Matific's new Focus feature bridges the gap between personalized learning and classroom instruction, enhancing our popular Adventure Island personalizing learning experience. 

What is Adventure Island?

Adventure Island is Matific's adaptive learning space where students explore math concepts at their own pace. Our algorithm serves up activities tailored to each student's skill level, which means no more activities that are frustratingly difficult or boringly easy – just the right level of challenge to keep students engaged and progressing.

The Challenge: Balancing Adaptivity and Classroom Goals

While Adventure Island excels at providing personalized learning experiences, teachers often face a dilemma: How can they ensure that this self-paced exploration aligns with their current classroom objectives? Enter Focus: a feature designed to maintain the benefits of adaptive learning while giving teachers more control over the learning direction.

Introducing Focus: Guiding the Adventure

The Focus feature allows teachers to gently steer the Adventure Island experience towards specific topics or curriculum areas they're currently covering in class. Here's how it works:

1. Teacher-Guided Direction: Teachers can easily set a focus topic through the Matific dashboard, signaling the system to prioritize activities related to this area.
2. Smart Activity Selection: While honoring the focus topic, our algorithm continues to adapt to each student's individual needs. This means activities are not only relevant to classroom learning but also appropriately challenging for each student.
3. Building Strong Foundations: If a student struggles with the focus topic, the system intelligently serves up prerequisite activities. This ensures students build the necessary foundational skills to tackle more advanced concepts within the focus area.
4. Flexible Learning Paths: All students work towards the same overall goal, but each follows a unique path tailored to their needs – some may speed ahead to advanced content, while others take more time to solidify core concepts.
5. Time-Bound Focus: Each focus period lasts for two weeks by default, aligning nicely with typical classroom units and encouraging regular engagement with the platform.

The Practical Benefits of Focus

For Teachers:

Time-Saving: Set a broader focus area instead of assigning individual activities, streamlining workflow.
Improved Alignment: Easily connect Matific content with current classroom topics.
Simplified Management: Maintain control over learning direction while relying on the platform's adaptive capabilities.

For Students:

Tailored Experience: Each student works at an appropriate level of challenge within the focus area.
Steady Progress: Students automatically advance to more challenging content as they master concepts.
Foundational Support: Those who struggle with the focus topic receive prerequisite activities to build necessary skills.

Focus in Action: A Classroom Scenario

Mrs. Johnson's 4th-grade class has just started a unit on fractions, so she sets "Fractions" as the focus topic in Matific. Over the next two weeks:

Advanced students progress quickly through basic concepts and move on to comparing and adding fractions.
Mid-level students work steadily through identifying and representing fractions, with gradually increasing difficulty.
Students needing additional support begin with prerequisite skills before advancing to more complex fraction concepts.

All students work towards the same learning goal, each following a path tailored to their individual needs and pace.

Personalized learning paths, aligned with classroom instruction

Focus represents Matific's ongoing commitment to supporting effective math education. By allowing teachers to align Adventure Island activities with their current classroom topics, Focus creates a seamless connection between guided instruction and adaptive learning. This ensures that students engage with relevant, fun activities that build strong mathematical understanding while complementing their in-class lessons.