Third party (commercial) digital resources
There is a range of third-party (commercial) digital resources that schools may choose to use as part of their suite of teaching and learning materials. Schools and teachers will need to develop and apply their own criteria and processes for trialling and evaluating the suitability of such resources for their contexts.
To assist schools and teachers, the VCAA has reviewed several resources with respect to the following broad criteria:
- the resource covers four or more consecutive years of learning
- the resource maps to the Victorian Curriculum: Mathematics and cover all three mathematics strands
- the resource supports teachers to identify additional learning needs and appropriate intervention/s after a teaching and learning sequence has taken place and diagnostic data obtained
- the resource provides digital (and possibly other) materials to support targeted teaching and learning for individuals, small groups and larger groups of students
- the resource provides diagnostic tools or analytics to help monitor and evaluate student progress and achievement.
The following links are provided for teacher reference. Schools and teachers will need to develop and apply their own criteria and processes for trialling and evaluating the suitability of resources and materials contained on these sites.
Education Perfect
Developer: Education Perfect
Levels: 7 – 10
Contact:
contentaus@educationperfect.com
Education Perfect is a web-based learning platform with features designed to help teachers and students. Teachers can assign lessons and other tasks individually or to a class and follow student progress. Personalised feedback can be left on each question to help students improve. Students receive instant feedback on questions with explanations teaching them how to improve their answers. Pre-tests can be used to gauge students' progress, and automatically assign targeted remediation to students.
The content is fully customisable, and teachers can create editable copies of any lesson, either in their own private workspace or accessible by other teachers in their school. New content can also be created - a set of tools is provided for teachers to create their own lessons and assessments, including a media gallery containing images, animations and videos.
Each topic is specifically covered in its own folder and there are several different types of lesson and related resources. Core concepts and review lessons cover important skills and past content. Main lessons and online worksheets teach and allow practice of the curriculum content. Problem solving and activity lessons present content in a different environment. Definitions and spelling lists facilitate quick revision of key terms and concepts.
enVisionMATHS
Developer: Pearson
Levels: F – 6
Contact:
schools@pearson.com.au
enVisionMATHS is a whole-school mathematics solution, including a diagnostic concept-based screening system.
This concept-based primary maths toolkit comprises a webpage and a variety of optional print resources that focus on developing a deep conceptual understanding of mathematics.
It utilises visual learning strategies particularly through Visual Learning Animations and Bridges provided for each lesson.
The webpage provides all the resources for every primary year level to allow teachers to differentiate lessons and address the needs of any student in their single- or multi-year level classroom. It contains the Concept Check-In diagnostic screening system, mathematics background information for teachers, planning and teaching resources as well as pre- and post- assessments. The website also allows teachers to allocate resources directly to an individual student's device.
It can be used flexibly as a full maths program with the topics and lessons followed sequentially, or topics can be selected in any order to suit a school's teaching program. There is an option of using a student workbook or the program is equally effective when the website resources are used with any teacher-directed practice activities.
Essential Assessment – Assessment and Curriculum made easy
Developer: Essential Assessment
Levels: C, D, F – 10/10A
Contact:
info@essentialassessment.com.au
Essential Assessment is a whole school summative and formative assessment and curriculum model for Mathematics, aligned to both the current Victorian Curriculum as well as the new VC 2.0 Curriculum. Materials are available both online and as printable resources.
Our summative assessment component allows teachers to pre-assess and post-assess their students, and enables them to monitor student growth against the content descriptions and the achievement standards.
Our formative assessment component aligns content based upon the students' pre-assessment results, provides feedback to the teacher as they progress through each strand and sub-strand in terms of the proficiencies (understanding, fluency, problem-solving and reasoning) and provides additional learning opportunities based upon this feedback.
Essential Assessment offers opportunities to differentiate and align content for individuals, groups and classes depending on the requirements of the students and teachers. Rich data insights provide an overview of how each individual, class and cohort are progressing throughout each school year and over multiple years.
Lightbook Starter Mathematics
Developer: Pearson
Levels: 7 – 10
Contac:t
schools@pearson.com.au
Lightbook Starter Mathematics is a digital resource powered by Pearson’s Lightbook technology and developed to help students learn key Mathematical concepts, assess their understanding and track progress.
It assesses learners’ readiness prior to beginning new topics by identifying gaps in prior knowledge, prerequisite skills and concepts. It then evaluates their understanding as they move through chapters and answer auto-correcting questions linked to the progress tracker dashboard.
The progress tracker dashboard provides formative feedback on student and class progress and can act as a diagnostic or summative assessment tool. It uses a ‘traffic light’ colour-coded system, allowing teachers to view if a question was answered correctly on the first attempt, second attempt, or after accessing the hints provided with each question.The content in Lightbook Starter is mapped to each text chapter in Pearson Mathematics 2nd edition, as well as to the Victorian Curriculum: content descriptions.
Manga High
Developer: Blue Duck Education
Levels: 7 – 10
Contact:
michelle.kueh@mangahigh.com
Manga High provides curriculum-aligned maths activities in the form of games and adaptive quizzes (Prodigi) to support the development of a growth mindset workflow in maths. The system applies principles from the neuroscience of games-based learning and aims to engage students, build long-term memory, and retrieve learning for continued growth.
Teachers use the specialised teacher platform to browse all activities (games and quizzes), preview, assign activities to their students (both as a group or individualised for differentiated learning), then use the reporting functions to gain insights to student performance and continuously monitor their progress towards set goals in the curriculum. Students access the student platform to personalise their learning experience, and do teacher assigned activities. The adaptive nature of the activities allow students to progressively attempt harder questions, while being supported at the lower levels where required.
There is an in-built personalisation tutor which automatically interprets individual student data, and proceeds to recommend further work to students as a way of individualising student learning, to develop success outcomes for each student.
Mathletics
Developer: 3P Learning
Levels: F – 10
Contact:
customerservice@3plearning.com.au
Mathletics is an online mathematics product that provides students with a range of learning tools. It supports each teacher's combination of student-driven learning and teacher-led instruction.
Mathletics is built on the premise that every child has the potential to learn mathematics. It is designed to empower students with the responsibility for learning and motivates them through flexible digital delivery. It aims to promote a growth mindset in mathematics as students learn from mistakes and monitor their own progress.
The understanding proficiency is addressed through support pages for each online activity, instructional videos, interactive widgets, printable eBooks, formula sheets, a dictionary and a concept tool. The Rainforest Maths interactive presents knowledge in a visual summary form.
The core component of the product targets the fluency proficiency through aligned and adaptive activities. Each task consists of ten online questions where students develop skills in choosing appropriate procedures, applying them and recalling knowledge and concepts. The Live Mathletics application helps develop accuracy and fluency in number fact recall.
The problem solving and reasoning proficiency is addressed through online activities and printable eBooks. Additionally, rich learning tasks give opportunities to explore, justify and communicate mathematical reasoning.
Mathspace
Developer: Mathspace
Levels: 3 – 12
Contact:
info@mathspace.com.au
Mathspace is an adaptive maths program that enables students to show complete working for each step of maths questions. The StepSmart Technology grades each step automatically, and provides immediate feedback at each step. There is a focus on the process of solving a maths problem as well as a final result.
Mathspace emphasises the problem solving process, identifying whether students have taken correct steps to solve the problem, and providing feedback where they have not. It intervenes at the point of misconception so that students can immediately learn from and correct their errors, or access hints, videos and suggestions to help them get back on track.
The resource allows students to solve problems using a range of mathematical approaches. The program accepts all methods with individualised feedback for each student using each problem-solving strategy.