XTRA Math

I believe very strongly in the mastery of math facts.  Mastering basic facts makes the upper levels of math easier and more enjoyable.  When a person has complete mastery, new concepts are not as daunting and don't take as long to learn. 

Mastery is complete and immediate recall.  If someone asks you your name, the answer is immediate.  Basic math facts should be the same, recalled instantly.

I believe flash cards and speed drills are a key component to attaining mastery.  Some studies have also shown that it's best to do math twice a day about four hours apart to really solidify the facts in the brain. For this reason, we use the CLE Math Curricula as the first assignment each day and Calculadder Drills as the last assignment.

Now I've found something new to add, not replace what we are already doing for mastery.

Its a FREE website called XtraMath  www.xtramath.org

This site is very friendly to parents, teachers and students alike.  The videos on the main page are well done and explain the details of the program. It allows easy sign up of multiple students and if the student uses the same computer used during sign up, all they have to remember is their name.  If a different computer is used, a password is needed to allow the student access.

Once sign up is complete, the program has a teacher named "Mr. C" to walk the student through the day's lesson.  "Mr. C" clearly worked at Disney in a past life, he's extremely bubbly, but the boys don't mind.  The first lesson is an evaluation.  The software assesses their strengths and weaknesses to create a customized program.  The goal is for the student to consistently recall their math facts in under 3 seconds. Surprisingly, my kids did not cringe at another math drill each day and are genuinely enjoying the program.  The creator of the site suggests using it between dinner and bedtime, so that's exactly when I plan to use it. The sessions are kept very short, under 10 minutes.

For accountability, they send the parent a weekly progress report for each child.  They also send reminders if the child (or parent :-) is forgetting to do the program.  Each report has a color coded summary level of how the child did each day, from there you can drill down to exactly what they did for each day.  For homeschoolers, these reports can be printed out at year-end.

I found out last night its one of the few educational websites that can be used on an ipad.  A touch keyboard appears on the screen when you access it from an ipad.  However, Lance says he prefers the computer.  He says the touch pad is too sensitive and he misses hearing the teacher talk (not sure why there's no sound on the ipad).