Getting Started ::

For Teachers
www.drfrostmaths.com
@DrFrostMaths

Last modified: 3rd December 2022

Contents

1 Home dashboard / menus Page 3

2 Setting up classes Page 5
3 Updating school settings Page 14
4 The ‘mastery’ measure Page 15
5 Setting homework/classwork Page 17
a. By Topic Page 19
b. Uses student demo accounts Page 27
c. Choosing the questions yourself Page 28
d. Modified past paper Page 33
e. Randomly generating worksheets Page 36
f. Generating a shadow paper Page 38
6 Viewing Progress Page 40
a. By Task Page 40
b. By Topic/Course/Viewing Activity Page 45
c. Leaderboards Page 49
7 Starting a Live! game Page 50
8 Using the virtual whiteboard Page 55
9 Browsing for downloadable resources Page 61
10 The Course/Scheme of work system Page 62
11 How do I… Page 70
 The top menu allows you to quickly
When you first log in… access different parts of the site.
We’ll explore this further…
You can use this search bar to quickly
search for skills (e.g. Pythagoras) or
students (e.g. to change their class)

On the right are notifications

related to activity of students in
your classes. You can click these.
e.g. Clicking this one would show
you the questions (and the
student’s answers) for this
independent practice they did.

The latest tasks you’ve set (use ‘View All

Tasks’ to see all, set a new task or access
the ‘worksheets’ you have created.

A weekly summary of activity,

including top students. Use View
Student Progress so see lots more
analysis.
 The left/top menu

Return to this home page.

Set a new homework/classwork task to

students. You will be presented with a
variety of options.

Analysis of tasks (including by topic),

leaderboards, progress by course, school
analytics, and so on.
Your latest dashboard notification and
Explore both exam questions and ‘Key Skill’ notifications about written student
questions (i.e. randomly generated feedback on tasks. These are clickable.
questions), including accompanying videos.
This is equivalent to Set a Task → By Topic.

A ‘worksheet’ on DFM is simply a fixed Every class you set up has a ‘demo
collection of questions. This interface allows account’. Any task you set to the class will
you to use a preexisting library of also be set to the demo account. Use this
worksheets, or to make your own. These can to see the experience as a student.
then be set to students to exported to Word.

A ‘course’ is a scheme of work to brings Change your password, profile

together the resources of DFM in an ordered picture, link your account to
way. You can create courses for your school. Google/Office365, and so on.

A virtual whiteboard, where you can import

A classroom game where questions and connect with student devices.
students can simultaneously
Downloadable teacher resources, such as PowerPoints.
answer questions on their
mobile device.
Set up your classes and add teachers.
Setting up your classes

Step 1

Click the top-left Menu button and choose Classes & Settings.
Setting up your classes
If classes have already been set up, you
can select a class from the dropdown
list here.

We highly recommend adding all your

classes via a spreadsheet import or MIS
import, particularly if you wish to reset
your class groupings at the start of the
academic year. Let’s try this option
now…

Use this button to add a single class

from scratch. Unless adding a small
class or intervention group, we
don’t recommend this option.

By exporting your class lists to Excel,

you have a backup, which could be
restored using Import by
spreadsheet should you encounter
any problems.
Setting up your classes via a spreadsheet import

Having pressed the Import by Spreadsheet link, follow the

Step 2 instructions to download a Excel spreadsheet you will need to
populate.

Step 3
By copying data from your department’s
tracking spreadsheet, list all your students. This
can be a mixture of students already with DFM
accounts (the wizard will find them), and new
students who require new accounts.

Key Point: If you don’t specify an email address, a

username (e.g. jfrost-2594) and random password
will be allocated to the student for you.
Setting up your classes via a spreadsheet import

Step 4 Use this button to select your saved import Excel spreadsheet.

If you’re starting a new school year in

particular, you’ll want the first option.
This will start all your class groupings
from afresh. It will never delete any
active student accounts.

The second option is useful to add

additional classes when you’ve
previously already set some up.

