Details for a Successful Deployment of MathScore If you are serious about using MathScore at your school for any type of deployment, including after school programs, you may find the following details to be quite helpful. These are step-by-step directions that should answer the majority of your questions. Requirements You need at least 1 computer connected to the Internet with a reasonably recent web browser, such as Internet Explorer 5.0+, Netscape 6+, Safari, or any version of Firefox. Ideally, a computer lab setting where every student gets a computer works best. Regular computers come with a 10-key number pad, but laptops don't. If you have laptops, learn to use the Num Lock key and type numbers using the following keys: 789uiojklm. The preferred approach for laptop users is to buy a USB keypad for each laptop, which will work out to about $20 each. Note that MathScore is 100% Internet-based, so there is nothing to install. You can log in from any computer 24 hours per day, even if it is at home, the library, etc. How to Set up MathScore for Your School We provide a unique web address for your school at http://[yourschoolname].mathscore.com. All users, including students, teachers, parents, and the administrator are to use this address to log in. You log in with the administrator account that we provide and create student accounts. You then create classes to organize the students into logical groups. You then create 1 or more teacher accounts and assign them to the classes you created. You may now log in with any account that you created. First Day of Student Use Have a list of student usernames and passwords ready. With your teacher account, you may find it helpful to click on "Generate Login Instructions" and print out the page. To find this link, log in with your teacher account, click on Classes, select your class (if multiple classes are listed), then scroll to the bottom of the left window pane to find the link. Have your scissors handy to cut out each student's login information. Help your students visit your school's unique web address with their web browsers. Help your students log in with their usernames and passwords. Direct the students to click on "Topics" and then click on "Copy Cat Preparation". If they are in 6th grade or older, have them select "Copy Cat". Tell the students to click on "Do Worksheet". This topic will help the kids develop keyboarding skills with the 10-key number pad. Direct them to use their left hand to hit the TAB key to move to the next problem. Have them place their right hand over the number pad and type the numbers they see without looking at the keyboard. If they make a mistake on a previous problem, they can correct the mistake by either pressing SHIFT-TAB to get to the previous problem, or click on the entry box with their mouse. When the students complete their worksheet, have them click on "Do next worksheet" to continue working. When a student reaches a rating of 100, the left side of the screen will turn purple, and they will have mastered the topic. Tell them to click on "Topics" and select the next topic on the list, then do a worksheet. This step is important. You must tell them to switch topics for best results. To facilitate this, you should walk around the room observing students as they raise their ratings. At this point, you are done training your students. They will know how to use MathScore competently and will most likely discover any other student features on their own. At the end of the computer session, log in with your teacher account to view progress. Click on classes, select your class (if given a choice), then scroll down to the activity summary feature and click on the Get Summary button. You will now see exactly what every student accomplished. Near the bottom of the page, student time spent explicitly doing MathScore worksheets will be ranked in order. We recommend that you commend the top 5 students for working hard. This form of positive feedback can be very motivating for future MathScore sessions. Make sure your students know that they can log in from anywhere, including their home, library, etc. Ongoing Use Beyond the First Day Simply ask your students to log in and they will immediately start working on their own. Based on student progress, you might choose to tell students to work on specific topics. Use the Analysis Tools For best results, use your teacher account to monitor student progress. When viewing the list of all of your students in a class, scroll down to the bottom and run an Activity Summary and also try the Class Stats Per Topic feature. These tools provide very useful information that keep you informed and can even be appreciated by both parents and high level administrators. When doing parent-teacher conferences, you can also view a particular student's progress with respect to a grade level. From the list of student names, click on a student's name, then click on a grade level to view that student's overall grade-level progress. Show this to the parent and you now have an unbiased third party source of information to lead a productive discussion regarding that student's math abilities. Alignment to State Standards When logged in with either your teacher account or administrator account, click on Topics. If we directly support your state's standards, you will see a button called View Standards. Click on that button and you will see a list of all of your state's standards as well as the exact MathScore topics that align with those standards. You can click on the MathScore topics to get a full description. Teaching Methods and How to Facilitate Optimal Learning MathScore is mastery-based. The mathematics curriculum is segmented into individual topics and the students work on each topic one at a time. The topics are listed in order of prerequisite, so in general, have your students master each topic from top to bottom. However, you are free to ask students to work on anything. For example, if you just taught fraction addition, you might ask everybody to attempt the Fraction Addition topic. MathScore automatically assesses ability as students work on the topics. The rating a child receives, which varies from 0 to 100 and beyond, is in itself an assessment of a child's proficiency with the topic. As students score 100% on worksheets, the difficulty adapts to become harder, and sometimes the rating increases. Today's leading math authorities, including the NCTM and the National Math Panel highly encourage that every student master their addition and multiplication math facts. MathScore was designed to facilitate this kind of mastery. Make sure every child masters (get a rating of 100) the Fast Addition and Fast Multiplication (if old enough) topics. Depending on talent level, this can take 1-12 hours for most students. True mastery of critical basic skills takes patience. Even though MathScore supports a full curriculum from 2nd grade through Algebra I, we do not recommend accessing our other topics until a child masters his math facts. English learners use MathScore frequently. Even though everything is done in English, MathScore minimizes the amount of English used. Even solution explanations are very concisely written. We have never received requests from schools to translate the product into Spanish, suggesting that this has not been a problem for English learners. Special needs children generally use MathScore just like everybody else. However, if a particular child needs more time to do the worksheets, you can log in with a teacher account, select the child, and modify the "Seconds Per Problem Padding" value to extend time limits for that child. Advanced students like to get ahead. When they select new math topics, particularly ones not yet taught in class, have them click on the "Tips" button for a concise lesson, and also the "Sample Problems" button if they wish to preview the types of problems covered by the topic. As new mathematical vocabulary is needed, the Tips pages define these new terms. Although MathScore's biggest strength is in basic skills coverage, MathScore is loaded with a variety of word problem topics to help students develop their critical thinking skills.