Math is one of those subjects that has been hit or miss in our home with all of our children. Our daughter has struggled with math pretty much since a very early age. We had switched programs when she was in 6th grade and it finally seemed to click for her with the new program. I was so excited that she wasn't going to have those struggles anymore. When she hit Algebra the struggles started again. I worried because I have always been strong in Algebra and didn't understand why I couldn't seem to help her! Our youngest seemed strong in math from the very beginning until the multiplication facts came into play. Then he struggled to remember the facts and it put him behind whereas before he was ahead :( When I saw that A+ Interactive Math (by A+ TutorSoft Inc.) offered the Adaptive Math Curriculum Online program I thought this might be an answer to our problems. I liked that this program offered assessment tests to better get an idea of your child's strengths and weaknesses. Setting up the account takes just a few minutes and since Issac is in 5th grade that is where he started. The dashboard is the main area where the student starts and works from daily.
It has the assessment tests, the lessons, reports as well as videos. The assessment test is broken down into quite a few sections. Each section is independent of the others, but showed me where he was weak. This is nice because you could chose to just try a few of the assessments and then start the lessons. Most of the assessment testing showed me 3rd grade level skills. Based on that then the program offered us lessons that hopefully when finished he'd have a better understanding of those skills.
We moved into the lessons and started working on number sense. There are also online worksheets that the student can use for additional practice. The daily lessons consists of a short video that teaches the student the material and then they answer a few questions to make sure they understand the material. At the end of each session the child is shown on the screen how they did. Issac liked seeing when he got the problems all correct.
I was excited when Issac finished the number sense section because then you can retake the assessment to see if you better understand the concepts than when you took it the first time. I have to admit that he got pretty frustrated while doing the assessment at the end. The assessment starts you out from where you tested the previous time. As you get the problems correct it bumps you up to the next level. He was frustrated because he was having to do more and more problems, but I was excited by this because I could tell that meant he understood more after doing the lessons. By the time he finished the assessment he had passed the set goal of the program and I was super excited and proud of him. This showed me that working on these specific target areas really helped him in the bigger picture. After you take an assessment you get a report showing you the breakdown.
I like that this report shows you the percentage of problems that they skipped as well as missed. One thing I noticed is that this time he skipped less problems than when he originally took the assessment. The program is made for you to be able to have several chances to retake the assessment. This program is tailored to be very easy for the student to use all the while focusing on any problem areas the student may have. It's great for parents because the student can do all the lessons on their own while the parent can follow with the reports.
This program goes up through Pre-Algebra, but I thought it would be beneficial to us to have my daughter do the assessment tests and see what it identified as possible problem areas. I noticed as she did the tests that the grade level where she kept getting the lowest scores were around the time we switched programs when she was younger. Even though to me it seemed that switching made an immediate difference for the better for her I'm now seeing that in the long run it might have made things harder. She went back and started working through the fraction section. She often times will ask me about multiplying fractions and I think to myself why is she asking me these questions. It seems as if she should know that by now. As she's been working through this program she's told me that she realizes that she never actually LEARNED some of these BASIC skills when she was younger. At the time we didn't realize that, but now those issues are showing up in her higher level math. I decided that for her benefit we would work on addressing some of these issues in hopes of giving her a better understanding of math in general. What's really great about this program is starting out WITH the assessment and then finding those problem areas. The lessons then target those problem areas for better understanding for the student. The online worksheets are nice too for some additional practice.
No comments:
Post a Comment