What is a spiralled curriculum?
By Definition:
Pearce (2018) describes ‘spiraling’ as “introducing topics in smaller chunks and spreading them out over a longer period of time…it is common to come back to the topic multiple times over the duration of the grade or course and going deeper every time”. The term ‘spiraled’ can also be referred to as ‘interleaved’, ‘distributed’, or ‘spaced’ learning (Pearce, 2018). Gibbs (2014) suggests setting the scope of a spiral curriculum “to fit the individual classroom or grade level” (p. 44). This is an acknowledgement that vertical spiraling does not take into account what students have actually learned, but rather assumes that students come in with certain knowledge.
In Practice:
A spiraled curriculum is one where students are taught concepts over-time. What is taught in-between? In an interleaved practice, students would be learning other similar concepts (Phillips, n.d.); however, it is not necessary to always remain with similar concepts. Research has shown that the choice of concepts taught in-between does not have a significant impact on the learning retention of students using a spiralled program (Foster et al., 2019).
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To implement a spiraled math program, it is inherent that the teacher has a firm grasp on the curriculum and the concepts within the curriculum. This is because the teacher must be able to recognize, understand, and draw connections between concepts; as that will help to determine the spirals for the year (Phillips, n.d.).