What Makes a Great Online Math Program?
I love homeschooling my kids. However, I don’t love teaching math: it’s the hardest subject for most kids to learn independently. It has always been my dream to outsource it to someone else, but even if my kids had a different teacher, I still have to help with homework. Even that is hard because with multiple students it is a lot to juggle all the levels (did this one learn long-form division yet? Should I explain this using fractions, have they covered that yet?). Online math programs offer one solution for making it easier to teach everyone math without doing it all myself.
Math can be a difficult subject to be “hands off” as a teacher because it has to be taught and mastered in a specific sequence, and if one set of skills isn’t mastered sufficiently then it can make the next concept challenging to learn. I love using online resources to teach my kids math, but not all online math programs are created equal and they don’t all provide the same results. Let’s look at what features to look for in a good online math curriculum.
Easy for Teachers to Curriculum for Math
It’s essential when using an online Math program that you as the teacher have a way to monitor and assess the student’s progress regularly. We have learned the hard way what happens when I try to put math on autopilot and not check-in. One student was being allowed to push through the lessons without actually mastering the material, but I didn’t know until a few weeks in that they started hitting mental roadblocks. There was lots of frustration when we had to back up, make corrections, and relearn the material.
CTCMath offers placement tests to monitor your student’s progress and a way to check in often to assess their progress throughout the course. Teachers can see lesson-by-lesson assessments of the students to create assignments to target areas of struggle.
Easy for Students to Learn Math
Online math programs should be easy for students to follow and should be clear in their directions and the path to mastery. Each student should have their own login information with easy-to-follow assignments and celebrated progress. It is important even with online math programs for students to be writing out the work themselves and not trying to do it all in their heads.
We like to keep a dry-erase board next to the computer so they have easy-to-use scratch paper to work out the practice problems. Writing the problems out also helps them learn the process taught in the video when they practice it themselves.
I find the best online math programs have printable components for students to work on paper. We have not been successful using programs that are exclusively online for extended periods. We have found that writing the answers on paper is a vital part of the learning process: it can’t be sacrificed for the online experience.
Grade Level Flexibility
With Neurodiverse students, I can’t tell you how many times we have jumped around grade levels when it comes to math. We have tried several math programs over the years: each one has had great qualities, but also features that made us eventually move on to something different. As different programs teach material in different orders, we often have to stop and rewind to earlier lessons to review before working on a new concept. The foundations for math are so important, if skills are weak it’s not worth pushing through the material.
Having a program where we can access multiple levels at the same time is valuable to us so we can address these challenges and keep the math foundation strong as each student builds their skills. It’s also cost-effective to find programs that I can use for all my kids at once without purchasing multiple memberships.
The Perfect Online Math Curriculum
CTCMath has all these things mentioned above. We have tried other online math programs with little long-term success so I was hesitant to try another one, but my kids and I are all really happy with our CTCMath Homeschool Family membership. I can see what they are learning from the teacher dashboard and give them assignments based on their assessments.
For Pre-Algebra and above, there are worksheets to print to do the assignments on paper and then a way to submit them for self-grading. This is a big win for me, as I get to save the grading time and my older student are forced to complete their work on paper instead of trying to do it in their heads to answer digitally.
Homeschoolers save 50% when they sign up for a Homeschool Family Membership, with a math curriculum for all grade levels K-12 you can use it for everyone, making it very affordable for the family. Sign up for a free trial today and see how easy it is to use for everyone. I love checking in one place to see everyone’s daily progress.
