Ten Top Tips to Increase Engagement with NumBots

At Maths Circle HQ, we’ve been investigating ways to maintain and perhaps even increase children’s engagement and motivation with NumBots. If you’ve been looking for ways to promote the programme with more competitive components, or simply just seeking new ways to reward children’s efforts and achievements, we have you covered.

SET GOALS

1. Introduce challenges by setting achievable short term goals:

    • 10 minutes every 7 days
    • Earn 3 stars in every Rust, Iron and Tin level
    • Pass Copper by a particular date
    • Earn enough coins to purchase the full Pegasus or Eagle bot
    • Earn a 7 or 14 day streak badge
    • Get a Bronze cup on Challenge 1, 2 and 3

INCREASE VISIBILITY AND EXPOSURE

2. Play NumBots in school! Perhaps once a week using our ‘little and often’ approach until it takes on more of a life of its own. Don’t leave it to home use only.

3. Put up a NumBots display in their classrooms or corridor. You can do this by downloading the NumBots display board pack from the Downloads page.

PROVIDE REWARDS

4. Hand out stickers for passing stages – they’re available to buy from the Maths Circle shop. Press here to purchase:

5. Award a “Robot of the Week” certificate for something at your discretion – generic certificates are available on the Downloads page.

6. Use the celebration assembly builder to run award assemblies (hint: you’ll need to press Create Certificates first).

7. Let them know they can download their own certificates for each stage on the Badges page.

USE FULL RANGE OF RESOURCES

8. Check on what the data is telling you. Are there any who are struggling to pass the current level? If so, maybe there’s an issue. Maybe they need the Story difficulty adjusting – this can be modified on the Story Difficulty Page.

9. Point out the Gallery feature so they can see their friends’ robots.

10. Print out their bots – downloadable from Account > Classes > select classes and press Downloads. They can save their favourite bots in their Scrapbook.

We’d love to hear any more tricks and tips you may have up your sleeve! If you would like to share how you maintain children’s motivation in NumBots then please get in touch via social media or email us at [email protected].

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