Adaptive Math Curriculum

Homeschool Review Crew

I have an eleven year old boy who adores math.  Loves it.  If he’s doing school willingly it’s normally because he’s doing his math or doing extra of his math.  He was very excited that we were going to be reviewing an adaptive math curriculum from A+ Interactive Math (by A+ TutorSoft Inc.).  We received a year subscription for up to ten students for the Adaptive Math Curriculum Online. 

How it Works

This adaptive math curriculum is a bit different than most.  First as the parent you’re going to enroll your student in a target grade.  For my son I put him in fifth grade math as that is what he’s finishing up.  Then your student will log in to their own account.  There he will be able to take tests to see what skills he has mastered and which need more work.  If a particular concept doesn’t have the level of mastery needed he will then have individualized lesson plans to complete.  

Let’s talk about the lessons.  Each lesson contains everything that is needed so as the parent you don’t need to do any work.  It will have a video to teach the concept of the lesson and then questions to be answered.  Once your student has completed all of the individualized lesson plans for that section he can go back and retake the test.  This will change the grade and then it will be determined if mastery has been achieved or if more work is needed.

This program is available for grades first through Pre-Algebra so about seventh grade level.  My youngest girls were disappointed that they can’t do kindergarten math on this but some fun coloring books to distract them and life was immediately better.  I can see why kindergarten would not be included though as really most of what is learned is then relearned in first grade.  And of course there are those people who don’t do kindergarten but prefer to start with first grade.

Parent Role

As the parent of students using the Adaptive Math Curriculum I have my own login.  I can get into any of my students accounts with this and check how they’re doing.  This is the parent dashboard.  Through this I can review what their answers were for their placement tests and see if there is something that they are consistently doing wrong and make sure that specifically gets worked on.

Through this parent dashboard I can also change the grade level that I initially chose for my student.  So if they’re flying through the tests and acing them all I can take them up a grade level.  On the flip-side if they’re having a very hard time I can take them down a level and see if that grade is maybe more where they’re at.  

Above you’ll see the parent dashboard inside one of the accounts.  To view their tests and how they did I simply have to click on the review link.  I also like that I have the power under parental control to change the amount of time they have to take the test in. It’s timed you see and I have a few who just need more time to process thoughts so they always run out of time with timed tests.  I can give them more time so they are able to finish their tests.

Our Thoughts

Because my son is so into math he’s the first one who started with this program.  My plan is to have each child start working this when they are near the end of their current school year of math. Some of my kids are special needs and so their grade level for math doesn’t match their age.  I really think this program is going to be a great tool in knowing whether our current curriculum is working or if we need to rethink our curriculum and maybe even repeat a level or two.

Okay. So onto what my son has thought.  He started with the first placement test and did not pass it.  It said that he needed more work.  So he went through and did the individualized plan and retook the test.  Still didn’t pass.  Did the lessons again, did the test again, did the lessons again, and so forth.  Until I finally told him to go on to the next test.  I was thinking he might need to be taken down a math level.  Perhaps our current curriculum and this program don’t mesh the grades the same.  

As you can see from the picture above he hit goal and passed the next text.  This is fifth grade level.  I’m wondering if we just missed somehow learning some of the number rules and “laws”.  I know what I’ll be adding to our summer school schedule for all the kids!  They’re going to love it!  Once he hit goal first time he became more excited about the adaptive math curriculum and really started using it and getting those tests done.  Our current math curriculum doesn’t have end of year testing of end of concept testing so I can see this as being a great way to test what we’ve learned and making sure they’re fully grasping concepts.

Learn More

Make sure to head over to the Homeschool Review Crew main blog post where all reviews are linked up. There are reviews for the Adaptive Math Curriculum like ours and also reviews of the Family Math Package.  Both are offered by A+ TutorSoft.  You can also find the company on facebook, twitter, and pinterest. 

We definitely recommend the adaptive portion of A+ and have also used their family math package before and can say that’s it beyond amazing. Oh and way back in the early days of our homeschool we even just reviewed grade one.  Definitely a great curriculum and I like seeing that their student limit has been raised to ten at least for the purpose of this review.