How to use this
This app is built around one idea: you learn a question type by being shown it properly, then doing it yourself with the support taken away a little at a time. Everything below follows from that. It takes about four minutes to read, and you only need the first section to start.
Have a pen and paper beside you
This matters more than anything else on this page. The app is where you find out whether you were right; the paper is where you do the working. Working a question in your head, or straight into the answer box, is the single most reliable way to lose marks you already knew how to earn — because the marks are given for the working, not only for the final line.
So: read the question in the app, put it down, work it on paper the way you would in the exam, and only then type the answer in. If you would like the working laid out the way a marking scheme rewards, there are printable sheets under Resources — fill in the section, lesson and stage at the top and you can file them back against the lesson later.
Your first five minutes
- Open Today's plan. It suggests the best next thing to work on. You do not have to agree with it, but if you are not sure where to start, start there.
- Do one lesson. Most take ten minutes or so. Work through the stages in order rather than jumping to the end.
- When something catches you out, write one line about it in your Mistake notebook. One honest sentence now is worth more than re-reading the whole lesson later.
- Come back tomorrow. Twenty minutes on four days beats two hours on one. That is not motivational padding — it is the single biggest difference between people who remember this in an exam and people who do not.
A day's work, in order
The panels on your course page are arranged in the order it usually makes sense to use them.
| Panel | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Today's plan | The best next thing to work on. Start here. It looks at what you have done and what is coming, and picks something sensible — it is a suggestion, not an instruction, and nothing is locked behind it. |
| Practice & review | Come back to questions before you forget them. This is the part most people skip and should not. Re-meeting a question days after you first got it right is what moves it from "I could follow that" to "I can do that". |
| Mistake notebook | Your own notes on what caught you out, in your words. Private to you. The most useful revision document you will have by the end, because it is a list of your mistakes rather than everybody's. |
| Course lessons | Every lesson, open whenever you like, grouped into sections in teaching order. Use this when you want something specific — the section a question came from, or the thing you know you are weak on. |
The sections are in a deliberate order. Within a section, the first lesson teaches the method and the ones after it rehearse and extend it. If a lesson feels like it assumes something you have not met, the thing it assumes is usually earlier in the same section, or in the section before.
What the five stages are for
Every lesson has the same five stages. They are not five versions of the same question — each one takes away a little more of the help.
| Stage | What you do |
|---|---|
| Explain | Read how the method works, with one example worked all the way through. Do not skim this to get to the questions; it is the shortest part and it is where the method is actually explained. |
| Model | Watch the method used on a real question, start to finish. You are still being shown, not tested. |
| Imitate | Now you do one, with the same moves in the same order. Attempt it before you reveal the working. Getting it wrong here is the point of it existing. |
| Fade | The same again with less scaffolding. Fewer prompts, more of it left to you. |
| Apply | The method somewhere less familiar — a different setting, or wrapped up in a situation. This is closest to how it turns up in an exam. |
Hints come one at a time on purpose
When you ask for help you get a nudge first, not the answer. Each further hint gives away a little more. Take them one at a time and try again in between. If you open all of them immediately you have read a solution, which feels like progress and is not — the difficulty is what makes it stick.
Typing an answer with symbols in it
Answers are checked by matching what you typed, so the app teaches you one
way of writing things and accepts it everywhere: sqrt(3),
x^2, frac(1,2), pi, +-.
The buttons under the answer box put each of them in for you, brackets
included, so you rarely need to type the notation yourself.
Check the “Reads as” line under the box before you submit. It shows your answer rendered properly — a real square root sign, a fraction stacked the way you would write it by hand. If that line looks like what you meant, the app has understood you. If it still looks like typing, something is not closed: an opening bracket without its partner is the usual cause, and the bracket button inserts both at once.
Be generous with brackets. frac(8t-5,(2t+1)(6t)) and
frac(8t-5,(2t+1)6t) mean the same thing and both are accepted;
where brackets genuinely change the meaning, the extra pair costs you nothing.
When you get something wrong
Which you will, constantly, and that is what practice is.
- Partial credit is real. Many questions award marks for the right method even when the final answer is wrong, and you will see which parts earned them. A wrong answer is rarely worth nothing.
- If you think you were right, say so. Automatic marking compares what you typed against what was expected, and sometimes an answer is correct but written a different way. Where a question offers it, you can record your own judgement of your answer. Be honest with yourself — that record is there to catch marking that was too strict, and it only helps if it is truthful.
- Read the notation note. Where a question expects an answer typed a particular way, it says so before you type. It is worth ten seconds.
- Write the mistake down. Not "got it wrong" — what you actually did. "Forgot to check whether the answer was allowed" is a note you can use again.
Some stages let you write out your reasoning in full. That writing is for you — a place to think on paper and to look back at. Nobody is grading it, and it is not marked by a person.
What this app will not do
It will not chase you, email you, or tell you off for missing a day. If you disappear for a fortnight, everything is where you left it.
It will not use a bad run to sell you something. If a topic is going badly, the app's job is to help you with that topic.
It will not hide lessons behind progress. Every lesson in your course is open from the first day. Today's plan is advice about what to do next, not a gate.
Your notes and your mistakes are yours. They are there to help you study, not to score you.
If you only remember five things
- Pen and paper first. The app checks the answer; the paper earns the marks.
- Short and often beats long and rare.
- Attempt it before you look at the working.
- Go back to Practice & review even when nothing feels wrong.
- Write down what caught you out, in your own words.