Station 1: Increase your students’ motivation
A Buzzmath account can be very different from user to user, and students love personalizing their account! Here are three features that can have a significant impact on your students’ engagement and motivation.
There are two interesting options in the My Account section on the homepage. To access them, simply click or tap your avatar located at the bottom left of the sidebar. From there, both you and your students can modify the account.
Note that students in grades 1 and 2 can only modify their avatar, and students in grades 3 and up cannot change the time zone.
- Change the theme by clicking or tapping Change the background.
- You can change your avatar by clicking or tapping the pencil beside it.
You can also modify your:
- First name
- Last name
- Email address
- Password
- Time zone
Award a badge to your students
During the year, it’s also possible to add your two cents to the students’ learning experience! At any time, you can send your students a personalized badge. Simply go to Individual Report, choose the student in question and click or tap Award a badge.
This is what the page for awarding badges looks like once you’ve chosen the Award a badge tab
Once you’ve selected a badge, you can personalize the message that comes with it or choose a message suggested by the team. When you award a badge, you are highlighting your students’ successes directly in their personal portfolio.
IMPORTANT! Students can receive a badge even if you did not send them one! Aside from the cross-curricular competency badges mentioned above, your students can also earn knowledge badges without you sending them one.
Don’t worry! This is a system set up by the Buzzmath team to encourage your students to pursue their adventure on the platform. There is a progress bar with a lock at the top of the sections for certain topics in the books. When students complete an activity, they will see the bar fill in with color until they have completed all of the activities set by the first lock (in this case, 10 activities).
Once they’ve completed all of the activities, a secret activity will be revealed. If they’re able to complete it with fewer than three mistakes, they’ll receive a badge. Here’s an example of the badges they can earn!
Station 2: Find your teaching pathway
Now, we’re going to take a look at the different types of books that can be found on your homepage. This will help you find the content that responds to your needs over the course of the year.
There are 5 different types of books on the platform:
- Activities
- Explorations
- Geometric Constructions
- Brain teasers
- Ready, Set, Math!
These books can be found in the Books section in the sidebar!
01
Activities
To find out which activities your students need to complete, go to the Books section and select your students’ level by changing the book selected at the top of the menu.
Next, choose an activity based on the math concept that was recently taught. If you don’t know where to start, go to the website’s Curriculum section. There you will find the learning outcomes the students must attain and the related activities. This is where you’ll find activities that will help your students consolidate their math learning.
02
Explorations
The binoculars represent the book that contains all of the Buzzmath explorations. In Buzzmath, exploration and experimentation play a key role. Your students can use a tens cube to solve a subtraction visually; change the parameters of a function to test their hypotheses on the form of a graph; or experiment with probabilities using spinners, randomly draw candies or rolling dice. Math concepts become more than simply symbols! And this is how math will take on a whole new meaning for your students.
03
Geometric Constructions
The play icon represents the Geometric Constructions book. Here, your students will find demo videos on various math topics that will help them understand concepts.
04
Brain Teasers
The map represents the book that contains Riddles as well as Sonya’s math challenges. For the brain teasers, we’ve chosen not to include detailed solutions—the only way to solve them is through perseverance!
Sonya’s challenges are math challenges for the students, for grades 5 and up.
05
Ready, Set, Math!
The book Ready, Set, Math! contains math activities for the end-of-year review. Your students will discover which concepts they have mastered and which ones still require special attention!
Station 3: The toolbox
The toolbox can be accessed directly from the Buzzmath activity pages. It includes:
- Pencils
- Read to me (speech synthesis)
- Glossary
- Calculator
Students in grades 1 and 2 do not have access to the glossary and the read-to-me option is already activated.
01
Pencils
This icon contains 3 different types of pencils so that your students can continue to use the reading strategies in place. They can highlight a word or make notes directly in the activities. Different colours and stroke thicknesses are presented.
02
Read to me
The read-to-me feature is a support tool that appears close to each paragraph on the platform once the option has been activated in the toolbox. To activate it, simply click or tap the speaker icon. Note that for students in grades 1 and 2, this feature is already activated and is therefore not in the toolbox.
This tool is represented by the blue speaker in the margin of each activity. If you click or tap this button, the text is highlighted and the word that is being read is displayed in a different color.
03
Glossary
Clicking or tapping the dictionary icon will take you straight to the visual glossary or to the glossary of formulas, depending on the level you’re in when you consult it. A glossary is a lexicon that explains certain words to the students to facilitate their comprehension.
Visual glossary
This glossary can be used for elementary-level activities and to obtain an illustrated description of certain math terms. In some cases, it allows for manipulations that make it easier to understand the term.
Glossary of formulas
This is a glossary of math formulas that you will find in the middle school-level books.
04
Calculator
The calculator can be used for simple calculations, such as adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing.
Station 4: Features for teachers and
students that you don’t want to miss
01
The feedback loop
Buzzmath offers a feedback loop to encourage students to persevere in their learning.
If a student gives an incorrect answer, they are prompted to become aware of their mistake so that they can correct it themselves. If they don’t know what to do, they can be shown exactly where they made their mistake.
On some pages, the student can also choose to consult the detailed solution so that they can find another way to arrive at the same answer. They can start the page over as many times as they want, using different values.
This approach helps to reinforce the student’s conviction that they can find the right answer on their own, without copying their answer from the solution. This is a step towards developing a mindset of growth and perseverance!
02
Integrated glossary
Simply move the mouse over a word on the activity page and a direct link to its definition will appear.
03
Your favorites
In this section, it’s easy to find all the activities you saved in your favourites.
To add an activity to your favourites, simply go to the book you want, then click or tap the heart icon to the right of the activity that you wish to add. It will be automatically added to your list of favourites.
04
The missions
Accessible from the homepage in the Laboratory menu, the missions are fun and exciting adventures where your students can complete math exercises while accumulating stars to unlock the 10 missions and rebuild the city of BuzzCity.
The missions are available as of Grade 5 and will introduce your students to the history of math and its key figures.
