DrFrostMaths Platform Manual, Schemes and Mind Maps of Trigonometry

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DrFrostMaths Platform Manual

• 1. Getting Started (for teachers) CONTENTS
• 2. The main menu, Student/Teacher Home Dashboard and Topic Explorer
  • A. Main Menu
  • B. Dashboard
  • C. Topic Explorer
• 3. Understanding points, levels, trophies and topic medals
  • A. Points and levels
  • B. Trophies
  • C. Topic Medals
• 4. Student independent practices & Topic Tests
  • A. Practise a Topic
  • B. Practising a past paper or revision worksheet
  • C. Completing a topic test
• 5. Setting homeworks, assessments and Topic Tests
• 6. Monitoring Progress
  • A. Viewing data across homeworks
  • B. Viewing data by task
  • C. Viewing Progress by Topic
  • D. Viewing Timestable Progress
  • E. Viewing Leaderboards
  • F. Viewing Overall Student Summary
  • G. Viewing the activity log
  • H. Exporting a Report
• 7. Creating a Certificate
• 8. Creating, Managing, Setting and Exporting worksheets
  • A. Creating a worksheet
  • B. Using your worksheet
  • C. Adapting an existing worksheet/past paper
• 9. Creating your own questions
• 10. Playing a Live! Game
  • A. Starting a Game
  • B. Waiting for participants to join the game
  • C. During the game
  • D. Frequently Asked Questions
• 11. Managing Classes
  • A. Setting up a class
  • B. Managing existing classes
  • C. Dealing with student log in issues
  • D. Updating classes at the start of a new academic year
  • E. Using the demo student account for a class
  • F. Viewing a student’s home dashboard
  • G. Frequently Asked Questions regarding class management:
• 12. Managing Teacher Accounts
• 13. Managing Schemes of Work
  • A. The benefits of setting up schemes of work
  • B. Creating a scheme of work
  • C. Assigning schemes of work to a class
• 14. Updating School-wide Settings
• 15. Timestables
  • A. Practising Timestables
  • B. Viewing student performance data

• Learn : Where students can learn new content. This links to the Topic Explorer (also accessible via the left tab on the home dashboard) and to the teaching videos interface.
• Work Set : Homework/assessments set to the student by a teacher. The red number indicates the number of homeworks/assessment yet to be completed.
• Practise : Students can practise questions by topic, practise a past exam paper or UKMT paper, practise timestables, or even start a “Live!” game if with friends (see the Playing a Live! Game section).
• Assess : Students can monitor their own progress across topics, see a timeline of all their question activity (which shows each question they have completed along with the answer) and try “Topic Tests” (pre-written mini-assessments consisting of 8 questions each) in order to earn Topic Medals. The menu for logged in teachers is similar but has several differences:
• The search facility, as for students, searches for skills, resources and videos. For teachers, it also searches for students at the school and class groups, allowing quick access to student/class management or data.
• Questions : Similar to the Practise tab for students, but also has links to the Worksheet Builder, the Question Browser (allowing you to find any question in the database by topic, difficulty, exam board and/or keyword). The Practise By Topic link allows you to practise questions as if you were a student, to get a sense of the points system.
• Set Work : View or set homeworks, assessments and Topic Tests, or play a Live! classroom game (see the Playing a Live! Game section).
• Progress : Allows teachers to view assessment data for classes or individual students. This may be data for set homework/assessments, or viewing students’ log of activity (e.g. casual practices). You can also view leaderboards, export reports to Excel and generate certificates.
• : Manage classes, teachers, schemes of work and school settings. You can also create questions.
• [Your school logo/picture]: Log off or change your account settings.
• [User icon]: The red number indicates how many users are online at your school. Clicking on this icon lists these users, and allows you to see (a) what page they are currently viewing on the site and (b) if they are doing a question, what question they are working on: You can filter by class using the dropdown on the left. You can close this view by either clicking the user icon at the top- right again, or clicking the cross just under the dfm logo.

B. DASHBOARD

When logging in, you will be taken to the home dashboard, showing notifications, a student data summary and providing quick links to key functionality on the site. Dashboard for teachers: Most of the notifications on the right are clickable. For example, clicking a “ X has practised some topics ” notification will go to the activity log and bring up the students’ answers for that practice. You can also view notifications for other teachers at your school by using the dropdown selection at the top of the notifications pane. The pie chart shows the aggregate data across all students in your school. The tabs on the left allow you to switch between notifications, ‘how tos’ (offering videos and downloadable pdfs), and leaderboards (which can be viewed by whole school, year group or class).