We recommend using the Preview

button first. This will show you what
the import will do, including any
existing accounts identified.
Setting up a class from scratch

You can also create classes without a spreadsheet. We only recommend

using this if creating small classes or an intervention group.

Fill in this form. We

recommend adding
the teachers in your
school first so you
can assign them to
classes you create.
Click this button. You can always do
this later.

Once you’ve created the class, you will be

a quick on-screen tutorial about the
options available. You can use the
+Students button to add students one at
a time.

The alternative is to obtain the class join URL from

under Class Options, where students self-register.
We do not recommend this option.
Setting up a class from scratch

If you click the +Students button,

you’ll see this form. If you don’t
enter an email address, a username
will be created for you.

If there’s a matching student, you’ll be given

the option to either use this existing account,
or create as a new account.
If you specify an email address for an existing
account, it’ll automatically use this account
without prompting.
Importing from a school data system (MIS)

You can import from a school data

management system. We currently
support Bromcom and very soon will be
supporting Wonde and iSAMS.

For Bromcom syncing, please send your IT support

the document linked to in the help text.
They will need to grant permission to certain entities,
e.g. ‘SubjectClasses’. After following the instructions,
they will have Bromcom credentials specifically for
Bromcom.

We highly recommend using the Preview button

first, which will indicate all the new class groupings,
and indicate any existing accounts which match.
Managing Existing Students Change the year group for your class, teachers
assigned to the class and any courses assigned
to the class (see the Courses section) here.
Delete the class, get the
‘class join URL’ (if you wish
students to join your class
independently), use the
‘demo account’ for the class,
or export the class to Excel.

Important Note: If students use a non school email address to

To select a student, just click the row. register, i.e. their email extension after the @ doesn’t match that
You can then change their class and set for your school, then their email will appear as “Non-School
change details such as their name, Email Address”. This allows for appropriate Safeguarding in cases
email and password. When a selection where students don’t have a school email address available for use,
is made, the Apply Action dropdown but would like to associate an email address with their account.
will be visible and give you the
available options. Some options (e.g.
change password) can be applied to
multiple accounts simultaneously.
If an email address is associated with a student account, rows with ‘Unactivated’
Use the back arrow to return to class are students who haven’t yet activated their accounts. If you’ve added the accounts
selection. yourself and provided an email address, this means they haven’t clicked the link in
the automated email they received. If there’s problems with this, select any such
rows and use the Force Activation option within the Apply Action dropdown. This
activates their account and temporarily sets their password to password.
Dealing with students who have registered independently

There’s nothing stopping a student registering with a school independently (although

they will receive a warning message telling them to await teacher instructions where
appropriate). If this happens, you can still subsequently put them in a class.

From the main class

selection, choose
CLASSLESS
STUDENTS at the
bottom.

Find the student in the list,

and click them to select.
Choose ‘Move class’.

Choose a suitable class to

put the in.

Important Note: For Safeguarding/GDPR reasons, students who register independently

won’t be able to see the names of anyone else in the school, i.e. on leaderboards.
 Updating school settings

To access go to Menu → Classes & Settings → School Settings

Different schools use different year group naming conventions.

UK1 for example uses “Reception, Year 1, Year 2, …”. UK2 uses
“1st Form, 2nd Form, …”. We also have the native naming
conventions in various countries.

By setting the email extension, this ensures the system knows

what a ‘school email address’ is versus a personal email
address. If you have multiple extensions (e.g. one of students
You can upload and one for teachers), use OR (ensuring a space before and
your school logo if after), e.g.
not already set. students.myschool.sch.uk OR teachers.myschool.sch.uk

We no longer use the time zone associated with

the school – instead the intended time for due
dates/set dates on set tasks is based on the
underlying time zone of the browser you are
using. Be wary of this if setting tasks to students
in a different country!
 The ‘mastery’ measure

Our ‘skill tree’ is broken down into 5

levels:

