This article explains how to adjust the weekly homework plans for your classes, to best align with your teaching and to support your students' learning.

Understanding the Planner Page

When a Scheme of Learning is assigned to a class, it creates a homework plan. You can see the homework plan for a class in the Planner page.

The Planner shows a weekly view of the homework that's planned for your selected class. By default, the topics included in the plan will reflect the Scheme of Learning that you've set for the class.

The right-hand side shows the calendar broken down into weeks and each week has a number. It's not possible for schools to adjust the numbering of the weeks in order to align with a school's numbering system. It's worth noting that these numbers are not shown to students.

Click on a week to make changes to that week's homework. You can turn homework on or off, add or remove topics, change the homework length and change when the homework will be handed out or handed in from here.

You can also adjust the topics that are eligible for consolidation by clicking Manage Consolidation Topics.

To make changes to all future homework, click Edit class settings in the top-right corner.

Changing the topics in a homework plan for a specific week

From Planner, add new topics by selecting the homework week that you want to work with, clicking 'Add topic to week x', searching for the topic that you want to add, expanding the topic's details and clicking 'Add to week x'
- To help you to decide whether to include a topic, you can view example questions and support videos for each level by clicking the blue 'i' icon next to the topic
Move topics between weeks by clicking the 'Move' drop-down next to the topic and then choosing either 'Move topic into next week' or 'Move topic into week...' (and then choose the week)
Remove topics that you don't want Sparx Maths to cover by clicking 'Remove' against the relevant topic

Changing hand-out/-in dates and times for a specific week

From Planner, select the homework week that you want to work with and use the hand-out and hand-in date and time fields at the top of the plan to make changes
You can only move the hand-out date of a homework to be after todays date, and to be within the week it was originally scheduled for.

Changing homework length for a specific week

From Planner, select the homework week that you want to work with and change homework length using the 'Homework Length' dropdown (30-90 minutes)

Frequently asked questions

How many topics should I include in my homework plans per week?

For maximum impact, we recommend:

60-minute homework: 3-4 topics
30-minute homework: 1-2 topics

How do I change the order of topics in a week?

It's not possible to rearrange the order of topics in a week in the Planner page. When the homework is generated for students, questions will be split evenly between the topics, so all topics will have equal priority.

If you would like to change the order that the topics appear, this can be done by changing the order of topics in the Scheme of Learning, or by removing and re-adding the topics in Planner.

What happens if I remove all of the topics for a week in the Planner?

Each week will always contain consolidation homework. If your remove all of the topics from a week, then only consolidation homework will be set. We recommend keeping the number of consolidation only weeks to a minimum, to ensure that students receive homework that's reflective of what they've been learning in class.

Can I make changes to a homework that's about to be set?

To ensure that any changes are included in an upcoming homework, we recommend making your changes at least 10 minutes before the homework hand out time.

I set a homework by mistake, can I cancel it?

From Planner, select the homework week that you want to change and click 'Cancel this homework'.
You will be taken through some steps including selecting a reason on the dropdown and typing a reason. These steps are deliberate to ensure this is what you want to do.
This cannot be undone by Sparx, and you cannot set a replacement homework in the same week.

Can I make changes to homework that's already been handed out?

You can only cancel the homework, or edit the hand in date.

How do I control which topics are included in Consolidation?

Sparx Maths automatically provides spaced retrieval for students in the Consolidation section of homework which revisits topics assigned in previous weeks.

You can control which topics are eligible for Consolidation in the Planner page by clicking Manage Consolidation topics.

In the window that appears, you can deselect specific topics and these will not appear in the Consolidation of any future homework.