Using Essential Assessment Data to Inform Daily Review Priorities

1. Start with Your Data

Use your Strand Overview for your class or cohort to identify:

• Lowest percentages of understanding at and below grade level
• This can be identified strand by strand

NSW:

AC/VC:

2. Prioritise Concepts for Daily Review

Once you’ve identified focus areas:

Use this template to map out your Daily Review for the term, based on your data. 

• Choose one content descriptor (AC/ VC) or content group (NSW) to focus on as needed. Incorporate this in to your Daily Review  across the term.

You can then access the aligning My Numeracy task to  provide an opportunity to focus on 5 questions daily, focusing on:

• Understanding – explain why & how
• Fluency – practise until efficient
• Problem Solving – apply in novel contexts
• Reasoning – justify, compare, explain choices

Dr Swain highlights that simply reviewing isn’t enough — the process must include retrieval, meaning the students must pull previously taught knowledge out of memory, rather than passively re-reading it.

3. Use My Numeracy for Daily Review

My Numeracy offers differentiated tasks aligned with each student’s zone of proximal development (ZPD). Here’s how to embed it in Daily Review:

1. Open Manage Class Assessments and access the shortcut to My Numeracy using the coloured button next to the name of the assessment. If you access My Numeracy with the General All ( AC/VC ) or the NSW Common Grade, you will be able to see all the tasks for the strand across year levels. 

2. You need to UNSET ALL the tasks to remove the activities being automatically allocated.

3. Daily Review is about accessing the task (20 questions) by clicking on the code or Preview box. You will be able to see the set of 20 questions to display visually for your students.

4. For each day choose a set of 5 questions (see breakdown below). You can work through 5 per day in order of proficiencies to build schema as the questions will be similar within that proficiency.

5. Deliver these in your Daily Review session:

• Teacher reads the question out-loud and students repeat in a choral response
• Use mini-whiteboards, turn-and-talk, or class response to prompt retrieval (Swain emphasises rapid participation and engagement norms)
• After independent attempts on whiteboards, engage a brief reasoning/discussion piece: “Why did you choose that strategy? Could you do it another way?”
• Use this as a time for immediate feedback or clarification of any misconceptions.

4. Track and Reflect

• Maintain a simple tracker of which strands you’ve addressed via Daily Review-See our template
• After 2-3 weeks of Daily Review, check: have students’ results in those strands improved? You may wish to allocate the Task to your whole class to gather evidence of improvement. Hovering over the code will provide the class average result when students have submitted their 20 questions. The goal is 80% or greater for mastery. Reflect and celebrate if there has been growth!

• If not, identify goals to work on using the Stars coloured in to see where there still may be some class misunderstanding. You may wish to revisit content by downloading the paper-based resource underneath and provide further instruction. You can use the paper option as an exit ticket or homework consolidation.
• Celebrate growth: show students their progress (e.g., “For our pre-assessment only 30% of class understood this concept; now it’s 80 %. What a big improvement in our learning!”).

5. Summary: Turning Data into Action

Research-Informed Rationale: What Dr Swain and the Science of Learning Tell Us

Sources: SOL Conference 2025 and Sharing Best Practices, Sydney 2025 (Dr Nathaniel Swain)

Swain, N.  PhD 2025 Harnessing the Science of Learning, first edition, Routledge.

Here are some key research-based principles from Dr Swain that support our Daily Review design:

• Retrieval Practice (not just review): Swain emphasises that the act of pulling information out of memory strengthens the memory. “Every time that information is retrieved … it changes that original memory to make it stronger.”
• Spacing and Interleaving Matter: One slide from Swain’s presentation shows that simply massed repetition or blocked practice (e.g., doing only one topic repeatedly) leads to less durable learning. Spacing and interleaving (mixing topics) do better.
• Desirable Difficulties: Swain references the idea that more effortful retrieval (within reason) leads to stronger retention — the “sweet-spot” lies between too easy and too difficult tasks.
• Avoiding Passive Review: Simply re-showing content, reading notes, or redoing the same type of question again and again doesn’t deliver as strong retention as varied, active retrieval/
• High Engagement and Participation: Successful routines involve all students, rapid pace, minimal transition, and high participation norms — this is vital for Daily Review, as Swain outlines.

By aligning your Daily Review with these evidence-based features, you strengthen the link between your data-informed focus (via Essential Assessment) and the cognitive science of how students learn best.

Teacher tips:

• Use mini-whiteboards or class response systems so you can quickly see retrieval in action and address misconceptions immediately
• If many students blank or struggle with the first question, pause and reteach briefly — retrieval does not replace instruction. Swain warns of confusion when retrieval becomes the lesson rather than follow-up to instruction.
• Keep the review short, sharp, and routine — 10-15 minutes is ample if done daily with high participation. Swain emphasises that it should not become a full lesson.
• Use your EA data at the end of each week (or fortnight) to check for movement: if little is shifting, consider the context: is the instruction fine? Is the Daily Review aligned? Are the tasks at the right level of challenge?

Daily Review is most powerful when it revisits the right content — the concepts students most need to consolidate. Essential Assessment provides rich, curriculum-aligned data that makes this process simple and intentional.