The number machine
“Double last season's goals, then add 5 cup goals, and you get 23.”
2x + 5 = 23
Lesson: undo the last step first.
A tutor's kit · O-level maths · ages 15 to 16
Words into Algebra
The hardest step in algebra isn't solving the equation. It's writing it.
Take the same off both sides. The balance never tips.
A maths tutor told us the one topic he found hardest to teach: turning a sentence into algebra. He also told us his hardest problem as a tutor: the clock. This is what MetaDAX built from that conversation. A complete two-sided kit, five interactive 3D scenes, and a pause built into every example.
New: the same kit, re-made for one learner. Meet Nova's Edition
What you're looking at
A kit one tutor could make in a sitting
This is a showcase of something a tutor can make for one learner, in one sitting, on their own AI subscription.
It began as an interview. A tutor who taught maths in England, mostly to students of fifteen and sixteen at O-level standard, was asked a few plain questions: what learners find hardest, what he found hardest to teach, and what he wished he had. His answers shaped every part of this kit.
- The hardest topic: sentences into equations. Learners who can solve 3x + 4 = 19 freeze when the same thing arrives as words.
- The hardest problem: time. He always felt he was racing the clock.
- His first idea for fixing it: give the learner more time to explain.
MetaDAX took those answers and built a kit with two sides: one page for the tutor, one for the learner. The learner's world here is football, but that is a setting, not a limit. One line rebuilds it for any interest.
Five sentences
The five sentences
The balance
“Two scarves and a 4 pound badge cost the same as one scarf and an 11 pound programme.”
2x + 4 = x + 11
Lesson: “costs the same as” is the equals sign.
Shirt numbers
“Three players have shirt numbers in a row. They add up to 72.”
n + (n + 1) + (n + 2) = 72
Lesson: one more each time, not double.
The pitch
“A pitch is 30 m longer than it is wide. Its perimeter is 340 m.”
2w + 2(w + 30) = 340
Lesson: four sides, not two.
The tickets
“Each ticket costs x pounds plus a 3 pound booking fee. Four tickets cost 56 pounds.”
4(x + 3) = 56
Lesson: this is where brackets come from.
Words to symbols
Build the equation
Solve it in order
Say it in algebra, three levels
Editions
The same kit, re-aimed
A kit is a starting point. An Edition is the same kit re-made for one learner. Every mechanic, slip, route and scene is kept. The world and the words change, and the tutor's page is rewritten around who that learner is.
Sam · football
The base kit
“Two scarves and a 4 pound badge cost the same as one scarf and an 11 pound programme.”
Built for any learner. Goals, shirt numbers, a pitch, ticket prices.
Open the base kitNova, 15 · into space
Nova’s Edition
“Two mission patches and a 4 pound star map cost the same as one patch and an 11 pound telescope filter.”
Moon photos, meteor nights, mission patches, a launch-pad safety zone, planetarium tickets. The same equations, in her world.
Open Nova’s EditionWhat stayed
- The five equations and their answers
- The six named slips
- The three routes and the fast path
- The say-it-back pause before every example
- The four games and the three quiz levels
- The scenes, from the same shared library
What changed
- Every sentence, now from her world
- The skin: a starfield page and space versions of every scene
- The tutor’s page: who Nova is, and how to meet her there. “Don’t explain space to her: let her correct you.”
- A checked real-world hook for the tutor
- Her role: mission control, calling go or no-go before each move
- Her own mission problem at the end
The real-world hook
In April 2026, Artemis II flew four astronauts around the Moon. Christina Koch became the first woman, and Jeremy Hansen the first Canadian, to travel around the Moon. That fact sits on the tutor’s page, not in Nova’s questions, so nothing she answers depends on news she might not have seen.
About
About this kit
From the tutor's chair: time, handed back
Three routes, chosen before you start.
Quick, Standard or Deep. Each is complete on its own, and each ends with a note that tells the next session where to begin. You never have to finish everything. You only have to stop well.
A fast path.
If the learner gets the first three right first time, skip ahead to the pitch. If they miss two in a row, drop back to the balance. The kit decides nothing for you; it shows you where the doors are.
A translation strip.
The phrases and their signs on one screen: more than, less than, twice, shared equally, costs the same as. The trap that catches everyone is in plain sight: 5 less than x is x - 5, never 5 - x.
Six slips, named in advance.
Every wrong choice in every game is a specific mistake, and your page tells you what to say when it happens: the reversed subtraction, the missing bracket, consecutive numbers written as multiples, the perimeter counted once, half a sentence, the wrong operation.
The pause, built in.
Before every example, the learner says the sentence back in their own words, and you wait. It was the tutor's own idea, and the kit treats it as the method, not a nicety. If you are short of time, cut an example, not the pause.
Continuity.
At the end, tick what happened and add a line in your own words. The page writes a short next-time note. Paste it in next time, and the next session is built from where this one stopped.
From the learner's chair: your world, your pace, your turn
It starts with what you know.
You are the football expert here, and the page says so. Every sentence comes from that world: goals, shirt numbers, ticket prices, the size of a pitch.
One question at a time.
Nothing is marked right before you choose. When you choose, the page tells you what happened, and if it was a slip, which one. “Wrong” becomes “here is the exact thing to fix.”
You move the maths.
Five scenes you can press: a number machine you run backwards, a balance that never tips whatever you take off, bars that share out, and tiles whose brackets open in your hands. The equation changes as you go.
Time to think.
Before every example: say it back first. No timer, no rush.
Then you lead.
At the end you make up a sentence about your own team, and the tutor turns it into algebra while you check them.
The human delta
What only a person can do
The kit can hold the structure: the order, the examples, the slips, the routes. It cannot read a face. It cannot tell the silence of thinking from the silence of being stuck, wait a few seconds longer than is comfortable, praise the sentence instead of the answer, or decide that today should end on something the learner got right.
Those belong to the tutor, and the kit says so on the tutor's page, in a card called What only you can do. MetaDAX calls this the human delta value: what the person brought that the system could not. This kit is built to hand the tutor more of it, not less.
The pieces
How the pieces fit
1
Player
One page that plays any package.
2
Scene library
Shared 3D pieces. The numbers, the skin and the level are separate, so a new skin never changes the maths.
3
Package
One file: a page for the guide and a page for the learner.
4
Edition
A package re-made for one learner: same mechanics, new world.
5
Showcase
A page like this one, for the people deciding whether to use it.
Make an Edition for your learner. Paste this into the MetaDAX prompt or skill:
Build an Edition of the MetaDAX Words into Algebra kit for my learner. Keep the five worked examples, the scenes, the games, the six named slips, the three routes and the say-it-back pause. Re-make every sentence and the tutor notes for this learner: [age], loves [their interest], and [one thing about how they learn].
How it was made
How it was made
A conversation
A tutor answered a few plain questions about one topic and one kind of learner.
One kit, checked
MetaDAX turned the answers into a package: an open file with a page for the tutor and a page for the learner, checked by the same checker that runs in the player. Every answer was worked out and verified before it went out.
A shared scene library
The balance, the number machine, the bar model and the algebra tiles are now part of the player, so the next kit, in any subject or interest, can use them.
Yours to remake
Paste one line into the MetaDAX prompt or skill with your learner's interest, and the same kit comes back in their world. It runs on your own AI subscription. MetaDAX is free.
Make one for your learner
Make one for your learner
A way, never the way.
Built by MetaDAX from one tutor's interview. Model-generated, checked for accuracy, not certified. The learner's name is made up.