Why do we offer levels in our activities?
At EdPlace, we recognise that every student will have different needs when using our resources. This could be a result of previous school experience, support at home, level of confidence or ability in a specific skill or topic. All students using EdPlace have the same potential for progress, but it's important they begin this path at the best starting point (or level) for them. Our levels system have been devised to help support teachers and tutors with online differentiation, to reflect as closely as possible the differentiation happening within the classroom in order to best meet a student's personal needs. Our levels system can support learning on both our website and app. This supports engagement and helps to inspire confidence, ultimately increasing students' levels of success.
How can you recognise levels in our resources?
We have 3 'flight paths' or levels of challenge at EdPlace. These are represented in the educator and student accounts with a dash, like this:
What do the dashes mean?
- Where you see one dash this represents an activity that is created for the student who is beginning a new skill or needs to recap a topic before they can progress. This is an activity that helps to build the foundations of understanding in a skill;
- An activity with two dashes represents an activity created for the student who is consolidating a skill or topic and, therefore, has some level of prior understanding or confidence before beginning;
- The activities with three dashes indicate an activity designed to stretch and challenge a student who has already grasped the content or topic and has secure knowledge in this area.
How do our levels relate to age-related expected understanding?
We provide three levels of challenge from Key Stage 1 right through to Key Stage 4. We refer to these as 'flight paths', as they are progressive from the start to the end of your students' educational journey with us:
For students who are within Key Stage 1 or 2, the activities have been written by our teacher-authors with the following students in mind:
- One dash relates to a student who is considered to be working towards the expected level for their age;
- Two dashes are targeted at students who are working at the expected level for their age;
- Three dashes are created for students who are working above the expected level for their age.
For students who are within Key Stage 3 or 4, the activities have been written with the end destination of GCSEs in mind:
- Within KS4 a one dash activity specifically correlates to those students sitting the Foundation paper or aiming for grades 1-4 in their exams;
- Two dashes are targeted at students who are middle attaining based on their KS2 data. This corresponds to the challenge of work required to achieve within the GCSE grade bracket of 5-6;
- Three dash activities are created for students who are considered higher attaining students based on their KS2 data. This corresponds to the challenge of work required to achieve within the GCSE grade bracket of 7-9.
It is also helpful to think of your students progressing through these levels during the course of the school year:
How can you use our levels to maximise your students' progress?
- Identify areas for development from the feedback that EdPlace provides in the form of scores and data (particularly using PDF reports from our assessments);
- Assign activities to build your students' confidence in more challenging areas and to stretch and challenge where they excel. Remember you can easily differentiate for your class by assigning activities at different levels for different skills.
We believe that by offering activities with three levels of challenge, we provide the opportunity to really support your students' personal needs, whichever level they may be working at in any skill or topic. Take a look in your account today and hit the 'Browse and assign' button in your left-hand menu to see our levels in action! We hope this answered your question. If you’re in need of further information or advice, please contact our friendly Customer Support team via email at help@edplace.com.
Please note: EdPlace uses the levels to help guide and support teachers and tutors when ascertaining the suitability of activities for students. We do not offer any guarantee or prediction of student grades.