C. TOPIC EXPLORER

The Topic Explorer brings together all the resources, student progress and various options together for each different topic. It can be accessed either via the tab on the left of the home dashboard, or via the top menu: Learn  Topic Explorer. Students can quickly find topics either by typing into the filter at the top, or selecting a particular strand (which also includes any school schemes of work if set up). Students can also quickly see what topics they need to work on using the By Performance filter. If students click on a pie chart slice on the Notifications tab (seen when they first log in), it will instantly switch to the Topic Explorer view and chance the By Performance filter appropriately. The same occurs if they click on the ‘ Identify topics I should work on’ in the quick links. Each row of the topic explorer is divided into three columns:

• Learn : Resources related to teaching of the topic, including teaching videos and teaching slides.
• Practise : Options for practising questions on the topic. The Practise Questions link starts an interactive practise of questions. Some topics have revision worksheets available, both in downloadable (pdf) form and online interactive form.
• Assess : The student’s overall performance at the skill is displayed; Not Encountered , To Work On (Level 1 or 2 achieved, corresponding to 0-49 skill points), Secure (Level 3 achieved, or 50-74 skill points) and Expert (Level 4 achieved, 75- 100 skill points. See the Understanding Points and Levels section of this guide. Review Qs Completed allows students to view all questions they have completed at this topic, observing both their answer for the question and the correct answer. The Topic Medals are earned for completing topic tests, which students can access for example using the Test – Standard and Test – Advanced links in this column. See the Homeworks, Assessment and Topic Tests section of the manual for more information.

3. UNDERSTANDING POINTS, LEVELS, TROPHIES AND TOPIC MEDALS

There are three ways in which student practice is rewarded: A. POINTS AND LEVELS Students earn points each time they get a question correct, or for practising their timestables. Their total points is a combination of the following: a. Skill Points: For each individual ‘skill’ (e.g. “find the area of a triangle”), students start on 0 points and can earn up to

100. This acts as their ‘skill level’ at the particular skill. Once students have maxed out the points on the skill level, they can earn no further points of this type. On the Topic Explorer , students can see what their points for that particular skill: The number of points for a skill corresponds to a ‘level’ from 1 to 4. 0-24 is Level 1 (indicated as ‘To Work On ’ in the topic explorer, 25-49 Level 2 (indicated also as ‘To Work On’ ), 50-74 Level 3 (indicated as ‘Secure ’) and 75-100 as Level 4 (indicated as ‘Expert’ ). When the difficulty setting for a homework/independent practise is set to ‘auto’, and where the questions are not pre-chosen (e.g. as would not be the case with a past paper), students will be allocated questions at a difficulty that matches their current level at that skill, where available. If the question involves multiple skills, then the difficulty level chosen for the question will match their lowest level across these skills. Students only earn skill points if the question they are doing on that skill is of a difficulty that is at least equal to their level at that skill. For example, a student at ‘Level 3’ on area of a triangle will not earn skill points for doing easier ‘Difficulty 1’ questions. Note that students never lose points ; the skill points for that skill is always the maximum skill level obtained. But the skill level can drop if a student gets questions wrong – the skill points will appear unchanged because it displays the maximum skill points, but as their level (from 1 to 4) is based on the current skill points, the level can drop. This explains for example why the skill points may not go up for a few questions even if the student gets the question correct, because the student needs to reach the prior maximum skill level before the skill points subsequently increases. b. Practise Points: In addition to the skill points above, students achieve between 3- 6 bonus ‘practise’ points per question (depending on the difficulty of the question), provided they have not seen that question recently. This rewards students for revisiting topics even if their skill points in the skills involved in a question is high. Changes to points/skill level will appear each time a student answers a question in either a homework or independent practise. Note that for assessment formats where answers are initially concealed (i.e. a ‘Topic Test’ or an ‘Assessment’), the change in points won’t be displayed to students, but points will still be updated in the background. If the question involves multiple different skills, then the change of points is shown for each of the skills involved. The change in skill points per question is calculated using a complicated numerical formula. It depends on both the recent history of answers for questions on that skill, but also on performance on questions at each difficultly level within that strand more generally. In the pictured example, it was the first question that the user had answered on “Find factors or multiples of a number”. As the user had a good track record on Level 1 questions in ‘Number’ (the strand associated with this skill), it immediately awarded 25 points in order to accelerate the user to difficulty Level 2. The logic is that more able students are less in need of practise at easier questions, so are accelerated appropriately at the lower difficulty levels.

