For Irish teachers and their students, Christmas exams are over and the Christmas break is fast approaching. This means that many teachers are turning to digital classroom solutions in order to act on the feedback from their class’ exams and keep them working over the break. In particular, our Adaptemy pilot programme for Junior Cert maths students launched in September and continues to provide teachers around the country with a personalised, effective, and engaging way to manage their classrooms. Our teachers have provided us with both encouraging feedback and valuable advice, as seen in Dave’s post, and it’s clear that the Adaptemy pilot programme facilitates personalised instruction for students of all ability levels. Teachers can monitor each student and provide support before obtaining feedback and setting assignments, and these features will be particularly useful in the run up to Christmas.
Assessing the competence level of each student is vital before moving forward, and the Adaptemy system provides teachers with information relating to progress in particular topics in addition to overall knowledge. This feedback will likely reflect exam performance, and these indicators of a student’s ability can direct further study. After identifying strong and weak areas for each student, teachers can choose to focus on a particular topic during the last few weeks of term and ensure that the class as a whole is on track before the Christmas break. Assessment allows teachers to evaluate the success of the year so far without relying solely on student feedback, which may be somewhat biased. Information relating to knowledge level is also made available to the student, encouraging each student to improve on their weakest topics before returning to school in January.
When teachers have identified strong and weak areas for their students, these areas can be the focus of the last few Adaptemy sessions of the term. Students can work on particular topics by answering questions on the Adaptemy system, which is designed to provide students with appropriate but challenging questions to build their confidence while improving their knowledge. As such, students tend to get approximately one in three questions wrong. When this happens, a worked solution is provided right beside the original question in order to allow the student to understand their mistake. Students can use the system at home, and teachers can track their progress in each topic and identify those who are studying and those who are not. The Adaptemy pilot programme is based on the Irish curriculum, allowing teachers can set assignments on the system for homework and study.
Many teachers provide their students with tasks to complete over the Christmas break when the exams have finished, and the Adaptemy system allows teachers to set assignments that students can complete and submit online. Teachers have access to information relating to the amount of time spent on the system by each student and answers are corrected by the system, eliminating the need to correct them when class resumes in January. Different assignments can be set depending on the student’s needs. Many students prefer working on personalised, effective, and engaging problems with worked solutions to working through a worksheet or exercise in a book, and students who are struggling with a particular topic can choose to practice on the system in their own time. The Adaptemy pilot programme for Junior Cert maths students allows teachers to direct student learning at home as well as in school.
Many teachers could benefit from using the Adaptemy system to assess and improve their class both before and during this year’s Christmas break, and now is the perfect time to try something new. If you’re interested in a personalised, effective, and engaging classroom management tool this Christmas, we’d love to hear from you on Twitter, Facebook, through our website, or by email at hello@adaptemy.com.
