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Using the iPlanner

iMaths 1/1/18

Note: iMaths is in its final year and will be discontinued at the end of 2024. If you’re looking for a primary maths resource written for the Australian Curriculum Version 9.0, explore Maths Trek.

The iPlanner is an interactive tool that allows you to quickly and effectively plan your entire year in iMaths. It keeps track of what you have taught and what you have left to teach, and can be adjusted at any time to suit the changing needs of your class.

Watch our tutorial above and read our guide below to find out how to get started with the iPlanner.

Creating Your Plan

From the program home page select Create New Plan. Choose a Template from the drop-down menu. You can choose a Blank template, one of your existing plans, a colleague’s shared plan (more on this later), or one of our Sample Plans. Give your plan a descriptive title in the Name Your Plan field. Next, select Create Plan and you will be redirected to the Plan Editor.

Understanding the Plan Editor

You can change the title of your plan at any time under the Plan Title heading. To share your plan with colleagues at your school, check the box under Plan Sharing. Sharing your plan allows teachers within your school and year level to copy your plan as the basis for their own.

On the left side of the Editor are lists of Investigations, Topics, Problem Solving Strategies and Assessment to be included in your plan. On the right are the first two terms laid out in vertical weeks. Click the black arrows to scroll across the four terms.

Specifying the Dates of Your Plan

At the top of each term you will need to specify a date in the Week Beginning field. Make sure you start your plan on a Monday (even though it might be a public holiday).

Building Your Plan

You can drag any block from the lists on the left side of the Editor into the term weeks on the right. Simply drop the block into the desired week.

Once an item has been placed in the plan, it will turn grey in the list to let you know that it has been allocated. You can drag an item to a different week after placing it, or you can delete an item from your plan by clicking the cross on the top right of its box.

Allocating Investigations

iMaths relies on real-life Investigations to teach the Topics. While each iMaths year level includes 12 Investigations, we recommend that you choose four to eight that most suit you and your class. Conducting one or two Investigations each term is ideal.

When you place an Investigation in a term the Investigation will automatically expand to fill one or more weeks, based on our experience of how long that Investigation and its prerequisite Topics should take to teach. The recommended duration can be adjusted by dragging the bottom of the Investigation box up or down.

The prerequisite Topics included within an Investigation block cannot be removed. Prerequisite Topics need to be taught in order for an Investigation to be conducted effectively. If any of these Topics have already been covered earlier in the year they simply need to be revised before the Investigation can be started. Similarly, every Investigation has an Assessment component that cannot be removed.

You can add additional Topics or Problem Solving Strategies to an Investigation block. These added components can then be found underneath the Assessment in the Investigation block and can be identified by the presence of a cross which allows you to remove them from your plan.

Allocating Topics, Problem Solving Strategies and Assessment

Once you’ve added the Investigation blocks to your plan, you need to allocate the remaining Topics and Problem Solving Strategies. All Topics must be included in your yearly plan. Problem Solving Strategies should be taught early in the year so students can apply them in the Investigations and the tasks in the Topics.

You can repeat Topics throughout the year by dragging them again from the list. Any Topic that already exists in your plan will have any later instances flagged as revision, indicated by an asterisk next to the Topic code and the text “revision” after its title.

Topics that contain a Problem Solving Task are identified by a small, green triangle in the bottom right of its box. Students need to know specific Problem Solving Strategies before attempting these tasks. Refer to the documents below to help you identify which strategies are needed for each task:

iMaths 1 Problem Solving Reference
iMaths 2 Problem Solving Reference
iMaths 3 Problem Solving Reference
iMaths 4 Problem Solving Reference
iMaths 5 Problem Solving Reference
iMaths 6 Problem Solving Reference

We recommend that you include an Assessment block in the first week of the year to conduct the Readiness Test (found in the Tracker Book).

Place as many Topics, Problem Solving Strategies or Assessment blocks as you’d like in a week, although we don’t recommend teaching more than five Topics or strategies in a week. Horizontally scroll through the week to see any items out of view.

Saving and Printing Your Plan

Once you are happy with your plan, select Save Changes. You can then print your plan by choosing the Print button. Remember you can adjust or print your plan at anytime throughout the year.

Navigating Your Plan

When you have created and saved your plan, select the Close Editor button at the top of the page. If the dates of your plan are current, your plan’s content for the current, previous and next weeks will be presented. From here you can click any Investigation, Topic or Problem Solving Strategy title to jump directly to that content in iMaths Online.

If you need further assistance, contact us to let us know how we can help.

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