Spiral Approach

THE SPIRAL APPROACH

The spiral approach is a technique often used in teaching where first the basic facts of a subject are learned, without worrying about details. Then as learning progresses, more and more details are introduced, while at the same time they are related to the basics which are reemphasized many times to help enter them into long-term memory. Spiral approach is a teaching strategy to expose the learners to a wide variety of concepts/topic, skills and attitudes that are deemed of “continual concern of everyone “until they are mastered.

A spiral approach or teaching strategy is one in which “key concepts are presented repeatedly throughout the curriculum, but  with deepening layers of complexity.” After a mastery of the initial topic, the student “spiral supwards  as the new knowledge is introduced in next lessons, enabling him/her to reinforce what is already learned. In the end, a rich breadth and depth of knowledge is achieved.  With this procedure, two purposes are served

(a)    The previously learned concept is reviewed hence improving its retention

(b)   . The topic may be progressively elaborated when it is reintroduced leading to broadened understanding and transfer of learning.

In structuring a course, certain perquisite knowledge and skills must be first mastered which in turn provides linkages between each lesson as the students “spiral supwards” in a course of study. The spiral learning  helps teachers construct lessons, activities or projects that target the development of thinking skills and dispositions which do not stop at identification , instead facilitate implementation of the desired performance.

Spiral approach  helps to  develop concrete and practical thinking-centered lessons that make students performances of understanding explicit .it may be used to structure an entire project which can readily fit into the regular curriculum and can help design thinking centered lessons..

Learn with focus on the learners, and learning in a real situation as the teachers facilitate their students to learn from experience, activities and work, leading to the development of learners in all aspects , physical, mental, emotional, social and intellectual. The learner-centered approach is characterized by:

(a)    In adopting the spiral approach, the teachers will be enriched with varied experiences in preparing every science lesson and curriculum a proper blending of concepts, skills and values from the natural and physicals sciences and appropriately sequenced from a start upward according to the level of difficulty.

(b)   One should always remember that one keeps moving upward, butv keeps returning to the fundamentals through reviews but adding more. Spiral approach based on the  transfer of thinking processes from one context to another required students to learned the fundamental principles of subjects and to explore ideas on a deeper level rather than just mastering facts and rote learning procedures. Spiral approach emphasized the gains that can be acquired by developing students powers of analysis ,judgment and memory in order to increase capacity to transfer learning into new students.

In the spiral progression approach, the first basic facts of a subject are  learned without  worrying about details. In spiral teaching ,teacher moves upward but keeps returning to the fundamentals.

Key Concepts of spiral  approach are :  Instructional  objectives are presented to learners in the beginning with simple concepts and then periodically revisiting the concepts and expanding on the concepts as is appropriate for the learner's cognitive level.. Compare to: Chronological, General-to-Specific, Known-to-Unknown, Part-to-Part-to-Part, Part-to-Whole, Part-to-Whole-to Part, Spiral, Step-by-Step, Topical, Unknown-to-Known, Whole-to-Part