No More Math Migraines
I have always wondered about parents who felt that they could not help their children with homework. They employed tutors, older students, retired teachers, you name it. And the kids were often in elementary school….
How hard can it be? In the lower grades, we’re not talking nuclear physics. Simple reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic the last time I checked.
Yet since we brought home four school-aged children from Russia, not one of whom was well-versed in any of the basics mentioned above, I’m rethinking this. Never mind that we homeschool, that’s challenging enough undertaking their education in Russian in the beginning, and then slowly transitioning to English. About now, I could use a few tutors on the side, if not for anything more than to repeat, repeat, repeat, and save me my voice.
Well, I’ve come across something even better than that if you have children in the lower elementary school levels. (Why didn’t I know about this way back when?) This is differentiated instruction for Grades K-3 and helps their math scores soar. This is an online program that provides hundreds of different paths through the same curriculum.
How many are the days you wished you had something like that? If your son or daughter didn’t catch on one way, you had another method or approach to pull out of your hat.
I wish.
The American Institutes for Research of the U.S. Department of Education explains that Supplemental Educational Services are the right of low-income students who attend Title I schools and have not made sufficient progress for at least three years. That’s good, but doesn’t apply to most of us in the mainstream. Our kids may need help, too, but we’re not eligible.
That’s where parents have to step in and take the initiative. If our kids fall behind, it’s not going to be on my watch-!
No matter how many worksheets or workbooks you might have, it’s still labor-intensive for the teacher or parent. But with differentiated instruction, there are themes and games incorporated into each lesson adventure. The parent is kept up-to-date on the math concepts their child is learning, in addition to their child’s work progress being graphed to summarize their scores. Homeschool families can try the program for free for 14 days.
What’s not to like? Individualized learning, dozens of proven approaches to learning the same core math curriculum required by most states, stats indicating how much you can expect your student’s test scores to improve, and fun learning games that will keep your child coming back for more.
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Oh my goodness! I will need to look at that site! : ) Loved your comment about needing to hire someone just for the task of repeat, repeat, repeat. lol We have started, yet again, something different in our home for the oder 2 boys. It is on-line and it will tell them when they are wrong. We needed to find something that took me out of their target practice. : ) Always the adventure in our homeschool. Thanks for the website.
You’re welcome, Phyllis. That’s great that the online course will interact with them. We had a funny thing where our oldest was trying to learn college-level Information Systems (IT) type of stuff. He had to take pre-tests to see how much he knew and there were no multiple choices, just fill in the blank. Since he hasn’t studied the books or anything yet, he knew very little. I was walking through the room and he asked me one of the questions. It was about someone doing something illegal to gather information. I told him that would be fraud, but the computer was looking for “phishing”. So he typed in fraud and the buzzer beeped at our wrong answer-! So much for helping….