Spiral review: what it is and how daily math review works

1 What spiral review means

A spiral comes back around. In a spiral review, a skill you taught in September shows up again in October, again in December and again in March, a few items at a time, while the class is busy with whatever is new that week. Each time it comes back, students have to remember how to do it.

Most math curricula teach in units: a few weeks on addition with regrouping, then a few weeks on measurement, then a few on fractions. Units are a sensible way to teach. The trouble comes after the unit test, when a skill can disappear from the classroom for the rest of the year. Spiral review is the fix for that gap. It does not replace the units. It runs alongside them, usually in a short daily slot such as morning work, a warm-up or the first problems of homework.

You will see a few names for the same idea: spiral review, cumulative review, mixed review, spaced review and distributed practice. They all mean coming back to earlier material over time instead of practicing it all at once and moving on.

2 Spiral review and blocked practice

Blocked practice is a page of one kind of problem. After a lesson on the 7 times table, twenty problems on the 7 times table. After a lesson on finding area, a page of area problems. Students know which method to use before they read each problem, because it is always the one from today's lesson.

Spiral review mixes in the older material. The page might have three problems on the 7 times table and two from earlier: an addition fact, a subtraction fact, an area problem. Now each problem asks a question first: what kind of problem is this, and what do I do?

Blocked practice has its place. Right after a new skill is taught, a short block of the same kind of problem helps students get the steps down. The point is not to ban blocked practice but to make sure it is not the only practice a skill ever gets.

Two closely related ideas from learning science sit underneath spiral review. Spacing is about when: coming back to the same material after a gap. Interleaving is about what is next to what: mixing different kinds of problems in one set. Spiral review usually does both at once. Our evidence library has a card on each, with the studies behind it and how strong the evidence is: spaced practice and interleaved practice, plus a side-by-side page on spaced versus massed practice.

3 What a day of spiral review looks like

Here is the shape the morning work maker prints for 3rd grade in the first week of school, when the week's skill is the 2 times table:

1. 18 − 9 = ? (review: taking away)
2. 9 × 2 = ? (this week)
3. 2 × 12 = ? (this week)
4. 14 − 6 = ? (review: taking away)
5. 7 × 2 = ? (this week)

Three items are on the new table. Two are subtraction facts from 2nd grade, which most 3rd graders need to keep warm. Each item prints with three answer boxes, and the wrong boxes are near misses rather than random numbers: for 18 − 9 the choices are 11, 8 and 9. A student who is guessing will not get far.

Notice that the review items are mixed in, not grouped at the end. That matters. If the review items always come last, students learn to switch methods once at a fixed spot. Mixed in, they have to look at each item.

Notice too what the page does not do. It does not jump to something students have never seen. Every item is either this week's skill or one already taught. That is what lets the page run as independent morning work.

4 How the maker spirals, grade by grade

The maker's math comes from Peabody's practice bank, in teaching order: adding, then taking away, then the times tables, then dividing. Each grade has a stretch of that ladder, and the 36 school weeks move up it. Every day has three items from this week's step and two from steps below it.

• Kindergarten: the first adding facts, with the very first facts as review.
• 1st grade: adding facts through the year.
• 2nd grade: the later adding facts, then taking away, with adding as review.
• 3rd grade: the times tables from 2s to 12s, about three weeks on each, with adding and taking away as review.
• 4th grade: the later times tables, then dividing, with everything below as review.
• 5th to 8th grade: dividing facts, with multiplying, taking away and adding mixed in as review.

Be honest with yourself about grades 5 to 8: the maker reviews number facts, not fractions, ratios or equations. Facts are worth keeping fluent at every age, but a middle school math teacher will want to add two or three problems from the current unit by hand, or keep the bell ringer to its fact items and the sentence.

Every week's key marks each review item with "(review)", so you can see at a glance which mistakes are on old skills and which are on the new one.

5 Reading what the review items tell you

Spiral review gives you something blocked practice cannot: a daily look at whether old skills stuck. Use it.

• One student misses the review items every day. That student may have learned the skill for the unit test and lost it. A few minutes of small-group practice, or a fact practice game, is a better answer than reteaching the whole class.
• Half the class misses the same review item. The skill was never secure. Reteach it in a short mini-lesson, then watch it on the next few pages.
• Everyone gets the new items and misses the old ones. That is normal in the first days of a spiral. It usually settles after a week or two of daily review.
• Everyone gets everything. Good. Keep going. The review is doing its quiet job of keeping the skill alive.

Checking together on the board for five minutes after morning work is the easiest way to see these patterns. Ask the class to raise a hand for each item they got right, and jot down the items with few hands.

6 Building spiral review for any subject

The same idea works beyond math facts. All it takes is a running list of what you have taught, and a habit of pulling from it.

1. Keep a running list. As each unit ends, add three or four of its key questions to a document: one question and its answer a line.
2. Mix every review. When you make a warm-up or a quiz, take most questions from this week and two or three from the list.
3. Spread the old ones out. Something from last week, something from last month, something from the first unit.
4. Print it or play it. Paste the lines into the quiz maker or the task card maker as your own list, and both print three-box questions with wrong answers made from your other answers.

Science and social studies vocabulary, grammar rules, map skills and spelling patterns all spiral well. The retrieval practice quiz guide has more on building a short weekly quiz that reaches back over the year.

7 Common mistakes with spiral review

Spiral review is simple, which makes it easy to get slightly wrong. These are the slips that come up most.

• Spiraling in skills not yet taught. A review page is for review. Anything new makes it a lesson, and the page stops running itself.
• Grouping the old items at the end. Mix them in so students have to decide what each item is.
• Never letting a skill rest. Not every skill needs to come back every day. A few items a day, from a changing set, is enough.
• Making review the whole page. Students also need practice on this week's skill. Most items should still be new.
• Ignoring what it shows. The review items are a free check on what stuck. If no one looks at the misses, the chance is lost.
• Grading it like a test. It is practice. Check it together, fix it, and move on.

If you are switching a class from blocked practice to spiral review, warn them it will feel harder at first. It is supposed to. Each item asks them to remember, and remembering is the work.

It helps to tell families too. A parent who sees a subtraction fact on a 3rd grader's times-table week may think it was a mistake. One line in the newsletter explains it: every day has a couple of older skills on purpose, so they stay fresh all year. That line also tells families what to practice at home when a review item keeps coming back wrong.