7 things (like Learning Tracks) you can change for Individual students on their green Individual Action Button

When you want to change something for an individual student, go to the green button at the end of that student’s row that says “Individual Action.”  Pull down for a short menu, outlined in green in this picture.   Options include :

1. Change Learning Track

When the student finishes Level Z of their assigned Learning Track, you will need to change them to whatever Learning Track you want them to learn next.

Learning Track Alerts (you need this!).  You need to have an email sent to you whenever one of your student completes a Learning Track because you have to change them to a new Learning Track before they can continue playing.  You can enable Learning Track Alerts on your dashboard by clicking the orange button that says “Enable Learning Track Alerts.”  If that is already enabled you will see a red button that says “Disable Learning Track Alerts.”

First click on the Individual Action button at the right end of the student’s row.  When you click on “Change Learning Track” you will get the pop-up you see here which lists the Learning Tracks available.  Click on the tiny arrow at the right edge of the box to reveal your choices. Choose the one you want and then click on the green “Assign” button.

Which Learning Track should I do next?  Here is a link in these FAQs to a discussion of Learning Tracks in the Online Game.  It gives you some idea of what order you should assign Learning Tracks.  There are many options, so we leave it up to you to make the choices.

Note: Changing a Learning Track will put them back to Set A in the track they just left. Don’t change Learning Tracks based on student requests, as they really, really need to finish a Learning Track to master those facts and you don’t want them to have to start over at Set A again.

New feature! Restore Student Progress.   

In case you accidentally change a student’s Learning Track, or even “re-assign” the Learning Track, they will be put back to Set A and will be very annoyed.  Let Dr. Don know immediately with an email to don@rocketmath.com  and he can restore the student’s progress. You’ll have to tell him your email and account as well as the student’s username, but if you’re quick about it, he can get that work restored.  Won’t be possible a week later, but the next day, yes, we can restore progress.  

BEWARE OF STUDENTS WANTING TO CHANGE LEARNING TRACKS!

Students may ask you to change their Learning Track, just as soon as it gets a little hard.  They may have to start over a couple of times and if they lack much perseverance, they will want to quit. But they only learn the facts if they stick with it.  If they skip around they are going to be wasting their time.  If you assigned it, then they ought to be learning those facts.

Here is a link to a “Toughness Certificate” you can use for students who have a hard time with Rocket Math and need to be encouraged to stay the course.

Starting all over.  You can also tell students (and this is a fact) that if they leave a Learning Track, when they come back, they start over at Set A.  So they lose all they have gained by quitting before they reach Level Z.  I believe that teaching the lesson that hard work and perseverance helps you succeed, especially when you are getting discouraged, is the best thing we can do for young people.  Encourage them to stay the course.  Then celebrate mightily when they succeed!  Woo-hoo!  They are learning a great life lesson.

2. Erase a student.

Deletes the student, deletes his/her credentials and his/her progress records, and makes the seat available for different credentials for another student.

3. Edit a student.

So you can change that student’s username and/or password but keep the progress records.

4. To change Teacher Mgr. first Disconnect Teacher Mgr.

Only the owner (AKA Subscription Manager) can change Teacher Mgr.  If you are the owner/subscription manager for your school you can change Teacher Mgrs for an individual student. Begin by choosing “Disconnect Teacher Mgr” from the Individual Action button.  This makes the student a sort of free agent (Teacher Name becomes n/a) so you can assign a new Teacher Mgr.

5. Connect Teacher Mgr.

This function is only available when a student is a free agent (when the Teacher Name is n/a) and therefore needs a Teacher Mgr. You click on it, and  this pop-up appears with a list of the available Teacher Mgrs in your account.  Choose the one you want and hit the green Connect button.

Only students who are free agents (who have n/a in the Teacher column) can be connected to a Teacher Mgr.  Be sure to “select” the students you want to connect to a new teacher.  After you have selected them go to the orange Bulk Actions button, pull down and you’ll see “Connect Teacher.”  Choose that action and a pop-up will give you the options of Teacher Mgrs in the account (see the picture).  You have to pull down to see who all is available, but then select one and hit the green “Connect” button to make it happen for all the students you had selected.

NOTE: There is a button to “Update Database” that allows you to change a lot of records all at once–say at the start of a new school year.  Here is the link to the help page about the “Update Database” function.

