Announcing the DreamBox Learning K-3 Math preview

So we created a K-3 Math parent preview, complete with sample lessons.  Play the sample math lessons, read about what’s new in our 3rd grade math games, or take the K-3 Math tour. DreamBox Learning K-3 Math offers over 100 lessons, an expanded curriculum, and brand-new virtual manipulatives.

This snippet is all we can show for now.  Feel free to pass the preview on.  DreamBox Learning isn’t just another game — it’s an excellent resource for parents, teachers, and homeschoolers.  What do you think of the lessons? Anything you hope to see in K-3 Math? Let us know below!

As you can imagine, this variance made a big difference in user satisfaction with our lessons and games. We searched for an existing tool to help young students develop these skills. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find any high-quality, free mouse tutorials that were geared toward this age group. (This was 1-½ years ago.) Most were for grown-ups. What to do?

DreamBox Learning Confronts Mouse Coordination for Kindergarten to Second Grade Kids:

We approached this as we would any other set of curricula. We thought about the steps needed to build the skill and set about designing activities that matched this. The result: our Mouse Midway games. Kids first encounter the balloon popping game. This simply requires moving the mouse over the balloon to pop it. Second they play the bowling pin game, where users must click on each bowling pin. Third is the turtle drag and drop game. Users must click and hold the turtle, then drag it to the water and release it. Each game requires a slightly more difficult skill than the one before it. And each has a timer so kids can see how many balloons they can pop, or how many turtles they can drop, before the time’s up. The more they play, the more their skills improve.

Because it’s important that users have adequate mouse abilities, these games can be played as part of DreamBox at anytime by going to the Carnival and then to the Arcade. They’re a lot of fun for kids and adults. Go ahead, challenge your child! See who earns the highest score. If appropriate, give yourself a handicap by using your inferior hand.

Making A DreamBox Math Game That Kids Can Really Use

I’ll never forget the day we realized our users didn’t “see” the differences in their game maps. How could they? We’d show them a map with some circular icons glowing, and they would choose one to play. The next time they saw their map, some of the icons were the same and some were different. A check mark indicating a game was successfully played was ignored. We needed to do a better job of telling the student, “Yay! You passed this game. Here are some new games to play.” The next time your child plays DreamBox, watch the map in the Adventure Park closely. When you return to a map, changes take place in front of the user. Lesson icons appear and disappear. Check marks appear. Reward backpacks fall onto the screen. When kids see their progress, it’s more meaningful and engaging. Whew! A minor tweak with huge results.

Did we learn our lesson the first time? No! Unfortunately, we repeated this mistake in the Carnival. But rest assured we are currently working to correct this behavior!

Early on we learned that our curriculum is challenging. Appropriately challenging, but nonetheless challenging. This made it difficult for new users that weren’t as familiar with computer games, weren’t comfortable using computers for learning, and weren’t confident when using virtual manipulatives for solving problems. There was too much new learning taking place at once. What should we do?

How Can Users Get the Most Out Of DreamBox Online Math Learning?

We, the Academic Team at DreamBox, experimented with the starting place of our curriculum and looked at some general patterns in user data. We found that a majority of new users failed the early lessons and our dynamic sequencing was taking them to lessons in a previous grade-level. This bothered us. As teachers we wanted our students to experience success with math early in the product use. Would it be better if we started kids off with easy math games and gradually increased the difficulty? The answer: Yes! By starting with curriculum one grade-level earlier in the sequencing, the new user experienced success with math and this compensated for frustrations that naturally occurred due to using a new learning medium.

But isn’t starting users one grade-level behind inefficient? With most products, this would be the case, but not so with ours. Our GuideRight™ Technology allows us to skip over large chunks of the curriculum when the student demonstrates that the math is easy. Our unique sequencing allows a child to work in two grade levels of the curriculum at once.

After a few successful kindergarten games, users are presented with our early first-grade curriculum. If they aren’t, it means they weren’t ready for it. This may not be the perfect solution for all kids, but it turns out that it works successfully for the majority of our kindergarten to 3rd grade students. However, as always, we’re anxious to hear from the parents of our little DreamBox users: how is this working for your children?

