Random Student Picker
Ten sample students are on the wheel; swap in your class and each spin picks who answers the next question.
How to cold call with the wheel
- Build the period roster
Enter your students, one on each line, and save the wheel to My Wheels named after the period. Repeat for every class you teach.
- Turn removal on
Enable auto remove winner so a student who has already answered cannot come up again until you reset the round.
- Ask, then spin
Pose the question before spinning so the whole room thinks about it, then read the winner box. The local Results history shows who has gone already.
Automatic removal stops when two students are left. Choose between the final pair yourself, then reload the saved wheel to begin a fresh round.
Give every student a turn before anyone goes twice
Make one wheel for each period you teach. Type each student on a new line over the ten starters, then save the roster to My Wheels with the period in the name, Period 2 Biology for example. Tomorrow it opens in seconds. A .wheel download of every class list survives a cleared browser and moves with you to another computer.
Turn auto remove winner on before the first question. A student who answers drops off the wheel, so nobody hears their own name twice while classmates are still waiting. That is the point of cold calling with a wheel: quiet students get reached, not only the quick hands. Until a line is duplicated or an Advanced weight is set, every enabled student holds the same chance on each spin.
For the next lesson, open the saved wheel from My Wheels again and the full class is back in play. Some teachers reset every day; others let one round run all week so students who rarely volunteer are reached before frequent hands return. If someone is absent, untick their name instead of deleting it and the roster stays complete.
Class lists are personal information, and this page often runs on a projector or a shared cart laptop. Keep to first names, add a last initial only when two students match, and remove rosters from any device that other classes or staff sign into. Where hosted sharing is enabled for this environment, Share can hand a co-teacher a private link instead of a copied list.
Sample class on this wheel
This template starts with 10 ready-made entries. Keep it or edit the list next to the wheel.
- Aisha
- Mateo
- Kenji
- Lucia
- Darius
- Ingrid
- Tomas
- Nia
- Ravi
- Chloe
Common questions
Does every student have an equal shot?
Each enabled name opens every spin with the same chance. That shifts only when a student appears on two lines or you set Advanced weights, so scan the roster once before the first question.
Can I keep a separate list for each class period?
Yes. Save one wheel per period in My Wheels and name them so they are easy to tell apart. Each list can also be downloaded as a .wheel file, which is handy on a school machine that gets wiped over the summer.
What happens when two students share a first name?
The wheel treats each line separately, so the shared name ends up with two slices and twice the chance of being called. Add last initials, Sam K and Sam W, and each student is back to one slice.