What's already on the classroom spinner
The wheel arrives pre-loaded with ten classroom tasks that cover the most common moments in a lesson:
- Answer the question — direct comprehension check
- Read aloud — shared reading or text work
- Come to the board — demonstrate working or write a response
- Line leader — transition management without arguments
- Explain to a partner — peer learning prompt
- Give an example — checks conceptual understanding
- Solve the problem — maths or logic tasks
- Ask a question — reverses the dynamic, puts students in the driver's seat
- Volunteer — for when you want a willing participant
- Choose the next activity — a small reward that students love
You can keep these as role prompts and spin to assign tasks, or clear the list entirely and replace it with your student roster for a random student picker. Either approach takes about thirty seconds to set up at the start of a lesson.
Setting up your student name wheel
To turn this into a student name wheel, open the entry editor panel beside the wheel. Delete the pre-loaded entries with the Clear button, then type each student's name into the text field and press Enter, or paste the full class list — one name per line — using the bulk import text area. For larger schools where you already have a spreadsheet, upload a CSV file and the wheel pulls names from the first column automatically.
Once names are in, a few features make classroom management smoother:
- Remove Winner toggle — turn this on and each student's name disappears from the pool after they're picked. Spin through the whole class before anyone repeats. Useful for reading rotations or group assignments.
- Hide entries — if a student is absent, tap the eye icon next to their name to skip them without deleting them from the list.
- Weights — each entry has a numeric weight (default 1). Increase the weight on a student's name if you want to nudge the odds in their favour — useful for differentiated participation tracking.
- Duplicate entries — create a second copy of a name in one click if you want a student to appear more frequently in the draw.
If you teach multiple classes, you'll need to re-enter names each session — the wheel runs entirely in the browser and doesn't store data between visits. Keep your class lists in a CSV file and the import takes seconds.
Who uses this classroom spinner
Classroom teachers (K–12)
The most common use is daily participation. Project the wheel on your classroom display, spin it to pick who answers, and students quickly learn that engagement is the safer bet than hoping they won't be called. Teachers also use it to assign group roles (scribe, presenter, timekeeper) or to rotate helpers like line leader or whiteboard cleaner without the same faces volunteering every time.
University and college lecturers
Large lecture groups are hard to manage with traditional cold-calling. Loading a seating-plan-based name list and spinning in front of the auditorium creates a light, low-stakes atmosphere — students see the process is random and the moment lands with energy rather than awkwardness. The Explain to a partner and Ask a question entries translate well to seminar-style sessions.
Tutors and small-group instructors
With three or four students, repetition of the same picker can feel obvious. A spinning wheel adds a physical randomness that feels distinct from the tutor's judgement — students engage more freely when they know the selection isn't personal. The classroom hub has additional wheels built for small-group contexts too.
Supply teachers and cover staff
A supply teacher who doesn't know the class can use the built-in task prompts without adding any names at all — spin to assign a role, then point to the student who volunteers. No setup, no learning curve, works on any school computer or tablet without installation or login.
Home educators and parents
Siblings doing school at home argue about who goes first, who picks the game, who reads next. Dropping their names into the wheel and spinning settles disputes instantly and without parental arbitration. The Choose the next activity entry is especially popular here.
Customising for rewards and classroom games
The classroom spinner doesn't have to be about participation. Swap the entry list for a reward wheel — "free reading time", "sit anywhere", "homework pass", "choose the music", "first to lunch" — and spin it at the end of a lesson as a class prize. You can assign different weights to entries if some rewards are rarer than others: set "homework pass" to a weight of 1 and "free reading time" to a weight of 3, and the wheel reflects that proportionally.
For classroom games, the wheel works as a randomiser for quiz teams, debate sides, or vocabulary challenges. Load in topic words and spin to pick the question prompt. The custom wheel generator lets you build entirely bespoke wheels if you want something specific that the pre-loaded entries don't cover.
You can also adjust the spin sound and win sound from the Customize panel — useful for reducing noise during quiet periods or for adding a bit of drama during a class game. Spin duration is set to 3, 5, or 10 seconds depending on how much suspense you want.
How this compares to Google's classroom spinner
Google Classroom includes a basic random name picker, and some teachers use the Google wheel (via Search) as a quick fix. The key differences here are the task-based pre-loading (the wheel already contains classroom role prompts, not just a blank spin tool), the Remove Winner toggle that tracks who's been called without any manual record-keeping, entry hiding for absent students, weight adjustments for differentiated selection, and the bulk import and CSV options for fast name loading. The Google spinner is a single-purpose name picker with no entry management. This classroom randomizer is a configurable participation tool. If you also want ready-made wheels for other parts of the school day, the classroom section has options beyond student selection.