Why use this wheel
Everyone gets a turn
Battle Duel removes each student once they've been called, so nobody is asked twice before the whole class has been round.
Your class list stays put
Saved in the browser on that machine. Open it next lesson and your list is still there — no login, no setup.
Readable from the back row
The result fills the screen in large type, so it works on a projector or interactive whiteboard.
Lists teachers actually reuse
The class register is the obvious wheel, but it is not the only one worth keeping. These three get loaded most often after the names — jobs, breaks, and something to say when a discussion stalls.
Classroom jobs
Spin in Battle Duel to hand out every job once, with nobody able to draw twice.
- Line leader
- Door holder
- Board cleaner
- Book monitor
- Pencil monitor
- Register runner
- Plant care
- Tidy-up captain
- Equipment collector
- Lights and blinds
- Recycling
- Class librarian
- Timekeeper
- Visitor greeter
Two-minute brain breaks
For the point in a lesson where nothing more is going in.
- Twenty jumping jacks
- Silent countdown from thirty
- Stretch and reach
- Simon says, one round
- Draw the person next to you
- Two truths and a lie
- Class stand-up, one word each
- Breathing, four in four out
- Rock paper scissors tournament
- Guess the sound
- Freeze dance
- Would you rather
Discussion warm-ups
Open-ended enough that a quiet class still has something to say.
- What is something you changed your mind about?
- What would you put in a time capsule?
- What rule would you change and why?
- What is a skill worth learning?
- Who is someone you admire and why?
- What makes something fair?
- What would you invent?
- What is the best thing you read this year?
- What advice would you give year sevens?
- What is worth being stubborn about?
Why randomising who you call on works
Teachers reliably call on the same students. It is not favouritism — it is that the hands going up are the same hands, and under time pressure the fastest route through a lesson is to take them. The predictable result is that a third of the class participates and the rest learn that they can quietly opt out.
Cold-calling fixes the participation problem and introduces a new one: being singled out by the teacher feels like being caught. A random picker removes the sting because the selection is visibly not a judgement. The wheel chose. There is nothing personal to read into it, and students consistently respond better to that than to being picked by name.
It also makes the fairness legible to the class. Everyone can see the whole list on the wheel and see that their name is in it exactly once. The usual complaint — you always pick me — becomes checkable, and usually turns out to be false.
Working through a whole class exactly once
This is the reason Battle Duel is the default on this page. With a plain random picker, a class of thirty will produce a repeat within the first few spins, and a student who has already answered gets called again while others have not been asked at all. That is worse than not randomising, because it looks arbitrary and unfair rather than merely unbalanced.
In elimination mode each name is removed once called. You can work through the entire register knowing every student is asked exactly once before anyone is asked twice, and reset the round when you have been all the way round. For a single lesson that is usually the whole workflow.
A useful variation: leave the round running across a week rather than resetting each lesson. Students who were called on Monday know they are safe, students who have not yet been called know their odds are rising, and attention distributes itself accordingly.
Practical notes for classroom use
Press F for fullscreen before the lesson starts. The wheel scales to the projector or interactive whiteboard, and the result appears in large high-contrast type readable from the back row. The spin sound gives students who were not looking a cue that a name has landed — worth turning off if your room needs quiet.
Your class list is saved in the browser on that specific machine, so the classroom computer will still have it next lesson. Nothing is uploaded to a server. That matters for student privacy: names never leave the room, which sidesteps most of the data-protection questions a cloud tool would raise. The trade-off is that the list does not follow you to a different computer — for that, use the share link to load the same class list onto another machine.
There are no accounts, no chat, no user-generated content and no data collection, which is generally what school IT policies are checking for. Ads are clearly labelled and never overlap the wheel.
How to use the classroom name picker
- 01
Paste your class list
Straight from your register or a spreadsheet column.
- 02
Turn on Battle Duel
So each student is only called once per round.
- 03
Spin to call on someone
Reset the round to start the whole class again.
Frequently asked questions
Will my class list still be here next lesson?
Yes, as long as you use the same browser on the same device and don't clear your browsing data. Nothing is stored on our servers.
Can I use it on an interactive whiteboard?
Yes. Press F for fullscreen — the wheel and the result screen scale up, and the winner is shown in large high-contrast type.
Is it suitable for young students?
There are no accounts, no chat, no user-generated content and no data collection. Ads are clearly labelled and never cover the wheel.
How do I move my class list to another computer?
Use the share button. It encodes the whole list into a link — open that link on the other machine and the same class is loaded and saved there too.
Can I keep one round running across several lessons?
Yes. The eliminated names persist until you reset the round, so you can work through a class over a week and only reset once everyone has been called.
Is a class list safe to put in here?
It never leaves the machine you type it on — no upload, no account, no analytics on what the names are — so it stays inside whatever data-protection arrangements already cover that computer. If your school's policy is strict about pupil names on third-party sites, first names or initials work just as well on a wheel.