I was recently approached by Hodder Education and asked to review their SNAP Maths assessment, a new product in their SNAP assessment range. I’m always looking for quick and simple assessment and screening materials, so I was intrigued by this online system and what it had to offer. As soon as I had my log-in details, I was hunting down a child to assess!

Developed alongside Judy Hornigold, Charles Weedon and Jonathan Weedon, experienced individuals in the fields of specific learning difficulties, education and maths, the program offers an efficient assessment of maths skills.

The program has several sections, including the assessment itself with 10 activities, three questionnaires which triangulate information from parents, pupils and teachers, and useful graphical representations of the information along with fluency booster exercises, learning strategies and supporting documents to advise families and teaching staff on how to best support any relative weaknesses.

The areas assessed include:

• Counting

• Subitising

• Comparing Numbers

• Number Relations

• Using Sight Facts

• Processing Speed

• Visual Memory

• Auditory Processing and Verbal Memory

• Visual Discrimination

• Non-Numerical Ordering

Whilst the online assessment is undertaken by the student, it is reinforced with appropriate practice questions and supported by audio output.

The program is well-presented and the user-interface bright enough to engage without being overly cluttered or fussy.There are some simple adaptive features available such as making the font size larger. My volunteer student was at the lower end of the age-range the program is aimed at, and lacked mouse control to click things quickly, but as we were working 1:1, I was able to adapt this function. On some sections, realising there were 40+ questions to answer I was girding myself for a long session, however, the questions do not take a long time to respond to and in some sections where the student had made too many errors it stopped before getting to the full quota. I liked that I could choose the sequence in which my student undertook activities and that we could come back to them over a few days.

The program is comprehensive. It isn’t something that you can do in 10-15 minutes and come out with a conclusive response…and that makes me happy! The 10 activities took us four sittings of around 20-30 minutes each and at the end I had a comprehensive graph of their strengths and relative weaknesses but most importantly the right advice to support the student to move on fully supported with the activities available online (Fluency Boosters), school strategies and links to other resources available.

I asked an older volunteer (13) to have a look at some of the assessments too. Whilst this student did not undertake the tests, they gave feedback on the ease of use and user friendliness of the site. As someone who has spent many years working in and with the ed-tech industry the easy to navigate interface was very much appreciated.

In conclusion, I found the program to be a valuable resource for assessing the mathematical skill set of students where you may have a concern. Overall, I definitely recommend looking at this if you are seeking to expand your resources in this area.

Abigail Hawkins

Want more information about SNAP Maths?

Find out more