1. Key Stage/age range Students have a mastery value from 0-100

(e.g. KS3/4) associated with each skill. 1/2/3 bars are associated
2. Strand with different thresholds (e.g. 85+ for 3 bars)
(e.g. algebra)
3. Topic
(e.g. trigonometry) Threshold for 3 bars.
4. Skill
(e.g. “determine angles in a right-angled
triangle”)
5. Subskill As each skill has subskills at various difficulty
(either ‘E’ numbers, i.e. exam practice of a levels (usually 1 to 4), high mastery is not just
skill, or ‘K’ numbers for ‘Key Skills’, which are associated with answering questions
randomly generated questions of specific consistently correctly, but also mastering harder
question types) questions at that skill. For example, students
can’t surpass a mastery of 25 if answering only
difficulty 1 questions on that skill. Conversely
students won’t lose mastery if they answer a
difficulty 2 question incorrect whilst with a
mastery less than 25.
 If a student practises a skill as a whole (or you set a task on a skill as a
The ‘mastery’ measure whole or multiple subskills), the system will automatically differentiate
by choosing the next Key Skill with a difficulty appropriate to their
current mastery. As the maximum difficulty is 4 (K83f), a mastery of
25-50 (they have 33) is associated with difficulty 2 questions. So the
system would interleave between K83b and K83c until their mastery
either goes above 50 or drops below 25.

If the maximum difficulty was only 2, then a mastery of 0-50 would

correspond with difficulty 1 questions and 50-100 with difficulty 2, to
ensure that a student can always achieve ‘full’ mastery.

Students can see their mastery tallies on their home

dashboard or when first going to Question Explorer.
Students earn 3-6 points per correctly answered
question based on its difficulty. Unlike mastery, points
can never go down, and points are an overall tally
rather than associated with specific skills.
Set some classwork/homework

Step 1 From the main menu,

select Set a Task.
Alternatively click the
Set a Task button on
your home dashboard.

Step 2

You’ll be presented with multiple different options for setting work, with
explanatory text. Let’s explore some of these…
 Set some classwork/homework

There are two main sources of Key Skill questions should be a starting Exam Questions are, as you’d expect,
questions on DFM. point to help students master very questions from past exam papers. We work
specific types of questions. with a number of exam boards, e.g. Edexcel,
All 4 of the above options allow AQA and OCR in the UK.
combining of both. By Topic gives the Key Skills are randomly generated (and
option of ‘flexible tasks’ (where hence unlimited!) questions of a specific These will give a broader variety of
students get different questions). The type. questions on a topic.
other 3 involve ‘worksheets’, i.e. a
fixed selection of questions.
Browse by Topic
You can access the Question Explorer using Set a
Task → By Topic or Menu → Question Explorer.

Our topic tree is organised into 5 levels:

1. Key Stage/age range
2. Strand (e.g. ‘algebra’)
3. Topic (e.g. ‘expanding brackets’)
4. Skill (e.g. ‘expanding single brackets’)
5. Subskill (Key Skills and Exam Practice)

Navigate this tree on the left.

Browse by Topic
This is ‘skill 83’. The mastery gives a measure of overall
competency of the skill. We explored this earlier.

Pressing the Example button on any

Key Skill will generate an example
question. There’s only small surface
variation so this should be typical of
questions students might get. Click
the Refresh icon to get another
example, or the Fullscreen icon to see
the question in a standalone page.

For ‘Exam Practice’ of a skill,

Browse allows you to browse all …and the video icon brings up a video
exam questions on this skill. showing a worked example. For Key Skills
these are typically 2-4 minutes long.
Setting a Task by Topic
You can set a task on the skill as a whole by clicking
the skill’s checkbox, which will differentiate on the Key
Skills within it. (We’ll explain more about this later)
Setting a Task by Topic
You can also select specific subskills
within the skill for more control over
your task. Your selection will appear on
the right. You can navigate to other
topics on the tree in left and mix skills
from multiple topics.

Set a task allows you to set questions

on your selection to students.

Generate Worksheet allows to

generate a fixed set of questions
(known as a ‘worksheet’) which you
can export to Word or set a task.

Have a Go is equivalent to the ‘Practise’

button students will see here if working
independently. It allows you to
experience what it’s like answering
questions as a student.
Setting a Task by Topic

Suppose we click Set a Task.

