Making cards

There are four ways to make a card. The first is done by a professor after a session. The other three are done by your child from My Flashcards → + Make a card.

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1. From a tutoring session

This is where most cards come from. The professor writes them from what your child actually worked through, in the same voice and with the same examples used in the session.

Your child can ask for cards in three ways:

• The end-of-session button. After the session is wrapped up and logged, a ✨ Make my cards from today button appears above the message box, next to Not today. One tap makes the cards.
• The /cards command. Typing /cards in a professor's room asks for cards from today's session. See slash commands.
• Just asking. Your child can say "can you make me a flashcard for this?" at any point. If they want a single card, they get a single card.

A professor makes between one and eight cards at a time, with one idea on each card.

Mentor does not make subject cards. Cards are made in the seven professors' rooms.

A professor will not turn an upload straight into cards

If your child uploads a worksheet or a marked test in a tutoring session and asks for instant flashcards, the professor works through it with them first and offers cards for the part they actually covered. This is enforced by the site, not left to the professor's judgement. A marked test is especially useful here: the professor goes through each mistake, works out why it happened, and makes cards for those points.

2. From your child's own notes

Sometimes your child already has the material and wants cards from it quickly. + Make a card opens a three-step page for that:

1. Bring me your notes. Your child pastes text, adds a PDF or takes a photo (up to three files), and chooses which professor should read it.
2. Which kinds shall I make? Basic, Both ways, Type it in, Gaps, or a bit of everything, and roughly how many. A batch is at most eight cards.
3. Here they are. Your child reads the drafts, removes any they do not want, and adds the rest to their pile.

Unlike a tutoring session, this page does read a document and write cards from it directly. The cards belong to your child, are marked as their own, and can be edited until the first time they are reviewed.

A few things worth knowing:

• The photo or PDF is not kept. It is read once to make the cards and then let go. To make more cards from the same page later, your child needs the page again.
• It only works on school material. Anything else is politely refused.
• New cards arrive gradually. They start the next day, a few at a time, so one batch does not swamp the daily review.
• There is a daily limit. A child can make three decks of their own a day. Cards a professor makes in a session do not count towards it.

The second look

Before your child saves the drafts, a second check answers each card cold, as a pupil would, and compares the result with the back of the card. It flags three things:

• a question that could honestly be read two ways;
• a card where working it out gives a different answer from the one on the back;
• in maths, a card that asks about how something is written when it should ask your child to do the maths.

A flagged card is shown to your child with a note explaining the doubt. It is advice, not a block: your child can reword the card, remove it or keep it.

3. Writing a card by hand

From the same page your child can write one card themselves: the question, the answer, and an optional clue and "why". It suits the child who already knows exactly what they want to remember.

4. Importing a list

Your child can paste a list of cards made somewhere else. The page checks them, shows how many it found, and asks before adding them.

What every card is checked for

Whoever writes it, a card is held to the same rules:

• One idea per card. A front that asks for several facts at once ("name three…") is sent back to be split.
• Recall, not recognition. The front makes your child retrieve the answer from memory.
• One reading, one answer. If a twelve-year-old could fairly read the question two ways, it is rewritten.
• The clue must not give the answer away. A clue that repeats a word from the answer is dropped.

If a card is wrong

• A card your child wrote and has not yet reviewed can be edited or deleted from Tidy up my cards.
• A card your child wrote and has already reviewed can be sent back to the professor with Ask Professor … to fix it.
• Any card can be put away with Something looks wrong, which takes it out of review and tells us.

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Flashcards overview · Daily review · Slash commands · Tutoring on the web