This overview contains far more details than the others as it is the most commonly referenced and is the most complete resource that I have been able to locate at this time.

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The EduGAINS website is developed and maintained by the Ontario Ministry of Education. This particular portion of their site is devoted to providing long-range plans, unit plans, as well as, accompanying lesson plans with hyperlinked resources. It appears to be a one-stop shop, albeit most (if not all) educators would tell you that no single resource can be used in its entirety and as a sole resource. Of note, they include “[an] overview video [that] provides information on what blended [spiraled] learning is, key components of this resource and how to access it” (EduGAINS, 2018). This video would be a good place to start when beginning to explore this resource.

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PROS: The EduGAINS site provides the big ideas for each unit and explicitly states which overall and specific curriculum expectations are being addressed in each unit. Lesson plans are organized in ‘bundles’ for their associated unit, with each plan containing the learning focus, curriculum expectations and additional resources. This site could be a great starting point for those who have no idea where to begin or are new to their grade and not yet very comfortable with their curriculum. The lessons and expectations are colour coded by strand making it easier to keep track of all expectations for assessment purposes. Suggested times are given in days for each unit, but only add up to around 120 days (number of days vary depending on the grade level). This gives a good cushion to accommodate school events, snow days, and units where students need a little more time. I think it is important that teachers begin this approach aware of the fact that they may need to spiral back to areas again, but that they have the time to do so.

 

CONS: The video provides an overview of what spiraling is and how to use the site, but does not do a great job of explaining why teachers should be spiraling their math program. This is a fundamental piece of successful implementation as it not only helps guide the teacher, it also helps the teacher to be confident and knowledgeable when explaining programming decisions to students, parents and colleagues (Lannin and Chval, 2013).

The spiraled plan here only accounts for spiraling back to content twice. More tweaking should be done by the teacher to identify areas that could benefit from additional deeper spirals. As well, lessons tend to be based on one strand at a time, so there is not much evidence of cross-strand learning.

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Another con to this website is the number of hyperlinks included. Many lessons link back to the Ontario Education Resource Bank. This is fine so long as you know your school’s login, but can lead a teacher to have to open numerous pages just to obtain all the portions of the lesson plan. Due to all of these links, this site can be difficult to navigate despite all the efforts made to counter this issue. That being said, it is nice to see resources being linked together and re-purposed to provide further evidence that spiraling does not need to mean re-creating all new material.

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