Instead, did I spend the first weeks of school assessing these particular objectives to determine the appropriate starting point for each student? Ideally, yes. But what teacher has of time? Remember, I can spend as much time planning and preparing for my students as I want, but it’s much more difficult to increase the actual instruction time I have with them. Instruction time is a valuable commodity and it’s important to use it wisely. Assessment is an important part of using instruction time wisely, but how much time should I spend assessing supplementary software?

Using Software to Better Gauge Kindergarten through Second Grade Math Curriculums

Although I hate to admit this, I’d usually make my best guess for a starting place. Reflecting back on this, I’d usually include too many objectives which didn’t challenge the students early enough, and resulted in my students not wanting to use the software. Or maybe the software just wasn’t engaging enough.

This prior experience had a dramatic impact on DreamBox Learning K-2 Math. I didn’t want to burden teachers and parents with this same requirement. We (teachers, developers and our wonderful assessment advisor) spent hours developing an assessment model that allows our software to dynamically adjust and provide just the right curriculum for each individual. As a result there are over a million paths through our curriculum. While I can’t tell you exactly how we do this (it’s part of our secret sauce!), I can tell you this is ground-breaking work. We’ve built something I haven’t seen any other product emulate. And to have my name associated with the patent — well, that’s just too cool!

Mathrack Lesson

I’ve had variations of the following conversation with relatives a couple of times in recent months. Has something similar happened to you?

“She loves playing DreamBox and was doing fine. But now the questions are too hard and she’s getting frustrated.”

“Hmm… Have you perhaps been helping her with her answers?”

“Well… not… really. She hates getting questions wrong. So when she didn’t seem to understand what to do, I answered a few of the questions for her so she would get the idea.”

When Math Problems Become Problematic

As parents of young children we are all too likely to have encountered so-called educational games where the difficulty of questions appears to vary somewhat randomly. For example, I was sitting next to my four year old son while he was playing with a handheld game. I was quite happy to hear him get “7 plus 3” correct. This was followed by “1+1”, “1+2” and “17-11”. Whoa! Where did that last one come from? (He didn’t get it right).

Sometimes, in order to help our little ones progress past some of these overly difficult questions, we help them for bit and then breathe a sigh of relief as the questions get back to being more appropriate (at least for a while). Our help is often required for a few minutes in non-educational video games as well. So in a sense, we adults are being trained to help our loved ones when a program appears to get too difficult for them.

DreamBox Learning’s Approach

With DreamBox things are a little different. As one of the developers in charge of our GuideRight™ technology I consider it my responsibility to make certain we assess and adapt to each child as accurately as possible. That means ensuring that we optimally level right down to the individual question level. And that we adapt as necessary immediately based upon how the student responds to those questions. Ideally the questions are just challenging enough that they get the occasional one incorrect as they learn.

In fact, DreamBox continuously assesses and adapts to your child not only within a problem, but between problems, between lessons and between groups of lessons.

Frog Race Level 2

Part of that process of recalibrating for each student between groups of lessons involves occasionally giving them a series of questions that might be a little too difficult for them. If they do well, we move them on to something that might rely upon the understanding they just demonstrated. If they don’t do so well, we then provide the comprehensive set of lessons they likely need to develop that understanding.

So with DreamBox, if you provide too much overt assistance, answer for your child, or let a sibling or friend play on their account, it is quite possible that the system will temporarily attribute levels of understanding – or misunderstanding – that do not accurately reflect that of your child.

What to Do When the Math Game Gets Tough

What should you do, when they turn to you for assistance? Try some of these approaches:

• Encourage your child to make his or her best guess. Remind them it’s OK to make some mistakes. We learn a lot from the types of mistakes they make and will respond accordingly. (Really!)
• Answer a question with a question. “What do you think?”
• Click help.
• Click help again. The second help is more explicit that the first help.
• Ask your child to explain the game to you. Sometimes talking it through like this will give them the answer.

If all that doesn’t work, perhaps it’s time for a snack or a break.

Finally, remember that playing DreamBox is meant to be fun. If they are still having trouble with one or more lessons, don’t hesitate to click the feedback button and let us know.

Counting Placement

It’s pretty easy to see how a child without the understanding of place value might accidentally create a math solution like Ma and Pa Kettle.

Ma & Pa Kettle do math.