The same four hands go up, the same two students get asked, and the quiet ones at the back go a full week without being called on once.
Paste your class list above and spin. Below you will find the no-repeat setting that makes it fair, how to save your list between lessons, and what to do about the student who hates being picked.
What is a classroom name picker?
A classroom name picker is a free wheel holding your student names. Spin it and it lands on one, choosing who answers next without you deciding in the moment and without anyone feeling singled out.
The value is not the randomness. It is that the randomness is visible.
A student who is called on twice in a row accepts it from a wheel in a way they do not accept it from a teacher, because the class watched the spin land.
How do you set up your class list?
Paste the whole list in one go rather than typing names individually. One name per line, straight from your register or a spreadsheet column, and the wheel builds a slice for each. A class of thirty takes about ten seconds.
Three steps:
- Paste the full list, one name per line
- Save it so it is there next lesson
- Turn on remove after pick before the first spin
Settings worth changing before your first lesson
| Setting | What it does | Why it matters in a classroom |
|---|---|---|
| Remove after pick | Takes the name off after it wins | Every student gets a turn before anyone repeats |
| Saved list | Keeps the class between sessions | You paste the register once, not every morning |
| Sound off | Silences the spin | A quiet classroom stays quiet |
| Reduced motion | Slows or stops the animation | For students who find fast motion difficult |
| Full screen | Fills the board | Readable from the back row |
How do you make sure everyone gets a turn?
Remove after pick is the whole answer. Each name leaves the wheel once it wins, so thirty students take exactly thirty spins and the wheel empties as the lesson runs, with nobody called twice before everyone has been called once.
Without it, a class of thirty produces a repeat far sooner than intuition suggests.
Three names in and the chance of a repeat is already around one in ten. Over a lesson that is a certainty, and students notice it long before a teacher does.
Two ways teachers run the empty wheel at the end:
- Reset it and start again next lesson, so the cycle repeats daily
- Keep it emptying across the week, so the cycle covers every lesson
Does it keep the class list between lessons?
The list saves to the browser on the device you are using. Open the same browser on the same computer next lesson and your class is already loaded, with no account, no login and no upload of student names anywhere.
That last part matters for a reason beyond convenience.
Student names are personal data, and a tool that uploads them to a server creates a records question your school has to answer. This one does not, because the list never leaves the machine you typed it on.
Moving between a classroom computer and a laptop needs one extra step. Share the wheel to yourself as a link, and opening that link on the other device loads the same list.
What about students who hate being picked?
Take them off the wheel. A picker that causes real distress to one student is not worth the fairness it buys for the rest, and removing a name takes two seconds with no announcement required.
Random selection is a tool for fairness, not a rule that has to apply to everyone equally.
A quieter version works too. Teachers who prefer that spin privately on their own screen and call the name without projecting the wheel, which keeps the fairness and drops the spectacle.
Is the classroom name picker random?
Yes. Every student left on the wheel has exactly the same chance on every spin. The draw comes from your browser's cryptographic random source, and turning on remove after pick changes who is eligible rather than the odds.
You can show the class that page if the fairness ever gets questioned.
More at how our randomness works.
What other classroom wheels are there?
Classroom picks are one job among several a wheel does in a lesson, and the others use the same list or a different one entirely. Pick the one that matches the task rather than reusing the student wheel for everything.
- Random team generator for splitting the class into groups
- Random number wheel for page numbers, questions and scores
- Wheel of animals for younger classes and topic prompts
- Wheel of names for the general picker