Take one Owl + one Reluctant Math Student = Success, A Review

3/18/2015

I have to admit, I was shocked when I heard these words from my boy child "Mom, Can I do math with the owl yet?" My immediate response was "Sure, here, let me set him up for you." I tried hard not to show my shock but inwardly I was SO delighted. My Boy WANTS to do math!!!! This was a great review for us to do.

What can I say but that GPALOVEMATH has been a total success in our household. :) Doing this review has given my boy an appreciation, though not yet a fondness for math. GPA LEARN has put together a product that works well for my boy and I am impressed. It has become our main math program.

The Philosophy ofGPA LEARN is Learn, Engage and Motivate. GPA LEARN is the winner of the 2015 Parent Tested Parent Approved (PTPA) seal of approval for math help. Each grade level has it own teacher/helper to guide the student through their learning. 150 lessons, 10,000 questions.

For grade four students, their instructor is an owl. I have to admit, my boy likes the owl but he has been known to say "Mom, Hooty doesn't know very much." It makes him laugh, which I think is part of the appeal. Each grade has it own instructor.

Each lesson is divided into three sections. Learn, Practice, Quiz. Your student can access this from their dashboard by pressing on the Learn tab. Currently my son is working on three streams of learning. I allow him to pick which ever lesson he wishes to. If I wanted to as a parent I could go into my dashboard and open up lessons ahead of time for him, but I have chosen not to do that with my son. He likes being able to go through the lessons at his own speed. Sometimes he chooses to redo a lesson... quickly skipping through the parts he already knows so he can concentrate on what he is unsure of. I am so pleased that he is gaining confidence enough to know that it's okay to not know everything right away and just redoing things is the best way to learn. He is so NOT intimidated by this program which is why I think it works for him.

Each lesson is presented in a logical fashion. The student is told what the objective of the lesson is. As you can see at the bottom of the screen are red and green buttons. These arrows are how you progress through the lesson.

My son being the audio learner that he is loves that he can just click on the question and it will read it to him. Sometimes he does this simply because he doesn't want to do the reading. But mostly he does it because it makes more sense to him if he hears it read out loud. The lessons are presented on a step by step manner that makes it very clear for your student.

When you get to the practice session the student is given three lifelines. My lad was using these for a while until I told him it was cheating. He was shocked! "Mom, I thought they were just there to answer the question when I didn't want to.". (I smiled). Then told him they were there to help him if he simply didn't know the answer.

The practice session gives the student a chance to see if they have learned the facts well enough to be confident to take the quiz.

Correct answers will give you a green checkmark, and a congratulations comment. Incorrect answers give you a red try again button and a "try again" comment.

Once your student has gained confidence in their practicing of the new material they are move straight into the quiz. For the quiz section they are asked the questions without being told if they are right or wrong. They are shown their results when they complete the test and can see where they made errors. The brown tab at the top shows what number of question you are on and how many are left.

GPALOVEMATH created by GPA LEARN works hard to create an environment that makes learning a non-threatening environment. They encourage hard work by offering various motivational rewards for the children. These rewards run the gambit from TOYSRUS gift certificates that the student can order, to student specific rewards their parent might set up (for my son that means additional minecraft time). GPA LEARN sets up various other rewards that parents can choose from as well from staying up later, getting more TV time, to play dates with friends and more. They make it very easy to choose a variety of rewards that will help motivate your student to doing their work well.

This web-based program .. it is not a downloaded program, is highly transportable. My son did most of his work on my laptop, generally at home, but sometimes when we were out and about. All we needed was a WIFI connection and we were set. :) He preferred doing the work on the touch screen laptop, though sometimes struggled with colour differentiation for some of the answers, but it worked just as easily on my slower desktop. For the colour differentiation answers, it was really a matter of having to pay attention to what he was doing.

What I liked:
My son's increased confidence in doing math. It is still not his favourite subject but he actually ASKS to do math now as opposed to say "NO, do I HAVE TO???".

Step by Step Instruction. I really liked how they explained place value and you could see the lights going on with the step up way they showed it.   All the lessons were broken down like that, and with the option to here is all audibly, it really worked well for him.

Reward Delight. The look on my son's face the first time he earned extra minecraft time and when I had to do one of his chores. WOW.   "Mom, can I do more math?   When do I get another reward?"

Email Updates.   I loved geting emails from GPA LEARN when he was finished with the lesson. This came in very handy a few times when I set him to doing work with his gramma minding him, and this way I knew when he was getting his work done.   Gave me something to be able to chat with him about as well. :)

What my son liked:
"I like that I can skip forward in the lessons if I understand what they are talking about."
'I like that I can do it again if I want to."
"I think Hooty is silly sometimes Mom."
"I like that I can get mom to do my chores and get more time playing minecraft."

Product Details
Vendor: GPA LEARN
Product: GPALOVEMATH
Grade Range: K-5.
Cost: Special Introductory Price of $129 per year per child It is regularly $149
OR $12.99 per month per child

Supported on: Currently supported formats are Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac Computers, Apple iPad, Samsung Galaxy Tab 4, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer 11, Mozilla Firefox, and Apple Safari 6 and 7.

I hope you will check out Great Parents Academy for yourself, but if you want to gain the perspective from other members of the crew, pleaseclick on this link or the banner below.