Metacognition is the key to increasing student agency.
“Spinndle helped me understand my learning progress, what I need to work on, and what I do well.”
Spinndle was designed by former K-12 teachers. After spending years inefficiently hacking management platforms to personalize projects for their students, they realized that the "complete and submit" system was entirely teacher-centered. Students relied too heavily on their continual prompting and therefore stalled as they awaited feedback before progressing in their learning. In the last two years, Spinndle has proven that improved metacognition, not micromanagement, is the key to improving student agency.
Spinndle is a co-learning space for student-led projects. Students as young as grade 4 are tackling complex projects while implementing key social-emotional learning and executive functioning skills. On Spinndle, the entire learning process is visible and students are activated as resources to one another; sharing knowledge, insights, feedback, and strategies every step of the way. The platform is designed as a sandbox for learning - a communal place to practice and hone increasingly critical soft skills.
“You should use Spinndle to help you start to understand how you learn.
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2020-2021 Pilot Study
Spinndle's latest study with 20 educators and 180 students grades 4-12, demonstrates that a metacognitive approach to managing student work helps equip young students with the necessary executive functioning skills to learn how to learn. Teachers notice a substantial improvement in the self-sufficiency and organization of their students, and students that use Spinndle show dramatic growth in their confidence to effectively and independently manage long-term projects. Download the full report here.
“Spinndle allowed some of my truant students and struggling learners to catch up with more confidence and control.
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“Spinndle helps the students plan out their projects, stay on task and work through the project to help effectively manage their time”
Spinndle Fosters Confident Self-Starters
student ability to progress without teacher prompting
Spinndle FOSTERS PEER COLLABORATION
student willingness to work with classmates
Interested in bringing Spinndle to your school or district?
Foster competency-based learning.
Make skills explicit. Students need timely feedback and differentiated support based on their individual learning needs to work towards mastery of competencies. For teachers to be effective mentors, they need to be able to guide and track each student's process. Spinndle empowers students with a system to track their own process while giving teachers streamlined insight and communication tools so they only need to look to one place to provide feedback.
Build executive functioning skills.
To succeed in modern self-directed styles of learning, students require strong executive functioning skills. These brain-based skills need to be explicitly taught and repeatedly practiced in order to stick. Spinndle is a visualized structure for these modern learning styles. By helping students visualize their big, complex projects as smaller, tangible steps, students have a strong foundation to build on: a place to keep plans, organize information, and initiate tasks.
Practice social-emotional skills.
SEL isn’t just a curriculum to be taught, it’s a set of skills that need to be practiced. Spinndle is a social-emotional learning environment. Because these competencies are seamlessly woven into the platform, every action on Spinndle is SEL in practice. They are required to constantly exercise self-management and self-awareness to maintain their own learning pace. With their peer community, they build social awareness and foster relationship skills. And since students are autonomous on Spinndle, they are constantly required to exercise responsible-decision-making.
