The spiral approach is very old. A spiral spread over multiple years is an old idea, and a sprial within one year is also an old idea.
The first I encountered it in one year was with the book "The New College Physics, A Spiral Approach" by Albert V. Baez. In case you don't know, or are wondering, Albert Baez is the father of folk singer Joan Baez. He is also co-inventor of the x-ray microscope. His spiral textbook was pubished in 1967. I started college in 1968, and this book was the text for my first college physics course.
It is probably a bit too much for high school, but that's a mute point because it is out of print. Amazon lists 6 used copies available for about $14, so if you wanted to have a look you could pick it up fairly reasonably, or try to find it in a college library.
In the "forward to the student" the author says... "The order in which physical concepts are presented in this book is quite unusual. You may visualize it as a spiral. Imagine the important concepts of physics - such as space, time, matter, motion, energy, electricity, wave, particle, light, atom - as occupying the sectors between spokes of a wheel. Your progress through the concepts will follow a spiral - starting in one sector, moving into the next and then the next, and, after completing the first round, returning to each sector again and again in an ever broadening spiral."
There are 59 chapters altogether. Newton's second law first appears in chapter 24 on page 304. By that time forces, fields, energy, waves, light, optics... have been discussed at some level.
It's a very interesting book. I'm am not sure why it didn't catch on. I have no idea how widely it was used. Apparently not widely enough to merit a second edition. If you are thinking about creating your own spiral approach it would be worth looking at the Baez book to see how one well-known physics educator did it.
Michael D. Edmiston, Ph.D. Phone/voice-mail: 419-358-3270
Professor of Chemistry & Physics FAX: 419-358-3323
Chairman, Science Department E-Mail edmiston@bluffton.edu
Bluffton College
280 West College Avenue
Bluffton, OH 45817