be so important when I meet my new students, after this Distance Learning is done. The inequity will be even more apparent when we come back together. I, like others, have done check ins on Fridays. The idea of moving it to a spot earlier in the week is intriguing. Gives me more time to pivot and meet with smaller groups based on what they are doing and forgetting!
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The big take away for me is taking my time with the spiral review. I will need to continue to learn and focus on essential standards. I believe spiral reviews will be best for assessing students learning for the standard. I feel students are just regurgitating information when I test immediately after a certain concept. I feel I am cheating students when I test right after a lesson. Spiral reviews will help me assess myself if I have or haven’t taught a concept appropriately.
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What I a still wondering is when I will find or make my own spiral reviews. I would like to make my own because I will have more ownership of the lesson because I made it but it will be unrealistic because it does take time. I teach in California school district where I have a self-contained classroom so I am responsible for all other subjects as well.
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@scott-cortez Yeah, we highly recommend to make your own. That way you’ll be able to build it to meet your students needs. Reach out if you need help.
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The concept of spiraling really speaks to me as a way to meet the academic needs of my students. I have many take-aways but I really see the need to make planning the cycles of the utmost importance and making pivots as needed. I also like the way you manage your mastery days with half the period on the assessment and the other half on checking over previous assessment materials.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by Lisa Hudson.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by Lisa Hudson.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by
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I already knew the theory I guess the challenge is to start to share this with teachers. Does anyone know some Australian Curriculum resources to support this. Wondering how best to plant seeds with teachers. Going to re-focus on getting the information out there though. It totally makes sense.
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I don’t know of any specific to your curriculum, but I bet they are out there.
For us here in Ontario, the TIPS4Math is a great spiralled scope and sequence to consider as a “roadmap” or “guide”
https://kylep.ca/TIPS4Math
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Assess by outcome, not task. I just need to figure out how to convert this to a % (provincial requirement). Ideas?
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I am excited to begin with the “baby step” of including spiraled math assessment questions on a weekly mini-assessment. For me, it seems like a manageable first move. I teach fifth grade math, which at our school is the last year of elementary school. Much of what we do throughout the year is an attempt to help bridge the gap between and prepare students for middle school. Until there’s greater buy-in (from either the grades below, or the grades above), I don’t feel confident jumping into the deep end . . . yet!
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As I am watching this series of videos, I’ve already thought of a way to break a few units up into smaller chunks and then teach them that way. Is there a suggested maximum time you would say to spend on 1 particular concept before continuing the spiraled learning and move onto another topic?
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Big takeaway was that spiralling does not have to be all or nothing. I can incorporate a little by including previous material as independent practice or on assessments. As a new teacher, I am learning that I will bump up against things such as district required unit tests. So I am wondering how to make that work!
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Totally! All or nothing is often too extreme in any situation.
Are the unit tests the same test across your system or is it just mandatory to have a test?
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In my region of Spain we have to evaluate in 4 “dimensions” Solving problems, connecting math with math and math with live, prove and reasoning, represent and communicate math. Then we have all the contents that we should teach which can be related to big ideas that you talk about. So that is what I think I have to mix. I use to plan a lot of group work and I have to do an assessment feedback for me and for the students, I plane also a big statistic project that it last all the cours, in which they have an assessment feedback also. It is difficult for me to think of how I will assess all of that and the individual test.
I haven’t spiralled yet, but I do mix big ideas in the different units because I have to work with connections and reasoning. For now, if the students work a learning goal in different activities I put a grade for that in all the activities they were working and then I make an average, for me it is difficult to understand how do you assess this learning goals if you work on it in different test or assessment activities.
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For us, it is all about documenting and pulling out what we are seeing and trying to align that with the specific learning goals that we are seeing highlighted. There is definitely no “one way”, but rather finding what makes most sense for you.
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For me right now my biggest take away is that I need to spend some time reading through our new 2020 curriculum so that I can really get to know it before we start school this fall. (I hope I have time to spiral it before then.)
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I, too, wonder how I am going to use the spiraling with my learning disabled students. One of my classes has half the class rated ESE. When you have so many students at all different levels, this becomes a real challenge. That said, I have dived deeply into the link Jon gives for Ontario’s Tips for Math.
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This was a great summary of how to start spiraling big or small, the steps were really helpful for me as I plan my next few math classes…
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I believe the key to making this work is being flexible, or as Kyle says, be willing to pivot.
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Hmmm… Mastery Day. That might be a good thing to integrate into this year’s plan. I find that my students (Grade 5) work quite slowly so doing 4-5 questions might take the whole math class instead of just a part. Perhaps it depends on the depth and complexity of the questions…?
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That and the grade level. The younger the students, the longer it will take. So maybe the number of questions is less?
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