Learning Snapshots: Smart Simplicity
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Mountain Creek State High School pioneers EP’s newest feature
Mountain Creek State High School, located on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, is one of the largest state secondary schools in the region, catering to over 2,200 students from Years 7 to 12. Among its teaching staff is Camilla Andrews, who teaches Mathematics and Certificate I in Financial Literacy and works extensively with students who have additional learning needs.
“It’s just so quick and easy to see where each student is at and what they need next.”
– Camilla Andrews, Mathematics Teacher, Mountain Creek State High School
The Challenge: Teaching a Diverse Cohort
Camilla Andrews is based in the school’s specialist support centre and teaches maths to a wide range of students, some working at a Year 2 level, others at Year 9 level, all in the same classroom. “Differentiation isn’t optional, it’s essential,” she explains.
With such a wide spread of ability, Camilla needs tools that can help her diagnose current skill levels quickly and accurately, set appropriately levelled tasks for each student, track student progress in a way that is visible and actionable, and support classroom teaching with data-informed decisions.
Camilla’s classes include students on Individual Curriculum Plans (ICPs), and she relies heavily on Education Perfect to provide differentiated learning pathways.
“We’ve been using EP across multiple departments for years. It’s invaluable for managing mixed abilities and tracking progress over time. EP lets me tailor activities based on each student’s ICP level and their actual strengths and weaknesses. I don’t want to just say ‘they’re working at Year 5 level’, I want to know whether it’s in number, measurement, or statistics.”
Working in such a challenging context, Camilla was among the first teachers to trial EP’s new Learning Snapshot feature.
What is Learning Snapshots?
Learning Snapshots is a powerful new feature within EP designed to give teachers instant, visual insight into student progress. By combining assessment data with colour-coded summaries for each student by curriculum content descriptors, it enables educators to quickly identify where individual students or entire classes are excelling or need support.
It works alongside EP’s curriculum-aligned prebuilt assessments to help teachers identify specific gaps in student knowledge and recommend tasks to support their growth. Learning Snapshots is designed to enhance the teaching and learning cycle, helping educators make informed, timely decisions that support improved student outcomes.
Driving Differentiated Intervention
Camilla already used EP’s quizzes and pre- and post-tests, but assessing which content needed re-teaching required digging through individual student data and manually interpreting questionlevel results. The introduction of Learning Snapshots opened up a whole new level of insight.
“Before, I’d manually go into each question to figure out which concepts students were missing. Now I can see everything by content descriptor in seconds.”
Camilla appreciated the clarity of the visuals, particularly the colour-coding identifying which students were struggling.
“The visualisation is brilliant. I’m a visual person. The colour-coding makes it so easy to scan, sort, and focus on who needs what. I can instantly see where each student sits.”
With such a diverse cohort, Learning Snapshots allowed Camilla to instantly and accurately group students for targeted instruction, both explicit teaching for specific gaps and the recommended personalised EP tasks.
“For one measurement unit, I knew from the snapshot that only two students needed extra help with radius and diameter. That meant I could tailor a mini lesson for them, while the rest moved ahead.”
Learning Snapshot directly supports in-the-moment teaching by clearly identifying the specific concepts students haven’t yet mastered. This enables Camilla to deliver focused, purposeful instruction exactly where it’s needed, maximising impact and minimising guesswork.
For students continuing to work through the assigned EP tasks, Learning Snapshots also allows her to regulate task size to avoid cognitive overload.
“I keep initial recommendations short, just two to three hours of work max. Then I can add more if needed.”
Impact on Teaching and Learning
Camilla says Learning Snapshots has reinforced and enhanced her teaching approach.
“I’ve always differentiated my lessons but now I can do it faster, more accurately, and with less stress.”
Being able to easily see the curriculum content descriptors has also allowed Camilla to separate out results that relate to prior knowledge.
“It is really handy to see that a student got the questions relating to a content descriptor for Year 7 right and yet struggled with the Year 8 content. Their success at part of a question doesn’t skew my overall picture of their growth because the results are not aligned with the individual questions but with the curriculum.”
A simple drop-down feature revealing previous scores relating to each content descriptor allows teachers to easily monitor progress, also helping Camilla identify students who needed re-assessment.
“I had one student score poorly and because I knew that he had understood that content descriptor in an earlier quiz, it raised a flag. Turned out he was playing games during the test. I had him redo it, and the results improved. Being able to identify the issue instantly was so helpful.”
In addition to improving her own workflow, she’s encouraged other teachers to give it a go, especially those teaching students on ICPs. She sees Learning Snapshots as a powerful enabler for inclusive teaching practices, especially for educators less familiar with curriculum progressions.
“For teachers not used to working across multiple levels, it’s a game-changer. Just try it. Once you see how easy it is, you won’t go back.”
Final Reflections
“I’ve always differentiated my lessons but now I can do it faster, more accurately, and with less stress.”
By translating assessment data into intuitive visual summaries, aligned with content descriptors, Learning Snapshots gives teachers clear insight into where students are, and where targeted intervention is needed. The feature transforms assessment data into a dynamic tool for targeted teaching, making differentiation easier and more effective than ever before.
