Glossary

Artificial Intelligence services like Open AI's ChatGPT, Google's Gemini and Anthropic's Claude, which allow users to get get near-instant answers to questions.

Bookwork Check. An automated mechanism where students input the correct answer from a question previously answered in the current homework session.

Class Manager. A page for importing classes and viewing class details including homework setting logistics. 

Compulsory. The main component of weekly homework, created from tasks in the planner.

Consolidation. Retrieval questions that make up around 40% of compulsory homework.

Comma Separated Values. A way of uploading students to Sparx without connecting to your MIS.

Dashboard. The homepage of your Sparx site. 

Deepen. Questions applying skills in unfamiliar contexts to gain a deeper understanding of the topic.

Department View. A tab on the Dashboard for a summary of up-to-date department-wide highlights.

Fundamentals. A curriculum of topics for students needing to cover the basics of mathematics.

General Certificate of Secondary Education. Content aimed at students preparing for their GCSE exam.

Getting Started Steps. A checklist of steps to complete in order to start setting homework.

Hand in Page. "Live" homework completion progress for a class.

Hand in Summary. Information on completion rates for a class including suggested students to praise

Homework Difficulty Level. Question level difficulty assigned to a student (KS3 1 - 4; GCSE 1 - 5).

Homework Statistics. A page to view hand-in statistics at a school, year or class level.

Independent Learning.  An area where students can practice any topic at any level.

Insights Page. Five questions identified as topics to "help the class" or "challenge the class" from the selected homework.

Introduce. Questions containing the most scaffolded content which have been designed to build confidence in the key skills.

Key Stage 3. A term used in schools in England, typically students aged 11-14 but this can differ from school to school.

Management Information System. A central place where schools capture, report and assess data. Common MIS systems are SIms and Bromcom.

Objective. Differentiated sets of questions that make up a topic.

Onboarding. Getting teachers, students and parents up and running with Sparx.

Planner. A page where upcoming homework topics can be edited on a class-level basis.

Scheme of Learning. The ordering of topics to appear in homework throughout the academic year.

Sparx Training. In-product training for teachers.

Single Sign On. Sparx Maths supports SSO from Google and Microsoft accounts removing the need for extra an Sparx password.

Staff Manager. A page for viewing and editing staff details.

Strand. A core mathematics theme e.g. Algebra.

Strengthen. Questions to build competency in a topic.

Student Manager. A page for viewing and editing student details by class or year.

Substrand. A sub-section of a core theme e.g. Fractions

Target. A 6-question optional homework of more challenging questions.

Task. A subsection of homework containing questions personalised to the student.

Teacher View. A tab on the Dashboard containing the most relevant information for your own classes.

Topic. Specific mathematical content that is added to homework via the planner.

Wonde. A service that we use to 'talk' to your school's Management Information System (MIS).

XP. "Experience Points" students gain for completion of tasks. 

XP Boost. A 30-minute optional homework based on consolidation, retrieval and in-focus topics.

XP Level. The in-product reward system. Students go up a level every 1,000XP.