You will be presented with 2 main

options for how to use your selection
of skills/subskills.
Note that if you combine Exam
Practice and Key Skills, the Flexible
Questions option will not be available.

‘Fixed Questions’ is equivalent to

pressing the ‘Generate a Worksheet’
button earlier.
Setting a ‘Flexible’ Task by Topic

You will be presented with 2 main options for how to use

your selection of skills/subskills.
Note that if you combine Exam Practice and Key Skills, the
Flexible Questions option will not be available.

‘Fixed Questions’ is equivalent to pressing the ‘Generate a

Worksheet’ button earlier.

This is the ‘flexible questions’ option.

If you set a custom label, this will be used for the name of
the task. Otherwise we’ll use the names of the skills involved.

Set immediately or schedule for the future.

Choose the criteria for students to complete the task. Within

each, you have options for how questions are selected. If you
use differentiation, the system will use easier and harder Key
Skills/exam questions within your selection as the user’s
mastery at that skill changes throughout the task.
Interleaving means rotating between the subskills in your
selection.

There are a variety of other task options. Click the question

marks for an explanation of each option.
What students will see… If they get stuck, they can watch a
Once students start their task, this is worked example video. If you’ve used
the interface they’ll see. the ‘Hide skill names’ option, the video
option will be disabled.

They have a whiteboard area

for rough workings. This
working will only be saved if
you’ve used the ‘Require
workings’ option. Clicking any
image in the question will
This keyboard will pop up if the load it in the whiteboard for
answer box requires algebraic input. easy annotation.
 They’ll be shown any change to their mastery if they
What students will see… get the question right. (We explain mastery later in
this manual)

They’ll get feedback after each

question (although depending on
what settings you’ve used this may
not be the case), with a full
explanation of the answer.

The system
will accept any
algebraically
The percentage completion is
equivalent
particularly useful for tasks with
answer (e.g. Students can skip to any question
5 accuracy-based completion
within the task simply by clicking
5−6𝑏 2 ) criteria.
the question numbers.

They have the option to leave written

feedback for you (which you can
subsequently reply to).
How to do the set task as if a student

Each class you set up also has an

associated ‘demo account’. Any work
Step you set to anyone in your class will
also be set to the demo account.
1
This enables you to see what the
experience is like for a student.

On the top account menu, choose

‘View As Student’.
You can also access this when viewing a class
within Settings, under ‘Class Options’.

Step Select a class. As you will now

be logged in as that demo
2 account, you will need to log
off (and back in) if you wish to
return to your own account.
Choosing the questions yourself

You can create a custom selection of questions, mixing past paper exam questions and
randomly generated Key Skill questions. We call such a collection a worksheet.
Worksheets can either be set to students as an online task, exported to Word (with
mark scheme) or played as a ‘Live!’ game.

Step
1

Go to Menu → Set a Task and then select ‘Choose questions’.

Alternatively, go to Home Dashboard → My Worksheets and click the
+New Worksheet button.
Choosing the questions yourself
Once your worksheet is saved, you can set it as an
online task, or export it to Word (with markscheme) or
play as a ‘Live!’ game. ‘Practice Mode’ allows you to
practise the worksheet as if as student.

Add a past paper exam question (or

user contributed question) to your
worksheet.

Add a Key Skill question to your

worksheet. Recall that these are
randomly generated questions on
very specific question types.

Once you’ve clicked on one of the +

buttons on the right, click the box to
choose an exam question or generate
a Key Skill question.
Choosing the questions yourself

You’ll see this dialog if you click on a blank Exam

Question box.
You can filter by topic, exam board, difficulty, or
search for a specific word/phrase.

Select a question on the left. Once you like a

question, choose Use this question, or if you want
to use all the neighbouring parts of that original
exam question (e.g. if the question was part (c) it
would use (a) and (b)), use the second button.

Similarly if you click a blank Key Skill question box,

you’ll be required to choose a Key Skill.
You can use the Regenerate above button to keep
randomly generating a new question. Once you’re
happy with it, press Use this.
Choosing the questions yourself

You can continue building your worksheet. Use the × to

delete questions, or drag the question boxes to reorder.
To set/export your worksheet, first click the Save/Save As
button.

