Review by Marianne Rogowski, Common Sense Education | Updated September 2017

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Spiral

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Provide instant feedback with collaborative, multimedia assessment tool

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Grades

3-8 This grade range is a recommendation by Common Sense Education and not the developer/publisher.

Great for:

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Price: Free, Free to Try, Paid Spiral Teacher is free forever and covers up to five classrooms. The Pro Teacher subscription is $39 per teacher per year and offers unlimited classrooms, student accounts for home use, and progress reports. The Pro School subscription is estimated at $3 per student and offers the features of Pro Teacher plus additional features, including full integration with the school's LMS.

Platforms: Website

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5 images

Ask multiple-choice or open-ended questions.

Personalize team tasks and pre-assign or randomize teams.

Students create presentations in Team mode.

Pros: Quick setup and a varied platform allow for instant feedback, class discussion, and student collaboration.

Cons: Creating and assigning effective content can be confusing and requires some legwork and technical problem-solving skills.

Bottom Line: Engaging, easy-to-use tool that supports both formative and summative assessment while allowing for student collaboration.

Lesson & Activity Ideas

Spiral is an interactive learning platform that teachers can use for quick assessment, student collaboration, interactive video, and flipped classroom activities. Probe deeply by discussing an essential question or a video with students in real time. Use the Team Up feature and monitor progress as students create collaborative presentations about current events, novels, or math and science topics. Show exemplary responses with the class as they create so that they can see models as they work, and cut down on the conundrum of "Who did what?" by viewing each student's contribution on your screen.

Grade assignments automatically or individually, and check whole-class understanding by viewing question-by-question statistics. Want to have students work independently or flip your classroom? Create an assignment, and then send students the link for them to access at school or at home (with the Teacher Pro version). Finally, sync your classes quickly with Google Classroom to enhance learning and provide variety.

Tool Overview

Spiral is a multiuse platform that allows teachers to create interactive learning experiences, pre-planned or on the fly. Basic account setup is easy and free, and it stops short of trying to do too much by offering just four types of activities: Quickfire, Clip, Team Up, and Discuss. Quickfire allows teachers to assign a quiz or ask a question. Teachers can send back inadequate responses immediately and ask students to improve and resubmit responses. Clip allows users to create interactive videos, stopping periodically to check understanding or discuss content. Team Up allows teachers to randomize or assign teams and have students create presentations that hold each member accountable. Finally, Discuss allows users to participate in interactive presentations by asking questions, sharing pictures, and responding to others.

Teachers can sync up to five classrooms from Google Classroom and create activities within Spiral or using G Suite. The paid version offers more features, such as the ability to flip your classroom by giving students access to assignments at home.

Learning Value

Spiral allows users to freely create learning activities that inspire the four C's -- creativity, communication, collaboration, and critical thinking -- while promoting understanding and accountability. Teachers can quickly assess students' understanding of concepts by asking open-ended questions and seeing all answers at once. Teachers can also ask a student to improve an answer with one click, enhancing the learning strategies of iteration and feedback. The ability to launch and populate learning activities within seconds prevents lost instructional time, and Spiral's integration with any internet-connected device is a plus for both one-to-one computing and bring-your-own-device (BYOD) environments.

Where Spiral falls short are the areas of monitoring, differentiation, and design. Teachers need to constantly monitor progress and appropriateness of students' responses, and since all users join the same assignment with the same code (in the free version), teachers have to be creative with differentiation. Spiral's design can be confusing in places, and teachers may find themselves requesting features from the developers in order to improve the user experience. In spite of those drawbacks, Spiral provides users with an engaging, interactive experience that reaches beyond the "one correct answer" school of thought.

Rating Details

Overall Rating

Engagement Is the product stimulating, entertaining, and engrossing? Will kids want to return?

Student interaction and ability to work on team assignments will engage users as long as teachers create interesting, grade-level assignments.

Pedagogy Is learning content seamlessly baked-in, and do kids build conceptual understanding? Is the product adaptable and empowering? Will skills transfer?

Offers a wide range of flexibility to create effective learning activities that can support a variety of curricular goals and instructional strategies.

Support Does the product take into account learners of varying abilities, skill levels, and learning styles? Does it address both struggling and advanced students?

