Ask any homeschooling family what their most and least favorite subjects to teach are and you will get many, many different answers. For us math is at the top of the list. We do have a math program that we routinely use and have stuck with it for the last four years. Overall we are pleased with it. Usually when review products are offered to us I try to steer away if they involve math, but this time I really felt that Adaptive Placement Test and Individualized Lesson Plan from A+ Interactive Math would be a good fit for us. Guess what? We weren't disappointed.
First off, how many times have you worried about gaps in your child's education. Since you can't see me through the computer - here is me raising my hand really high. Well, this program is specifically created to help you find those gaps in math and then fix them. Some of my favorite things about this product are:
- Very Economical
- Great for families with multiple kids at different grade levels
- Very easy to use
- Enjoyable to the students (at least mine)
Here's How it Works:
Each student is assigned their own login and password. I had three fifth grade girls using this and they all had their own account. Once the student logins in they are taken to a launch area which when clicked will go to their dashboard. Here the student has the choice of viewing tutorial videos on how to use the site, take the adaptive placement tests, view summary and progress reports, and view their individualized lesson plans based on the placement test scores.
Placement Tests - Seventeen placement tests are found on the fifth grade level, which is what we had. Concepts ranged from addition and subtraction all the way up to fractions, measurements, and algebra. The student has the ability to retake each test as many times as they wish until it is passed. Each exam can be viewed by the parent to determine what concepts were missed on the test. The tests are timed as well as each problem.
Summary and Progress Reports - Here the parent and student can review the test, see how many problems were missed, give a percentage total, and a pie chart visual. This information can be printed for future use.
Individualized Lesson Plan - In this section the student has the choice of working with multimedia lessons or online worksheets for each concept missed. The multimedia lesson consists of animated videos teaching the concept and then follow up questions for the student to solve. The online worksheet's format is very similar to the placement tests.
How We Used It:
I let each of my students start by picking an area they felt they needed help or extra practice. In a way this kind of backfired on me and them as they thought choosing the easiest topics like addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division would get them better scores and could move through the program faster. What they learned early on was that it wasn't so easy to pass the test on the first try for multiple reasons. Sometimes it was because of silly mistakes, other times it was concepts they learned at the beginning of the school year and forgot. Also we discovered that depending on what math program you use in your home would determine if what A+ Interactive says is a fifth grade math concept matches up. We ran across concepts they had not learned yet. The girls would take a test and if they did not pass would then complete the subsequent lessons of the missed topics. After lessons were finished they were off to retake the test.
We took a break from our main math curriculum to use this three days a week. Each student had their own computer and could use their own account at their own pace. I think this program has been a very valuable tool for them as well as myself in deducing where each child actually is in understanding different math topics.
The icing on the cake is that the girls really enjoyed using this program. We only have 4 more lessons to finish in their regular math curriculum, then they want to go back to using A+ Interactive Math. Actually their specific words were please can we do this instead of our other math. I think they really liked the challenge of passing the test after studying the lessons from the missed problems.
I feel that A+ Interactive Math has a winner with this program. According to the vendor a 40-50 percent off sale for this product will begin on 5/4/15 and end on 5/18/15. Be sure to see what the other Crew Members thought of Adaptive Placement Testing and Family Math Packages.
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