How it Works
CTC Math is an unlimited access online math tutoring program that contains over 1,300 tutorials, each lasting between 4-9 minutes. The lessons are animated, and narrated by Pat Murray, who is a father to 10 children. There are over 57,000 interactive questions to go along with the lessons, as well as instant feedback and diagnostic tests for each topic. Students can work at their own pace, and the video tutorials can be watched over and over as many times as needed. CTC Math can be used as a math tutor, or as a curriculum. All 4 of my children were able to use CTC Math for this review, which I was glad for. The grades that we used were K, 3rd, 5th, and 7th, but this grade is called Basic Math and Pre-Algebra. Along with each tutorial is a printable summary that gives complete instruction of the tutorial that can be used for review, or just to reinforce the lesson. When lesson questions are completed, students are provided instant feedback for each question, and at the end of the questions, the final grade is shown. If a 100% grade isn’t achieved right away, students can go back and do more questions until their grade is brought up to 100. When all topics have had completed questions, students will receive an award certificate based on their grade average: Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum. Platinum is achieved by having a 100% grade for all topics. Students can print their own certificates if they wish, and they can even choose their own background color! There is also a Speed Skills tab at the bottom for students to test their knowledge of different topics. Students are given 60 seconds to answer as many questions correctly as possible. They can even set and beat their high scores. With Speed Skills, you have the option to press the Enter key to submit answers, or it can submit your answer automatically.
CTC Math also offers a Parents Area. Here, you can log in to set up your child accounts with personalized login credentials. You can also view your children’s progress in their lessons. The right side of the page shows students’ recent activity, such as when they last logged in, and the grade they received on each lesson that they’ve completed. This lets the parent see where their children need more work, or where they are excelling. You can also manage the email feedback that you receive for your children’s work, as well as CTC Math’s newsletter. You can choose to receive a weekly email of your children’s progress, and awarded certificates are emailed to you immediately if you choose to receive those emails. Each student’s stats are shown here as well, such as their overall rating, how many lessons have been completed, the certificates that they’ve earned, and both summarized and detailed reports of their results. Parents can also export and download results for each student to their computer as a CSV file.
How We Used It
During the course of the review, we used CTC Math as our sole Math curriculum. I set up the kids’ account in the Parent Area, and let them have at it. All 4 kids started at the beginning of the program for the grade they were using. On a side note, CTC Math works perfectly on my tablet that runs Windows RT. This is a huge plus for us when more than 1 child is using a review product, because it lets us get done with our work faster. It was really nice to be able to watch the video lessons as much as needed. Sometimes I would need to help my daughter with her lessons, so it was nice to be able to watch the videos with her so I could understand what she needed (it’s been a long time since I was in school, y’all. I don’t remember half this stuff). The boys’ lesson questions could be answered directly within the questions themselves, and were provided immediate feedback. However, with my daughter, she had a worksheet to print out in order to work the questions, then she would go back and enter her answers. Once they were all entered and submitted, she received her final grade. She is still able to go back in and redo her lessons to bring her grade up, just like the boys can. The only child I had to actually sit with while they worked was Lucas. He’s 5.5 and isn’t reading yet, so I had to read some questions to him. Some were pretty obvious and he was able to do them on his own, but I usually just stay with him in case he needs more help. Sometimes, the kids don’t always get a 100% the first go around (and that’s okay!), so they will go back and do as many sets of questions as they need to get their level up to Platinum. The kids never do more than 1 lesson per day, but sometimes they will take a couple of days to redo some lesson questions instead of doing it all in one day, especially if we’ve had a rough day of school. When answering questions, students can either hit the Enter key to submit their answers, or click ‘Next.’ In questions where there is a problem that involves carrying numbers, such as addition or multiplication, the program automatically tabs over to the next space that a number needs to be entered into. This took some getting used to for Ethan and Issac, but it’s quickly become a favorite feature for them.
I’ll show you a couple of pictures from the Student Area.
This is first thing you see when you log in. When you set up student account, you don’t have to choose the grade that your student will be working out. They can choose for themselves when they log in. This is Ethan’s area. Here you see the grades and courses, the Stream, which is the group of topics that are covered, then the individual topics. If some work has already been done, you can see how much has been completed. The graphic buttons at the bottom are pretty simple to use. Students can click Awards & Reports to see what certificates they’ve earned, and see the average of the work they’ve completed. The Settings button allows students to change their background color. The Search button allows students to search for a specific lesson number, if they know it, or search for a specific topic. The Speed Skills that I mentioned earlier is just a quick fun skills game.
This is what the Student Area looks like when an individual topic has been chosen. This is Ethan’s Addition section, where it’s broken down further into Addition topics. You can see that he had completed all the topics in this section, and it shows him at a Silver level. It’s also tells him what his average needs to be to get up to a Gold level, and shows his average for each topic. Here students can also do a standard test to test their knowledge on the topics discussed, as well as a more comprehensive test with more questions. Students can also rate themselves on how well they understand a topic.
What We Think of It
I really love CTC Math for its ease of use. I don’t have to grade the kids’ work, the program does it for me, and they even send me reports via email. The kids love earning and printing their certificates, and I love that they want to work hard to do the best they can. They don’t complain so much about doing their Math work, and will even start on their own without my having to ask. I really feel like this program can be used on its own. The lessons are clearly narrated and easy to understand, and it’s nice for me to watch them with the kids and relearn a bit of Math myself.
Be sure to click the graphic below to read reviews from my fellow Crew Mates. We all received the same program to review and have our own experiences. CTC Math can also be found on Facebook here and here. Thanks for stopping by, and have a great weekend!
P.S. Check out this super-fun times tables practice game here. It reminds me of some old-school games I played when I was a kid. I was totally geeking out!
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