Give your worksheet a name. By default the worksheet

will be saved in your home directory, found under
[your school] → Individuals. Your school will also have a
‘Shared’ and ‘Restricted’ folder, the former good for
making worksheets accessible to students, and the latter
good for shared tests within your department.

Note that students can’t navigate into your own home

folder.

Tip: To quickly access your home directory of worksheets

elsewhere on the site, go to Set a Task → My Worksheets
on the main menu.
 Choosing the questions yourself
Once saved, click the ‘Set to students’ button. You’ll
initially be presented with a choice of setting as a normal
task or as a ‘Live!’ game (see the Live! Section).

If all the questions in your worksheet

are past paper exam questions, you
have the option to use the original
As explained, use the first option for more number of marks assigned to each
informal work, where students get feedback question, rather than 1 mark per
after each question. The second option is for question.
formal tests. After each answer submission
students will just see “Your answer has been
recorded”, but they can modify previous
answers before their final submission.

The fine print: If you set ‘Prevent reattempts’ to ‘No’ so that students can redo a homework, they won’t get the correct answer for
incorrect answer submissions, to avoid spoiling reattempts. If you ‘Set as an Assessment’, students will be able to see their score and
their/the correct answers after the Due Date. If no Due Date is set, they will never know their score.
Setting an abridged/modified past paper

Go to Menu → Set a Task → Past Papers. Then navigate to a past

paper of your choosing.
Setting an abridged/modified past paper

Click Edit to modify the paper.

Setting an abridged/modified past paper

You can now:

• Reorder questions by dragging
the question boxes.
• Delete questions using the × in
the top right corner of each box.
• Replace questions by simply
clicking the question within a box.
• Add questions using the +
buttons at the end of the
worksheet.

Once finished, use the Save As button

to save your modified copy, then use
the Set to Students button as before.
Creating a Random Collection of Fixed Questions

You can create a random collection of questions, with Exam Skill or Key Skill, and then set
these to students or export to Word.

Step 1 From Menu → Set a Task → By Topic or Menu → Question Explorer,

select the skills or subskills you want, then click either the Generate
Worksheet button, or the Set a Task button then the Fixed Questions
option.

Or to specify from scratch how your random worksheet will be

generated, go to Menu → Worksheets/Past Papers and then click the
+New → Template button.
Creating a Random Collection of Fixed Questions
On the right is the worksheet builder
interface as normal, but populated You can modify/delete/reorder these questions in the
with questions. normal work. As per before, use Set to Students or
Download to export to Word.

This extra column on the left is known

as a template. Templates are a
specification for how to generate the
random worksheet.

Press the Generate button to discard

the questions on the right and
randomly generate a fresh worksheet.
You can also regenerate individual
questions by using the refresh
buttons on the right.

If you scroll to the bottom of the

template, you could add additional
question specifications.
Generating a Shadow Paper

Open any worksheet within the

worksheets interface, whether a Past
Paper or one of your own worksheets.
Under the More Options menu,
choose Generate Shadow Paper.
Generating a Shadow Paper

This will look at the skills involved in

each question in the original
worksheet, and produce a template.

This in turn produces a random worksheet.

You can press the Generate button to
generate further random papers. After you
save the worksheet on the right, you can set
this to students or export to Word.

The questions in your shadow paper will likely

be the best match to the original paper where
there was a subskill (K numbers) identified. For
more uncommon questions, a more generic
skill is identified, and a random exam question
is used instead. As we create more Key Skills on
DFM, the quality of shadow papers will
gradually improve.
Viewing Pupil Progress Data from Set Tasks

Step 1 Go to Menu → Progress Data, or use the

Work box on your home dashboard.
If you have just set a task, you will
automatically be taken to here.

Choose Tasks → List. This should

Step 2 be the default view.

You can change the date range to view

historical tasks, or filter to a specific class.

Click on a row to open an

analysis of the task.
 Viewing Pupil Progress Data from Set Tasks The pictured view below is the ‘full
breakdown’, allowing you to see every
individual answer.
But you can switch mode to see an analysis
‘by topic’, or to see a summary ‘by question’.
This will open the selected task.

