This study involved a spiral teaching sequence on acceleration using four instructional strategies, namely: (1) preview of the core concepts, (2) a concept map, (3) conceptual questions, and (4) review of the solutions with a focus on the effective derivation routes and the prevalent difficulties that the students encountered. The participants were 402 grade 12 high school students. The results of this study reveal that the spiral teaching sequence, which introduced multiple stages of practicing and instructional explanation, was effective in terms of improving the students' conceptual reasoning of acceleration. The review of the solutions was perceived by the participants as the most effective teaching strategy, followed by the concept map. We also found that conceptual questions involving a single concept were mostly easier to solve than those involving multiple concepts.