Before you have the first session of Calcularis with your learners, please read these tips and guidelines to help you and your learners have the best possible experience with Calcularis learning application and Calcularis Coach.
- Calcularis intro and helping learners log in
- Learners are logged in. What’s next?
- How I can support my learners during the first practice sessions. What is Calcularis Coach?
1. Calcularis intro and helping learners log in
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Prior to the first training lesson, please try the application yourself. It’s important that you’re familiar with its elements and functionality, types of tasks and the reward system.
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Decide when it’s best for your class to use Calcularis: at the beginning or at the end of a math class, or as a part of their homework. Most teachers use a hybrid system: they do about 2-3 sessions a week at school and ask student to practice at least once at home.
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On the first day, make a quick introduction to Calcularis learning application. You can enter the application from your account and share it on a projector screen.
💡Here is an idea of how you can introduce Calcularis in class:
“Calcularis is a learning application that recognizes your strengths and weaknesses in math and works out exactly how you can learn best and fast. What’s important is persistency and not being afraid of making mistakes. Mistakes will show to the program what tasks to give you to help you improve.
Calcularis contains almost twenty different games, all of which train your understanding of numbers and your ability to process them. All your work is saved to allow your teacher to see how well you have progressed. You‘re going to see big improvements!
As you work, keep in mind the following tips:
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Underneath the working area on the right-hand side, you‘ll find a question mark (?). If you click on it, the program will explain the task.
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You‘ll start with the number range 0-10. As soon as you feel comfortable with this number range, the program will move you to the next one.
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You can collect points from the exercises and use them to buy animals and food for them in the shop. You can also buy items to change how the game looks.
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A bonus point is awarded for five correctly solved problems in a row.
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Once you‘ve completed a skill or number range, you‘ll get a certificate and an additional bonus point.
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You can check your learning progress at any time via the menu on the upper right-hand side and feel proud of the goals you‘ve achieved.
Let’s start your first session!”
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Now help your learners to log in. Ask learners to open this link: https://schools.constructor.app and enter credentials printed on password strips that you can download from the Download centre of Calcularis Coach.
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Additionally, Calcularis has a fun and fast way to log your learners in - Picture Password. Please read this article to know more about how to use Picture Password to log in. Please mind that we recommend Picture Password for children between 5 and 8 years old.
2. Learners are logged in. What’s next?
Guided Training
Now your learners can start practicing within a guided training mode. What exactly does guided training mean? At the beginning of learning, all children start with the easiest exercise in the number range 0 - 10. Based on the input, Calcularis selects the next exercise that allows the greatest progress. When all the skills in a number range have been mastered, Calcularis moves on to the next larger number range, allowing learners to work through the skills at their own speed and according to their personal learning patterns. At the same time, Calcularis ensures that all necessary skills are systematically strengthened and trained, and it repeats tasks automatically if needed, while it allows advanced and gifted learners to advance more quickly and thus prevents boredom for these learners.
Calcularis takes each child on their own individual learning path by detecting their strengths and weaknesses, and thus guides each child to the learning goals in an optimal way. For this purpose, Calcularis selects tasks that are not only taken from the core curriculum, but also tasks to train foundational skills for struggling learners and extended skills for advanced learners. Each learner is shown their own specific selection of tasks.
Every child is taken on an individual learning journey in Calcularis
Frequency and Length of Sessions
For a sustainable and effective training with Calcularis, it is recommended to have 3 20-minute training sessions per week: they can be completed during school hours or as part of homework. Longer and more frequent training sessions are optional.
Learners' progress is saved, and they can continue their learning journey from where they stopped their last session. Learners can view their progress in their profiles, whereas you can also track their progress in Calcularis Coach.
Tip!
We advise to allocate fixed time windows for working with the program. This can be defined and established in various ways. Here are some suggestions and implementation ideas:
· Part of a rotating station activity
· During their free time/ at the beginning or at the end of the lesson
· In a small group (specifically if you use Calcularis to work with kids with special needs)
· As a part of homework activity
3. How I can support my learners during the first practice sessions. What is Calcularis Coach?
Learners need guided introduction to the learning program to become familiar with the login process and the program too. It normally doesn’t take more than 2-3 training sessions before learners become experienced and can work independently, at their own pace, without constant supervision. Learners who face difficulties will require more intensive support and instruction. We offer a great tool to track your learners’ progress - Calcularis Coach, which is a companion of Calcularis learning application. Calcularis Coach stands out for three, most important functions it performs:
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Training time. You can track learners’ practice time in the Learning Board of Calcularis Coach.
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Learning analysis. Go to Calcularis Data in the individual profile of the learner to see how far the learner has gone practising or which exercise they got stuck in. In Area and Topic you can see their progress by topic, in Training history you can see what they did on every day they trained with the application.
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Helping learners struggling with making progress and focus on training. Mechanisms of Calcularis analyse students’ progress and behaviour. When a learner can’t move forward or has problems with concentration or learning behaviour, we send you a warning and you can assist the student.
With these short instructions you are fully prepared to start training with Calcularis. We hope it’ll be enjoyable and great learning experience for you and your learners! Please follow this link to read an article about scientific approach used in Calcularis.