How we support students with completing their homework
Innovative support for students
Sparx Science provides a range of support mechanisms designed to help students succeed. The support is tailored to each question to clearly address misconceptions or gaps in knowledge.
If a student doesn't know the answer to a question, they can click on the I don't know button. They will then be led through the Let's Learn this system.
Questions involving knowledge recall
Questions involving knowledge recall
For questions involving knowledge recall, students are given support material that covers the key knowledge required to answer the question. They are then given a follow-up question to check for understanding and that they have actively engaged with the support.
Questions involving calculations
Questions involving calculations
For calculation-based questions, the Let's Learn this system scaffolds the calculation by breaking it down into manageable steps. The steps check intermediate answers and that students can follow the key method.
Flashcards
Flashcards
Support on Flashcards is similar to support for knowledge recall questions. If a student clicks I don’t know, the Flashcard flips to show the knowledge statement needed to complete that card. Students are then retested on the card using the same question. This card will appear later in the same task to check students can recall what they have learnt.
Second Chance
Second Chance
If a student gets an initial question wrong, then they will get a second attempt. This gives them the opportunity to improve or correct their answer. If they get the question wrong again, they will then be led through the Let’s learn this process for that question.
Supporting low-attaining students
Sparx automatically adjusts the difficulty of homework based on a student's ability.
However, teachers are responsible for ensuring that the topics assigned to the class are appropriate. We recommend checking the Planner each week and adding/removing topics where necessary. You can see example questions in each topic by selecting View questions for the topic in the Planner page.
How to identify students who are struggling
How to identify students who are struggling
Use the Hand-in page to spot students who need help.
Look for:
Red sections in completion bars (incorrect answers)
High working times compared to peers
Grey sections showing unattempted questions
Look at number of attempts
Click on a student's completion bar to see their detailed question history - you'll see how many incorrect attempts they've made on each question.
How to support students who are struggling
How to support students who are struggling
Supporting struggling students:
Check their homework level - ensure they're set to Level 1 (easiest level) if they're finding work too difficult. Features of our Level 1 content include
reduced reading age of the question text
avoiding questions where students need to spell complex scientific words
questions are targeted on the fundamentals of each topics
Adjust homework settings - go to Management → Student Manager, select the student, and consider:
• Setting them to Level 1 manually
• Enabling half-length - check wording? homeworkReview topic selection - check the Planner weekly and ensure that topics are only set once they've been taught in the classroom
Reminder emails - Sparx sends reminder emails to assigned teachers of classes to remind them to check the topics in the Planner are what has been taught.
Managing the use of cheating tools
The increasing availability, capability and accuracy of AI services mean that it’s becoming more common for students to use them when completing their homework. This challenge is broad-reaching - it potentially affects any work that we ask students to complete at home, be that via worksheets, text books or online services like Sparx Science.
We’ve been carefully considering the feedback that we’ve been receiving about the impact of this challenge on Sparx Science homework. Whilst we establish longer-term solutions to this challenge, there are some approaches that you can take to monitor for the potential use of AI services. None of these indicators prove cheating on their own, but by looking at these indicators together, it can help build a clearer picture of whether homework is likely to reflect a student’s independent work.
Student level higher than expected for their group
Very low time spent on homework
Consistently perfect first attempts on homework questions
Hide a student from the leaderboard
Hide a student from the leaderboard
Teachers can choose to hide students from the leaderboard if they believe them to have been cheating.
To remove a student from the leaderboard that you believe hasn't done their homework genuinely:
Go to Reporting > Leaderboards
Select the class from the drop down menu
It doesn't matter which timescale drop down you select (this year / this week etc), it will hide the student from every view in the Science leaderboard
Click the three dots to the right hand side of the students name
Click on Hide student from Sparx Science Leaderboards
Ensure you've read the pop up warning message and select Yes, hide this student again to confirm
Changes made in Sparx Science only affect the Science leaderboards. To hide them from Sparx Reader or Sparx Maths leaderboards, this must be done within each respective Sparx site. The process works in exactly the same way.
Re-add a student to the leaderboard
Re-add a student to the leaderboard
You can visit the Student Details page in Student Manager to see if a student is hidden from the leaderboard. There isn't a way to see a list of all hidden students at once.
To re-add them in the future, you can do this anytime by visiting the Student Details page for the student. Select No - do not hide student from leaderboards from the drop down box under the title Hide from the Sparx Science Leaderboards?
This might be a useful first port of call while you investigate any suspicious activity, to reduce the impact on other students.
What a student sees if they are hidden from the leaderboards
What a student sees if they are hidden from the leaderboards
A student will be shown this message if they have been hidden from the Science leaderboards:
Frequently asked questions
How can I support a student who has become disengaged from their homework?
How can I support a student who has become disengaged from their homework?
Here are some possible actions to help your student re-engage with their Sparx Science work:
Take the focus away from completing outstanding homework by cancelling previous homework for the student to focus on the most recent tasks
Check that the student's difficulty level is appropriate. See Changing homework for an individual student for more information.
Set the student to 30 minute homework to make their tasks more achievable. See Changing homework for an individual student for more information.
How can I support a student who has been absent from school?
How can I support a student who has been absent from school?
During long-term absence, you can:
Turn homework off in their student settings - they will not be set any homework tasks. See Changing homework for an individual student for more information.
Cancel any outstanding homework for the student. See Making changes to upcoming homework plans for a class for more information.
Please keep in mind that Sparx Science is designed for practicing topics already learned in class as retrieval practice. It is not designed to teach students topics for the first time, so we do not recommend setting a student work in Sparx to catch up on missed lessons.