At Eckle’s Place, we believe great classroom resources should do more than keep students busy. They should support strong teaching, make important concepts easier to understand and give children opportunities to actively engage with what they are learning.
Australian characters children can connect with
Eckle’s Place has an unmistakably Australian identity.
Our characters, including Eckle the Echidna, Jorja the Wombat, Jesse the Joey, Callie the Croc and Sasha the Platypus, bring familiar Australian animals into literacy, mathematics, problem solving, creativity and discovery.
The characters are there to make learning inviting and memorable, without distracting from the learning itself. Each has their own strengths and personality, giving teachers a friendly way to introduce activities and helping students build familiarity across different resources.
Supporting explicit teaching with hands-on practice
We strongly believe in the value of explicit teaching.
Clear explanations, modelling, worked examples, questioning and guided practice are essential parts of effective classroom instruction. Our resources are not designed to replace that teaching. They are designed to strengthen what happens next.
After a teacher has introduced and modelled a concept, students need opportunities to practise it, discuss it, apply it and demonstrate what they understand.
That is where physical resources can be particularly powerful.
Whether students are creating arrays with marbles, constructing words with cards, solving a problem with a partner or physically rearranging a sentence, hands-on activities allow abstract ideas to become visible.
Teachers can see student thinking in real time, identify misconceptions and ask targeted questions while students practise the concept that has just been explicitly taught.
Designed for the reality of classrooms
Eckle’s Place resources are designed by teachers, for teachers.
That means we think about more than whether a game looks attractive. We consider how long it takes to explain, whether students can use it independently, how it could work in a rotation, how easily it can be differentiated and whether it genuinely supports curriculum learning.
A good classroom resource should be versatile.
The same resource might be used at the teacher table for guided instruction, between two students for paired practice, as part of a small-group rotation or independently once students understand the task.
It should also reduce workload rather than create another complicated system for teachers to manage.
Learning children can get their hands on
Digital tools have an important place in modern education, but children still benefit enormously from opportunities to move, build, sort, manipulate, experiment and talk.
Physical resources encourage students to participate rather than simply observe. They create natural opportunities for mathematical reasoning, oral language, collaboration and discussion.
Most importantly, they help connect what a teacher has explained with something a child can see and do.
That is the approach behind Eckle’s Place.
Purposeful resources. Strong teaching. Active learners.
And above all, we put learning back into children’s hands.