C. TOPIC MEDALS

Topic Medals are awarded for achieving the pass mark (6 out of 8) in a Topic Test. There are 1 or 2 pre-written Topic Tests for each curriculum skill (‘Standard’ difficulty and where available, ‘Advanced’). Students can see how many Topic Medals they have acquired from the home dashboard summary. They can see which Topic Medals they have by selecting the Topic Explorer tab on the left of their home dashboard. You can find more information about Topic Tests in the Setting Homeworks, Assessments & Topic Tests section of this manual.

4. STUDENT INDEPENDENT PRACTICES & TOPIC TESTS

In addition to teachers setting homeworks/assessments, students can start an independent practice of questions at any time. Students have three options: A. PRACTISE A TOPIC In this mode, students practise questions on a topic at a particular difficulty range.

1. This mode can be accessed from the top menu under Practise  Practise by Topic. Alternatively, students can use the Practise Questions link on any row within the Topic Explorer on the home dashboard. Teachers accounts can access this mode using Questions  Practise by Topic on the top menu.
2. You will then see the following page. One or more topics can be selected from the topic tree on the left. In addition, where schemes of work are set up by the school, students can quickly select skills from a scheme of work. 3. The right column contains various options. The difficulty range specifies the minimum and maximum difficulty of questions in the practice. Clicking the ‘ Click for guidance on difficulty levels ’ provides guidance on what these difficulty levels entail: 1 - Starter: Introductory questions to test basic understanding. 2 - Core: Typical questions. 3 - Challenge: Harder or less routine questions often combining skills or involving a degree of problem solving. 4 - Killer: Beyond typical expectations. At GCSE: Exam-board Foundation Tier questions would typically be 1-2 and Higher Tier 2-3. At A Level: Most exam-board questions are set as 2-3. Level 4 would be akin to MAT/STEP.
3. The author filter allows students to restrict questions to a specific exam board (or to UKMT questions), if desired. The completion criteria dictates when a practice ends (although a practice can be ended at any time). Where students are trying to achieve a minimum standard at the topic, the ‘ Achieve a certain accuracy’ completion option is recommended.
4. After clicking the Start button, students may receive the following message, ensuring that they are comfortable with any skills that questions in their practice may potentially combine with:

7. After answering the question, the student will be informed if they answered correctly, and will be provided with the correct answer if wrong. The dialog on the right will pop up as discussed in the Points, Levels, Trophies and Topic Medals section.
8. Students can optionally provide written feedback about their answer, which can be read by any teacher in the school. See the Feedback subsection of Setting Homeworks, Assessments & Topic Tests of this manual for more information.
9. In an independent practise, students only have two options after answering each question, to proceed to the next question or to stop practising. Provided they don’t exit the practice prematurely, they will receive questions until the ‘completion criteria’ is met. B. PRACTISING A PAST PA PER OR REVISION WORKSHE ET
10. On the student’s top menu, go to Practise  Past Papers.
11. Use one of the tabs on the left to either choose past exam papers, a revision worksheet, or a worksheet produced by the school.
12. Use the filters as appropriate, e.g. selecting between Foundation and Higher Tier papers.
13. Students will see a preview of the paper but note that they will be able to answer the questions in this mode. After pressing the Practise This Worksheet button, they will be presented the questions one by one where they can then answer.

C. COMPLETING A TOPIC TEST

As described earlier, a Topic Test is a pre-written assessment consisting of 8 questions. There are 2 for most topics (one ‘standard’ and one ‘advanced), compiled by the DrFrostMaths team. Students require at least 6 out of 8 to pass the topic test, and two attempts are permitted each day. Answers will not be revealed to the student on any assessment interfaces (e.g. the Activity Log ) unless they pass the test. During a Topic Test, students can skip questions and return to them later, simply by pressing the question numbers. The system will automatically go back to unanswered questions after students reach the final question. Students can access these via the Topic Explorer. This can be found on the home dashboard, selecting the Topic Explorer tab, or via Learn  Topic Explorer or via Assess  Topic Tests on the top menu. If a student took the topic test independently rather than being set by a teacher, both the student and teacher can view each attempt on Progress  Activity Log. Note that on student accounts, the answers will be blanked out so as to avoid compromising future attempts. If the topic test was set by a teacher, teachers can view it via Progress  By Class. Topic Tests are classes as ‘assessments’ rather than as ‘homeworks’, so ensure the filter is not set to ‘Homeworks Only’.