Edit/Delete the task.

Export spreadsheet with a tab for each

student, and the skills involved in each
question.
Use this button to get the latest data
without having to reload the page. This is
useful if you are monitoring a task while Click a cell in the table to view the student’s answer and
students are doing it. the correct answer, as well any working/feedback they’ve
left.
You can also overwrite their answer to correct/incorrect
by clicking the tick/cross, or where you have used ‘use
exam marking’ can award partial marks.
An ‘F’ around the cell indicates that you or the student
has left written feedback.

If the student has had multiple

attempts at a homework, you can Clicking a table heading displays the
list all answers in all attempts by full question and answer (fixed
clicking here. question tasks only).
Viewing Pupil Progress Data from Set Tasks

Clicking ‘View Attempts’ from the Task Analysis for a specific student will load their attempts.

You can unassign this task from the

student. If you feel the student has
completed the task (but hasn’t met the
completion criteria for the system to mark
it as complete), you can override this.

Clicking the Write a new comment link

allows you to feed back to the student. The
‘Use feedback for all who got this question
wrong’ option is useful to duplicate
feedback across students.

Clicking the tick/cross allows you to

override whether correct/incorrect.
Viewing Pupil Progress Data from Set Tasks

The By Question view is useful to get a summary of answers to each question (including variants of correct
answers, particularly when the answer is algebraic). You can sort by question number or ‘worst to best answered’.
We can see here that all students got the correct answer, but expressed their prime factorisation in many different
ways. The By Question analysis is only available for fixed-question tasks.
Viewing Pupil Progress Data from Set Tasks

The By Topic view is particularly useful for past papers you have set, which ordinarily
involve a large mix of skills. The worst answered skill will be in the leftmost column.
Viewing more general progress and activity

Choose Student
Progress.
The Summary view is useful
for seeing aggregate activity
stats for a class/student in a
period of time.

By switching to ‘By
Individual’, you can also see
statistics by individual within
your selection.
Viewing more general progress and activity
Mastery by topic allows you to see the mastery
across the whole topic tree. Recall that the levels
of the topic tree are:
1. Key stage/age range.
2. Strand (e.g. algebra)
3. Topic (e.g. trigonometry)
4. Skill (e.g. determining angles in a right angled
triangle)
You can traverse the
topic tree here.
Mastery is for each skill, so for levels 1-3, the total
mastery is shown for all skills within it.
Viewing more general progress and activity

If you’ve created courses or assigned external

courses to your school, you’ll also be able to
see mastery by course/module/unit.
Viewing more general progress and activity
Finally, use Activity to see a timeline of all
student activity, including independent
practice.

You can change the date range to see

historical activity.

Clicking any row will open the task attempt.

Leaderboards
In the Progress interface, select Leaderboards.
You can optionally specific a date range. Total
Mastery will only be displayed if no date range
is specified.

Export the current

leaderboard to Excel.

You can select the whole school, a whole year

group or a specific class.
Starting a Live! game

A Live! game is designed for a classroom environment. Questions are presented on the
board one-by-one. Students use their mobile phones or tablet devices to enter their
answers.
Starting a Live! game – using a worksheet

Go to Past Papers/Worksheets or
Step 1 Set a Task → Past Papers/Choose
Questions/Your Worksheets,
open a worksheet, and click the
Set a Task button.

or …
Step 1 Alternatively, go to Question
Explorer or Set a Task → By
Topic, find and select some skills,
and choose Set a Task on the
Your Selection pane.
Starting a Live! game

Step 2 Choose the Live! task option.

Step 4
Complete the options as described. If you’re
playing with a school class, choose the
‘Select a class’ option at the top. This will
make it subsequently easier to know which
students have and haven’t joined the game.
 Starting a Live! game

Step 5
Students just need to go to
dfm.live on their device’s
browser, and enter the join
code given. As people join,
they’ll appear in the
participant list.
If you selected a class, your
class’ students will be listed,
greyed out until each joins.

