1. Hello Teachers, TAs, and all other support staff
Hello Teachers, TAs, and all other support staff. This program is excellent for making games that promote conversations between students, helps with AFL (assessment for learning), helps to deepen the students understanding of a topic and is fun.
I’ve set this out on power point so that all pictures stay where I put them (objects always move in Word).
You can view this as a slide show (press F5) or just press the down arrow key to go to the next slide.

2. Installing Tarsia
Copy and paste this link into your browser, then follow the instructions on the following slides. You may need permission to do this at school. It is a good idea to install it at home as well.
Provided for free by

3. Scroll to here and click on this Formulator Tarsia Installation Package.
Then run & save the program

4. Exploring Tarsia
The following tiles show you what you can do with Tarsia.

5. This tells you what each shape consists of
Open Tarsia with this icon on the desktop. If it is not there go to computer>programs>hermitech laboratory>tarsia3.9 (or whatever the latest version is) and right click on this icon >send to desktop and an icon will appear on your desktop.
Click on the Tarsia icon on the desktop and you get all these wonderful options to make:- jigsaws; dominoes; ‘Follow me’ Cards; Matching Cards; Rectangular cards so that you can pair students for instance; and student discussion cards (which I haven’t used yet)
So there are lots to explore.
OK go ahead and choose one.
I clicked on here & all these options come up
This tells you what each shape consists of

6. This is mainly a program for maths formaulas but you can select text which means you can use the keyboard normally.
Type the question in this
and the answer in this
This is found on the input tab

7. If this is too small click on view>zoom and change the %
Example of Input found on the input tab

8. The Input is put into a Table so that you can view it easily to look for mistakes. You have to go back into Input to correct these mistakes

9. The Input is then mixed up as Output. This is the Output for Dominoes.

10. The Input is then mixed up as Output
The Input is then mixed up as Output. This is the Output for a Rhombus Jigsaw.

11. It comes with a solution. This is for a Dominoes game

12. It comes with a solution. This is for a Rhombus Jigsaw

13. Or give the students a blank puzzle (it doesn’t have to be this it could be a blank dominoes) and ask the students to make up their own questions. When finished they cut it up and give it to their partner to put back together and they put their partners back together.
The students then check the other persons work and also comment on it (Peer Assessment).

14. Tarsia puzzles by David Barton http://www.mrbartonmaths.com/jigsaw.htm
Parents page by David Barton
Teachers page by David Barton
Pupil's page by David Barton
Just for fun page by David Barton

15. Enjoy playing with it.
If you have any problems feel free to me.
Matthew