ChoiceSpin for Teachers

Why teachers reach for a spinner wheel

When you call on students yourself, someone always believes you have favorites. When the wheel does it in front of the class, everyone watched a random pick happen, and the argument ends before it starts.

The spin itself buys you something too. A wheel slowing down on the projector holds a class's attention in a way a name read from a list never will.

Student names stay in your browser

This is the part schools care about. ChoiceSpin doesn't use accounts or student sign-ins, and rosters you type or save with My Wheels are stored locally in your browser on your device. Nothing gets uploaded unless you deliberately create a share link or start a Spin With Friends live room.

You can also download any wheel as a small file and open it on another computer, which is handy for moving a roster between your school and home machines without putting student names in anyone's cloud. See the privacy policy for details.

Five classroom setups that work

1. Random student picker. Paste your roster into the wheel of names and spin whenever you need a reader, an answer, or a volunteer.

2. Cold calling without repeats. Turn on auto remove winner and each picked student leaves the wheel, so by the end of the lesson everyone has been called exactly once. The visible Results tab doubles as your participation record for the period.

3. Group and team maker. Put team names on the random team generator, call students up one at a time, and let the spin assign them. Nobody gets picked last.

4. Review games. Spin the random number wheel to pick which practice problem comes next, or the random letter wheel for vocabulary and spelling games. You can also run two wheels side by side with Add Wheel, one picking the student and the other picking the question.

5. Reward and brain-break wheel. Fill a wheel with two-minute activities or small class rewards and let a student spin it. The randomness is the fun part.

Set up each class once, reuse it all year

Paste a roster, then save it to My Wheels with the class name (one saved wheel per period). Next lesson it reopens in one click, with no retyping.

If a colleague wants your setup, send them a Quick Share link. They get their own copy of the wheel, and any edits they make never touch yours.

Made for the projector

Use Fullscreen mode for a big, clean wheel on the board, and turn spin sounds on or off to match your classroom. Colors and images are customizable too. Some teachers add student photos or subject icons to the slices.

The result box and Results history stay readable from the back row, so the class always knows who was picked and who's next.

Quick start for your first lesson

1. Open the wheel of names and paste your roster, one student per line.

2. Click Save and add it to My Wheels under the class name.

3. Turn on auto remove winner if you want every student picked exactly once.

4. Go fullscreen, spin, and teach. The whole setup takes under two minutes.

Questions teachers ask

Is ChoiceSpin free for schools and classrooms?

Yes. Spinning, saving rosters, sharing, and all customization are free, and neither you nor your students need an account.

Where are my students' names stored?

In your browser on your device. Nothing gets uploaded unless you deliberately create a Quick Share link or open a live room. If you'd rather, you can keep rosters as downloadable wheel files instead.

Can I make sure every student gets picked exactly once?

Yes. Enable auto remove winner and picked names drop off the wheel automatically, while the Results history records the calling order.

Can I keep separate wheels for each class period?

Yes. Save each roster to My Wheels under its own name and switch between them in one click. There's no limit that matters for a normal timetable.

Does it work on interactive whiteboards?

ChoiceSpin runs in any modern browser, so it works wherever your board or classroom PC can open a website. Fullscreen mode gives you a clean display, and you can spin by clicking or tapping the wheel itself.

Is the pick actually fair?

Every enabled name has an equal chance on every spin, and anything that changes those odds (like a duplicated name) is visible right on the wheel. The fairness page explains exactly how a winner is selected.