6. Change Play Time–You can do it, but should you?

Our 20-minute “Battery Down” forced break is a feature not a bug!  Slamming through these facts at the rate of 3 seconds apiece (or less as they go faster) is very INTENSE.   Students will do this game for a couple of hours at a time if you let them.  But, here’s the problem.  They will only do it for a couple of days, and then they will just wear out.  They just won’t want to do it anymore. We don’t want them to lose their enthusiasm, so……. 

After five minutes of play, up comes this screen (to the left).  We say the battery is down and will need at least 20 minutes to “recharge.” The countdown timer shows the amount of time left until the student’s break is over.  The student has to take at least a 20 minute break.  We want them to do a little practice a couple of times a day, but spaced out over a month or two.  The it takes for them to get through an operation, (the longer this is spaced out) the longer they will retain the information.  And they need to know these facts for a lifetime!  So a little bit each day is far better than sitting down for long periods of time until they are sick of it.

We purposely planned for your students to end a session anxious to play again.

Yes, they may complain that they have to stop, but that ensures that they will want to come back again later.  You want them to end their sessions wanting to play more.  That’s how you can get them to play and practice, time after time, day after day until they reach Level Z.  That’s how we win and that’s how they win! before the forced break.

You can now increase play time to ten or 15 minutes, but should you?  Only if they still LOVE it! 

After years of game play lasting only five minutes at a time (under pressure from customers) Dr. Don allowed a change.  We added a feature to allow you, the parent or teacher, to adjust student play time UP to ten or even 15 minutes. The option is found under on both the orange bulk Actions button and the blue individual Action button.  

But with this freedom comes a great responsibility.   You have to make sure they are still enjoying playing! If you increase the time, you have to make sure they are not getting tired of playing!  The minute you hear a student moan or groan or complain, please move them back to 5 minutes! Seriously!! The first time anyone complains, move them back to 5 minutes.  And anyone else who does it, move them too.   They can learn just fine only working five minutes at a stretch!  

Remember, you want them to practice at home also, which they won’t do if they are getting sick of it.  You want them to practice the whole time they are assigned to do it–and they won’t do that if they aren’t motivated to keep going.  So you better be sure if you move them up to ten or fifteen minutes.   

7. Change Game Speed–You can do it, but should you? 

You can change how fast the student has to answer, but you probably should not.  The main goal of Rocket Math is for students to commit facts to memory, to be able to answer them instantly, from recall.

Recall is instantaneous, but “figuring out” is not.

The fast pace means they don’t have time to “figure out” a fact–they just have to remember it.  If they don’t remember, then the game gives them a LOT of practice on a very small number of facts, until they do remember them. That is exactly the point of the game.  We want them to stop having to “figure out” facts and just remember the answer.   If the students are not used to “recalling” facts they will think that the game is just “too fast” for them.  If they keep playing and learning, more and more facts are committed to memory and can be answered instantaneously.  Almost everyone can do it–if you insist on it.

The danger in slowing the game down for most students.  If you let students play at the slower speeds they may never use “recall” and instead may figure out the facts over and over.  Until I realized the difference, I allowed my students to take their time to figure out facts.  Many of my students never committed facts to memory all year long!  If, as we do in Rocket Math, you only ask them to remember two facts and their reverses at a time, everyone can remember two facts.  It takes just a few minutes to realize that they can, in fact, remember that answer instantaneously.  Once they use recall, they remember the answer in less than a second, and then three seconds to input it, is quite doable.  If you slow down the game speed, they may NEVER realize they can remember the fact, instead of figuring it out each time.

Many students may complain, but only if their difficulty score is over 3.0 do they need an adjustment made.  Students are not used to memorizing, which invariably involves repeating things over and over.  All students should expect to “Start Over” often, but some are upset by even starting over once.  Some are shocked the first time they cannot answer a problem in the 3 seconds allotted.  They don’t realize that persisting in playing will help them learn the fact fast enough to answer in 3 seconds.    Their difficulty score, from the Review Progress screen tells you whether or not the game is too fast for them.

You can sort your class based on their difficulty scores–as the teacher did in this picture.  A difficulty score under 3.0 means the student has to start over on average fewer than 3 times for each part passed.  That is not too difficult.  Some students have difficulty scores under 1.0 and Rocket Math is very easy for them.  Only students with difficulty scores over 3.0 should you consider to have their speed changed–and then only if you know they require accommodations.  On the other hand, students with difficulty scores under 0.1 should be challenged to take on the Faster speed!

The options for speed are:

• Normal, at 3 seconds to answer (double that for two digit answers)
• Slow, at 4.5 seconds to answer per digit
• Slowest, at 6 seconds to answer per digit
• Fast, at 2.25 seconds to answer per digit