Abacus Active Learn Maths Homework

Hollymount School has purchased Abacus, a maths toolkit that has been written for the new primary maths curriculum. To help children make sense of and practice their maths, Abacus provides a combination of maths games, interactive activities and pupil videos, focused around an interactive pupil world where your child can earn rewards and personalise their learning. Your child will be accessing this in school; however, they can also access certain activities at home that have been allocated to him/her by their class teacher. The site they will need to go to is www.activelearnprimary.co.uk, or use the link on the school website homepage.

The games and activities should be compatible with tablet devices as well as standalone computers.

Below is information provided by Abacus to help your child access it at home (although I am aware some children have started to use it already!). If there are any problems with using Abacus at home (and particularly in terms of access), I have put a “troubleshooting” guide at the end of this information sheet to help.

Using the Abacus online pupil world with your child

The Abacus pupil world is the place that your child will log into to play maths games, complete interactive activities and access rewards. They earn rewards by completing the games and activities that their teacher has allocated to them. They can also watch pupil videos, which recap key teaching topics.

If you have access to an internet connection, your child can log into the Abacus pupil world at home with their personal login. They can do so via a computer or tablet. Your child’s teacher may give them a login reminder bookmark to keep at home, or in their bookbag, so that they have the information they need to access the pupil world from home – We use the same Login as their MLE .

Logging into the pupil world

The Abacus pupil world is powered by a website called ActiveLearn. To log into the pupil world, your child will need to:

1. Go to www.activelearnprimary.co.uk

2. Enter their login details and click “Log in”.

Once your child has logged in, they’ll arrive at the Pupil Home. Children can personalise their home screen by choosing a world. The worlds differ depending on key stage but include Race World, Skate World and Future World.

“My Stuff”

This is where children can see the activities their teacher has allocated to them. They can see here how many coins each game or activity is worth before completing it.

“My Rewards”

‘My Rewards’ is where your child can go to select their rewards after completing allocated games and activities. They can also customise avatars, decorate a tree house, play games and more. The more games and activities your child completes, the more rewards they can unlock and buy.

Need help?

Don’t forget, if your child is having trouble using the pupil world, help can be found in the Help Section of ActiveLearn (in the top right-hand corner of the website).

Troubleshooting

Firstly, check to see if you have everything loaded on to your system that you need to play the games. E.g. flash, Java etc. The program will tell you what you need to download or add on to your browser. When you play the game a new screen will popup – please remember to close this screen down in order to receive the credits earned for each game.

Sometimes your browser needs refreshing in order to get your credits or add your changes so press F5 to refresh and try again.

Browsers:

Please note: We strongly recommend using Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox web browsers with Active Learn. If you prefer to use Internet Explorer, please check you have at least IE9 in order for everything to work as it should. Whichever browser you use, it has to be the default browser for your computer.

If you have a PC or Mac or Tablet, you must enable popups as the games are played on extra screens which pop up when you click on the required game.

Here are a few How To unblock popups for browsers and iPads.

Internet explorer.

For Google Chrome:

For iPad s/safari

If you are still experiencing problems, please come and see me after school and I will do

my best to help (if it’s a problem with IPads or Laptops – bring them along)

Regards,

Maria Halpin

ICT Manager

Hollymount School