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Hello,
We had the same discussion in our district. What we realized is what we tend to call spiral really isn't a spiral (at least the way we would think of it). For example, a good spiral would have you learning a particular topic then they would learn a little more of that same topic the next year and even more the following year. Instead a middle school earth science "spiral" tends to be maybe weather one year, space the next, and geology next (in any order). So it really wasn't a spiral...more of a chunking of unrelated topics.
So instead we went with a 6 semester rotation of life, physical earth, life physical earth. The semesters offered a mix but also longer periods of time for each content. You can also split each science content into a lower and upper level through middle school. Nothing is perfect but this seems to be working for us.
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