Matific is an online program that offers over 1500 math games and activities for students in grades K-6. These games and activities are designed to support teachers’ existing lessons and curriculum. All activities are both standards-aligned and textbook-aligned, meaning regardless of your curricular foundation, Matific will likely connect with what you’re already using.
The Matific team has also won numerous awards for their rigorous curriculum, which can be differentiated to individual ability levels and needs. Before jumping into the review, here is an introductory video from the Matific team that looks at how Matific can be integrated into the K-6 math classroom.
The Matific team has also won numerous awards for their rigorous curriculum, which can be differentiated to individual ability levels and needs. Before jumping into the review, here is an introductory video from the Matific team that looks at how Matific can be integrated into the K-6 math classroom.
Overall, Matific is meant to be used in combination with whatever curriculum a teacher is already following. Additionally, students can move through Matific at their own pace, and teachers can receive detailed analytics on student performance. This type of formative feedback can be incredibly beneficial in helping individualize instruction for K-6 students.
Matific is web-based as well as offering an iOS and Android App, so as long as students have an internet-enabled device, they can use the program. In terms of pricing, it’s best to contact the team to receive a quote, and teachers can receive a free 30-day trial to see if it’s a good fit.
When teachers first login to Matific they will be taken to their home dashboard where you can manage your math classes. From here you can manage students, or adjust student languages for ESL learners. Matific also syncs with Google Classroom, so if you’re a Google school, you can easily pull in your students. Matific also integrates with Clever and Office 365 for those schools who are outside of the Google ecosystem.
Under the Content menu, teachers can assign out games (or “episodes” as Matific calls them) to their students. The content is organized by grade level, by state-level curriculum, by domain, and by subdomain. This way, regardless of where you’re located, or what you’re wanting to teach, you can quickly and easily find specific episodes that are aligned with your curriculum.
Teachers can add as many episodes as they would like into the “planned work” for students, which is what will be assigned out. Teachers can also share games in present mode, if they would like to work through it as a whole class, or group activity. This is great for introducing games to students so they can get a preview of what they will be doing, or to provide whole group instruction.
You can assign lessons out by individual students, or by the entire class, which makes differentiation easy to achieve. Teachers can also assign out episodes that are above or below the student’s current grade level in order to further differentiate.
All episodes also include a lesson plan which provide more in depth, specific instructions for how the episode could be implemented in the class. These include ways to introduce the episode, questions to ask before and after, and how to wrap up the lesson once it’s complete.
Along with the episodes and lesson plans, teachers have access to grade level worksheets, which can be assigned and used in conjunction with the episodes. It’s important to note that these worksheets are all digital. It would be nice to see some physical resources from Matific, so that teachers could print them off for students when the internet is down, or for students who may not have internet access outside of the classroom. However, these digital worksheets do a nice job providing additional practice for various skills.
Teachers also have access to student analytics and historical data. By clicking on each game’s “completeness” graphs, teachers can get a quick look at who has done the work that has been assigned. In addition to this, teachers have access to more advanced reports that show detailed analytics on individual students and entire classes.
Teachers can run reports based on specific topics/standards and see the average, lowest, median, highest, and improvement scores for students, which is particularly helpful in cases where students have played through episodes multiple times. These reports can also be broken down by the curriculum and/or the textbook you’re using. There is also a “Snapshot” report, which combines everything a student has done into a single graph, which is helpful for getting a big picture overview on a single student’s performance.
Matific also offers tons of support resources like teacher guides, video guides, talks, tutorials, webinars, whitepapers, and infographics. These resources are great for teachers who are just getting started with Matific, or for teachers who want to explore additional possibilities for how to use the system.
Overall, Matific is an excellent support resource for the K-6 math classroom. Although it would be nice to see some physical resources to support students as well, or the ability for students to work offline for situations where they don’t have internet access outside of the classroom. However, for those times when internet is available, Matific is a fun, engaging, and rigorous resource that provides standard-aligned and textbook-aligned math practice games.
For teachers interested in exploring Matific further, I absolutely recommend trying their free 30-day trial to see if it is a good fit for your classroom.
The opinions expressed in this review are my own.
I was not compensated for writing this review.
I was not compensated for writing this review.
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