I really want to know how to Spiral my curriculum effectivally

[Christa Amezcua]

Hi! I’m not an expert, but have two things to say.

1) Right now, we’re living very hard times because of the virus. School is not the most important thing in our lives. BUT, if we come back to school before the year ends, we will not have time to finish all the topics (also if we finish the year remotely, as virtual lesson go slower than normal). As terrible as this sounds, I would use this as an oportunity to show my fellow teacher how useful can spirals be.

I was asked to choose “the most important topics” to finish this year. I chose quadratics, and letf aside the area of prisms, pyramids, cones and cylinders. I will use areas of these figures to solve problems about quadratics. I will not assess their knowledge on memorized formulas or figures themselves, but at least they won’t be blank on this topic. I don’t know if this makes sense to you…

2) I’ve always used “integrating activities”. Even if the curriculum is not spiral, I introduce many tasks were they have to recover previous topics, and they end up deepening their understanding about them. This tasks look harmless for my fellow teachers, but in the end, I think that’s what spiraling is all about: Relating topics to USE them all throught the year and make connections.

Thanks for reading!

[Lynn Cornwall]

I totally agree with you Garret. Right now I am struggling to get online and differentiating, but spiraling is the way to do it and make connections so students don’t compartmentalize strands.