Step 6
Click the Start button that will
appear at the top-right.
 Starting a Live! game

Students with correct answers

will be listed here.

The question will end once

students have all entered an
answer, and the correct answer
will be displayed. You can also
press Stop Waiting.
Use the zoom slider to make the You’ll have the option to view
question smaller or larger. your students’ answers.

At the end of the game, students will

see their rank on their screen, and Students will see something
the leaderboard will appear on the like this on their device.
teacher screen.
Using the Virtual Whiteboard

The virtual whiteboard allows a teacher to connect with student whiteboard. Anything
the teacher draws (including imported images or exam questions) will appear on
student screens, and teachers will be able to see a grid of student annotations.

Go to
Step 1 Resources → Virtual Whiteboard

Important note: We are or use the link on your home

hoping to release a brand dashboard.
new version of the virtual
whiteboard in early 2023.
For this reason the
documentation here is
Choose a mode. Use Classroom
Step 2 out of date.
Mode if you are using the
whiteboard with multiple people.
If you select a class, it’ll make it
easier to see which students are
and are not connected to you.
Using the Virtual Whiteboard

You will be given a link to

Step 3 distribute to students. But if
students are in your class and
simply access the whiteboard via
the normal menus, they will
automatically join your current
whiteboard.

Step 4

Click the ‘eye’ icon at the top to view

connected student whiteboards in a grid
view. If you select a class when you loaded
the whiteboard, they will already be in the
grid, but greyed out until they connect to
your whiteboard.
Using the Virtual Whiteboard

Click this icon on the top menu to import

Step 5 an exam question.

Use the filters at the top to

Step 6 find a suitable exam
question. Click the question
on the left to view it, and
once you’re happy, click
Use this question.
 Using the Virtual Whiteboard

Step 7
The question will now be
underlaid on your
whiteboard. Use the
pen/line/circle/arc/text/
mathematical text tools at
the top to annotate the
question. Anything you do
will appear on all connected
student whiteboards.
Using the Virtual Whiteboard

By clicking on the ‘eye’ icon on the top menu again, you’ll be able to see on the
Step 8 student grid when a student does working on the question you chose. By clicking
Interact, their whiteboard will go full screen on your display. Unlike the Master
Whiteboard, anything you draw on the their individual whiteboard will only
appear on their whiteboard. Press Back to return.
Using the Virtual Whiteboard

Using Clear All for All will wipe not only your own
whiteboard, but all connected whiteboards.
Browsing for Downloadable Resources

Go to Menu → Downloadables

Browse by topic on the left.

You’ll then be able to all files associated with each

resource. Any file with a ‘padlock’ symbol requires a
teacher account to download.
The Course System

Schools ordinarily have a set scheme of work. Or it might be they use another existing
scheme of work, e.g. from an exam board or a publisher such as White Rose Maths. It
would therefore be helpful for students to see everything available to them in a particular
term/module rather than topics individually. This is what the Course system is for.

On the top menu, select

Courses.
 Looking at Courses
This toggle allows teachers to switch
between View and Edit mode. Edit Mode is
only available for your own school’s courses.

DFM Courses are in-house

courses, for those not following a
specific exam syllabus.

Click on a course box to open it.

The green bar shows your progress

through that course. This is obviously
‘Tiffin School’ will be the more relevant to students! The
name of your school, and progress percentage is based on the
Exam Boards & Publishers are courses by
contain your courses. total mastery of all skills in that
exam boards (e.g. Edexcel, AQA) and
other publishers (e.g. White Rose Maths). course.
Looking at Courses/Assigning Courses to a Class

If you want to use a course by an exam

board/publisher in your own school, click the Use
toggle. This will then prompt you to optionally assign
the course to classes you have set up. This will make
a direct link to the course available on the home
dashboards of students in those classes. You can also
assign courses to classes from Settings → Classes &
Settings, but the course must be ‘Used’ first.

‘Using’ a course has multiple benefits:

(a) It will appear in your school’s courses folder.
(b) It will be available in the course list dropdown on
the Progress By Course facility and the Question
Explorer ‘By Course’ tab.