Next select the recipients of the task. Clicking the relevant box will bring up a dialog where you can select either individuals or one or more full classes. Note that where full classes are selected, the task is set to the individuals within the class, not the class itself. This means for example that were a student to subsequently join the class, they will need retroactively be assigned this task. Similarly a student subsequently leaving the class will still have the task assigned to them. You can subsequently change who the task is set to. Automated Questions You will see a number of options: Choose one or more topics on the left by expanding the topic tree, or where you have set up a scheme of work, using the middle column. Select a difficulty range. Students will automatically be given questions appropriate to them within the specified difficulty range. Students who haven’t encountered the topic before will start at the lower end of this range, but students with prior success in this topic may start at the upper end. Be wary about including ‘difficulty 4’ in your stated range; these are very taxing and often time consuming questions.

The author filter allows you to restrict questions to a particular exam board if desired. The Warn when Wrong option, when turned on, allows students to receive one warning per question when their answer is wrong. These initial incorrect attempts are not recorded. You can either set students a fixed number of questions, or require a certain accuracy to be achieved, whether at any level or at a specific level. Please carefully read the guidance on difficulty levels. Previewing an Automated Homework Clicking the Preview button allows you to see the complete pool of questions from which questions will be selected for students. You will initially be warned that certain questions within your topic selection may combine with other topics. In the pictured example on the right, “Expand a single bracket” had been selected as the main topic for the homework. Such a skill might be used in the context of questions on other skills, for example solving a linear equation; this may or may not be appropriate based on the students’ place in the curriculum. Check the skills in the list where such skills would be permitted. The preview will appear in a separate browser tab. Use the difficulty and author filters as appropriate to browse questions within the preview. Completing the Setting Process Clicking the Set Task button, just like with the Preview option, will warn you of any skills that questions might also include, e.g. a question might combine Pythagoras and Trigonometry, which would be inappropriate if students have not yet studied Trigonometry. Note that the system attempts to consider what the selection of students may already know, so as to not warn you unnecessarily. These are derived from:

1. Skills you have similarly ‘permitted’ for past homeworks to that group of students.
2. Skills that students have encountered before in any context, e.g. independent practices.
3. Where a scheme of work has been assigned to a class (see Managing Schemes of Work ), and terms have been aligned to UK names (i.e. “Autumn 1”, “Autumn 2”, “Spring 1”, …), any skills from terms prior to the current date will be assumed knowledge, and skills with the prerequisite skills selection. Note that any assumed skills must be common to all students with the selection. Thus if not all students have encountered trigonometry, you will be warned if any questions within your topic selection involve trigonometry, which you can then either

6. MONITORING PROGRESS

A. VIEWING DATA ACROSS HOMEWORKS

1. From the main menu, select Progress  By Class.
2. Select a class or other custom selection of students from the filter at the top.
3. To see data for both homeworks and assessments, ensure Homeworks & Assessments is selected. You can restrict to just one of these. Note that Topic Tests count as an Assessment.
4. Set the date range you wish to view data over. By default, the start date is set to the start of the (UK) academic year and the end date to one week after the current date (in order to include homeworks that have not yet been set but scheduled for the coming week).
5. Your data will then appear. For each task for each student, a breakdown by question difficulty is provided. This is especially important for automated homeworks (where different students will receive different questions), as the overall score may not alone reflect the difficulty of the questions the student received. Homeworks which are either late or were completed late will be highlighted in black. If the student completed the homework multiple times, the cell will display MULTIPLE. If a homework/assessment contains written feedback by either the student or yourself, a pencil icon  will appear in the cell.
6. If a student wasn’t assigned a particular homework, the cell will appear blank. Clicking it will allow you to assign the task to them. This is useful if a student joins your class after the homework was set, allowing you to retroactively include them.
7. To edit a homework, use the Edit link at the top of the table column.
8. To view the breakdown by question across all students on a particular task, press the Task Analysis link at the top of the table column:

Clicking a green/red box will display the student’s answer and the correct answer. By selecting the By Topic checkbox, you can view all the topics involved in the task, how many questions were answered on each, and the accuracy: Press the Back button to return to the By Class main view.