Responsive to feature suggestions and feedback to improve the user experience, but a fair amount of time and problem-solving ability is needed to get beyond simplistic activities.

Common Sense Reviewer

Marianne Rogowski Media specialist/librarian

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Writing
W.K: Production and Distribution of Writing
W.K.5	With guidance and support from adults, respond to questions and suggestions from peers and add details to strengthen writing as needed.

W.K.6	With guidance and support from adults, explore a variety of digital tools to produce and publish writing, including in collaboration with peers.
Research to Build and Present Knowledge
W.K.7	Participate in shared research and writing projects (e.g., explore a number of books by a favorite author and express opinions about them).

W.K.8	With guidance and support from adults, recall information from experiences or gather information from provided sources to answer a question.
W.5: Text Types and Purposes
W.5.1b	Provide logically ordered reasons that are supported by facts and details.
Production and Distribution of Writing
W.5.5	With guidance and support from peers and adults, develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach.

W.5.6	With some guidance and support from adults, use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing as well as to interact and collaborate with others; demonstrate sufficient command of keyboarding skills to type a minimum of two pages in a single sitting.
Research to Build and Present Knowledge
W.5.8	Recall relevant information from experiences or gather relevant information from print and digital sources; summarize or paraphrase information in notes and finished work, and provide a list of sources.

W.5.9	Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research.
W.6: Production and Distribution of Writing
W.6.5	With some guidance and support from peers and adults, develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach.

W.6.6	Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing as well as to interact and collaborate with others; demonstrate sufficient command of keyboarding skills to type a minimum of three pages in a single sitting.
Research to Build and Present Knowledge
W.6.7	Conduct short research projects to answer a question, drawing on several sources and refocusing the inquiry when appropriate.

W.6.8	Gather relevant information from multiple print and digital sources; assess the credibility of each source; and quote or paraphrase the data and conclusions of others while avoiding plagiarism and providing basic bibliographic information for sources.

W.6.9	Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research.
W.7: Production and Distribution of Writing
W.7.6	Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and link to and cite sources as well as to interact and collaborate with others, including linking to and citing sources.
Research to Build and Present Knowledge
W.7.7	Conduct short research projects to answer a question, drawing on several sources and generating additional related, focused questions for further research and investigation.

W.7.9	Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research.
W.8: Production and Distribution of Writing
W.8.5	With some guidance and support from peers and adults, develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach, focusing on how well purpose and audience have been addressed.

W.8.6	Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and present the relationships between information and ideas efficiently as well as to interact and collaborate with others.
Research to Build and Present Knowledge
W.8.7	Conduct short research projects to answer a question (including a self-generated question), drawing on several sources and generating additional related, focused questions that allow for multiple avenues of exploration.

W.8.9	Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research.

Earth’s Systems
4-ESS2
4-ESS2-1	Make observations and/or measurements to provide evidence of the effects of weathering or the rate of erosion by water, ice, wind, or vegetation.
4-ESS2-2	Analyze and interpret data from maps to describe patterns of Earth’s features.
Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics
MS-LS2
MS-LS2-1	Analyze and interpret data to provide evidence for the effects of resource availability on organisms and populations of organisms in an ecosystem.
MS-LS2-2	Construct an explanation that predicts patterns of interactions among organisms across multiple ecosystems.
Energy
5-PS3
5-PS3-1	Use models to describe that energy in animals’ food (used for body repair, growth, motion, and to maintain body warmth) was once energy from the sun.

Spiral

Provide instant feedback with collaborative, multimedia assessment tool

Subjects and Skills: Spiral

Take a look inside

Lesson & Activity Ideas

Tool Overview

Learning Value

Rating Details

Overall Rating

Engagement Is the product stimulating, entertaining, and engrossing? Will kids want to return?

Pedagogy Is learning content seamlessly baked-in, and do kids build conceptual understanding? Is the product adaptable and empowering? Will skills transfer?

Support Does the product take into account learners of varying abilities, skill levels, and learning styles? Does it address both struggling and advanced students?

Key Standards Supported

Writing

Key Standards Supported

Earth’s Systems

4-ESS2

Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics

MS-LS2

Energy

5-PS3

Teacher Reviews

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