If you might want to modify this course, you need to

make a copy of it. Scroll to the bottom of the course
and choose ‘Make a copy of this course’.
 Courses are split into modules (e.g. ‘Autumn 1’ or
Looking at Courses ‘Algebra’) and then further into units. A unit is
intended to represent a small sequence of lessons
on a particular topic area.
This is the unit view.

There may be downloadable DFM slides,

worksheets, question compilations and
external links the teacher has included.

Use the back button (or your

browser’s back button) to
return to the full course view. Any skills associated with this unit will be
listed here. Please see instructions on
Setting a Task By Topic. Setting tasks and
generating worksheets is exactly the same
as doing so from the Question Explorer.
Creating Your Own Course/Scheme of Work

When in your school’s courses folder, click the

Step 1 View toggle to change to Edit. You can also click
while in an existing course to edit it. You can
only edit a course created by your school.

We recommend finding a suitable photo to use as your school’s course banner

image. For best results crop your photo so that it’s 5:1 to 6:1 aspect ratio.

Step 2

Click +Create a Course and fill in the

details about your course.
This will automatically navigate into your
course and provide initial instructions.
Anything with a dotted border is
editable by clicking (e.g. course name,
course description).
Creating Your Own Course/Scheme of Work

Step 3

After using the Add a Module button, you’ll see your module appear.
Click Add Unit to add a unit to it. Anything with with “::” can be
dragged around to reorder. All changes are saved instantly.
Creating Your Own Course/Scheme of Work

Step 4 Add content to your unit.

If you want some introductory text, e.g.

the learning objectives from your school’s
scheme of work, just click here.

Click the + buttons to add skills or

resources. For the last of these, you will
be given the option of including DFM
resources (e.g. PowerPoints), external
links, and direct access to collections of
questions on DFM you have made.

You can add additional units to your

module by clicking this button.
Creating Your Own Course/Scheme of Work

Step 5 Make your course visible to students in your school once you’ve
finished. Use the back arrows to navigate back to the top of your
course, then click the Use? toggle to make the course visible to your
students.
How do I…

Change my school’s name/logo? Change a student’s class?

On the top menu, Type the student into the search bar on the top
Classes & Settings → School Settings → Logo. menu. Click the student and select ‘Move Class’.

See a complete list of Key Skills/Exam Make an intervention group without

Skills? the students leaving their normal
Menu → Question Explorer → Complete Skill List class?
(link at bottom of page) From Menu → Classes & Settings, use the + New
Class button and click +Students. They will be
added to the new class without being removed
See summative statistics about my
from their old class.
school’s usage?
Menu → Progress Data → School Stats.
This will show you volume of usage by year Quickly see all a student’s question
group and volume of recent activity by teacher. answering activity?
Menu → Progress Data → Student Progress →
Activity
How do I…

Make my own questions? Deal with a topic moving in our

We currently don’t link to this from within Scheme of Work from one term to
the site, but you can access here:
another?
www.drfrostmaths.com/add-question.php
Go to your course and click the ‘View’ toggle
You could then use your questions within a
to change to Edit. In addition to being able to
worksheet. These questions will be visible to
drag the terms/modules to reorder them,
you when constructing a worksheet, but
you can also drag the units between
won’t be more publicly visible.
terms/modules.

See an ‘audit log’ if

Deal with students who have left accounts/homework mysteriously
the school? go missing.
Menu → Classes & Settings. Select the
Menu → Classes & Settings → Audit Log
‘CLASSLESS STUDENTS’ class from the
dropdown. Select all the relevant accounts
Retrieve deleted accounts
and choose ‘Archive’ from ‘Apply Action’. This
We can retrieve deleted user accounts, but
leaves the account open, but will no longer
not deleted tasks or courses. If a class is
appear when you search for students.
deleted, the user accounts should still be
If you do a full school import, any students
there, you just need to recreate the class and
not in your import will be automatically
the existing user accounts will be detected.
archived.
To contact us…

[email protected]
For general support issues.

[email protected]
Notify Dr Frost of any technical issues. Please
do NOT use this email for general support
queries.