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OUR CTC MATH LESSON + My Tips & Tricks | Homeschool Math Curriculum | CTC Math Reviews
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Jun 19, 2024
We've been using CTC Math in our homeschool for the past 2 years, and I've learned a few things along the way! Homeschool with us today as we do a lesson from CTCMath, PLUS, I'm sharing how I actually use CTCMath in our homeschool. TIMESTAMPS 🕒 00:00 Intro 00:44 Lesson set-up 05:14 Lesson time! 08:57 Interactive questions 13:10 Why I love CTC Math 15:44 Weekly revision sets 18:40 Diagnostic tests 21:41 Question banks 24:23 Wrapping up ⭐ CTCMath Free Trial — https://www.ctcmath.com/ ⭐ CTCMath Homeschool Discount — https://www.ctcmath.com/purchase/homeschool50?tr_id=BHSB ********************************************* Hey there! I’m Sara, and I’m a teacher-turned-homeschooling mom to 4 kiddos (including a set of twins!). I balance homeschooling while working full-time from home, and am so thankful you are here.
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0:00
Hey guys, welcome back for another video. It's been a while since I've done a video strictly about CTC math
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and this time of year I always get a lot of questions about this curriculum. So I thought I would take you with us today for one of our lessons
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My daughter Carly is working on a lesson about changing mixed numbers to improper fractions in fifth grade math
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and she has agreed to let me videotape the lesson so you guys can see exactly what it's like. I am also going to share
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a couple of things with you that I do as we work through the lessons in CTC math that help
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me make sure my kids are learning the material and staying on track
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Okay, this is my parent dashboard when I log into CTC Math
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So you can see on the right hand side over here, I have account set up for each of my kids
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This is where I can click to view their profile and results
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I can log in as them from here. And then I have kind of a test account set up for me
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But this is what the dashboard looks like. And I want to show you real quick how I set up tasks
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So I'm going to go up here. I just want to show you the task that I have set up for Carly today and the lesson that she'll be doing
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So this is just to quickly view it. It's this task right here
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I'm going to go in just to the edit view so I can show you around. And this is what this screen looks like when I go in to actually set up a task every week
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So I already assigned this. I set a task window so you can set how long you want the task to be available to them and when it should be due
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So I have it going from last week when I set this up till Friday at 8 p.m. of this week is when I want this task due
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I can give it a title. You can give it a description if you want to
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I typically don't. And then here you can check mark whether you want the task report
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automatically emailed to you. This one I always check because I want the lessons
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to be completed in the order because the lessons kind of follow each other. So it
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makes the most sense if they do them in order. So when I check this box, it's not
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going to let them do lessons out of order. They can't jump ahead or anything like
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that. And then this one right here, if you check this box, it's going to hide the year level
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of the lessons. So let's say, you know, you have, I don't know, a fifth grader and you needed
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them to go back and work on some third grade concepts. Maybe you didn't want them to see that
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it was third grade work, so you want to hide that from them. You can check this box right
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here. And then if I just click on this to open this up, this is where I actually added in the
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lessons. So you can select which of your kids you want to receive
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this task and then for lessons it'll give you a lot of options. So you can select for lessons
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with both online questions and a worksheet should the students complete either online
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questions or the worksheet. There are some lessons in the, I'm not sure what grade they begin
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in, but they do have worksheets that you can choose to do instead of the online questions
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and they still enter their answers online and can do the automatic grading that way
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Most of the time we do the online questions. Then you can select one of these
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They need to attempt all questions and reach their past grade to complete the lessons or just attempt all questions
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These are the lessons that I already have selected, but down here, this is where you can choose which lessons you want to assign to your kids
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So for example, for my girls, we did fifth grade. You can select specifically narrow down by stream and then what section you want them to do
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All right. So I'm going to cancel this out since I already assigned that lesson to them
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But what I do after I create the task is I'll actually go into homeschool planet
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This is our homeschool planet calendar and I will actually assign this to my kids in our
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a CTC math lesson. So if I just go to Carly's right here, this is showing Thursday today
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I actually went in and typed in the lesson that I wanted her to do. And then here's
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Friday's lesson. So I do this on a week by week basis. I go in and I type in the specific lessons
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that I want them to do that I've planned out because sometimes I don't know that far ahead
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which ones they are going to be moving to, which ones they might need extra practice on
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So usually I'll just kind of go week by week, but I do put it in their homeschool planet
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So whenever they log in, so if I'm just looking at Carly's, she'll log in and she'll see her checklist right here and see exactly what she needs to do when she opens up CTC math
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All right, so now that you kind of see how I've got the lessons assigned and set up for this week, I'm going to have Carly get started on the lesson so you can see what it's like
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In this lesson we take a look at changing improper fractions to mix numbers
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Let's look at some examples. We're asked to change these improper fractions to mix numbers
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The first one we've got is eight thirds. Now we're going to consider first the way of a diagram to illustrate what's going on
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So eight thirds, I'm going to put one, two, three whole there
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but we're going to break them up into thirds so break up each hole into thirds
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now we've got eight thirds to shade in so let's shade in eight thirds
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one two three four five six seven eight so eight thirds are shaded in
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now in terms of a mixed number what have we got? Well we've got two
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whole so let's put a two there and then we've got two thirds
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so answer there two and two thirds. Okay, that's our mixed number
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The next one, 17 fifths. Again, we're going to do it by diagram firstly
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So, one, two, three, four hole. Okay don worry about how I got the four hole I know how many is going to be But we going to break it up into fifths Each hole is broken up into fifths So let break up that and that that that and that Okay so how many fifths we got We got 17 fifths to shading Well let shade them in five at a time to start with
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So five, ten, fifteen, we've got to get up to seventeen, so we're up to fifteen, sixteen, sixteen
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okay, so we've done the seventeen fifths. Now in terms of a mixed number
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let's see, we've certainly got three whole. And then we've got two-fifths
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So our mixed number is three and two-fifths. Well, those ones we've done by diagram
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but it's going to take too long to draw a diagram each time. So let's look for it quick a way
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Let's consider our first one. Let's start with the eight-thirds again. Now that fraction bar means to divide
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So really that's eight. divided by three. So let's think three goes into eight twice, okay, and there is a remainder
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of two. Then what we do, with that remainder of two, we put it over the denominator. So we'll
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have two over three. So answer there, two and two thirds, which thankfully matches up with
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what we found earlier on. We'd be in trouble if it didn't. The next one, let's consider
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without a diagram, so 17 fifths. Remember, the fraction bar means to divide, so seven
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17 divided by 5. So we think 5 goes into 17 3 times, because 3 fives are 15
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And again, there's a remainder of 2. And that 2 remainder we put over the 5 to create 2 5ths
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So I answer there 3 and 2 5ths. Again, luckily, yes, it matches up
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Let's try this one then without a diagram. So we say 47 divided by 4, okay
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So 4 into 47. goes 11 times 11 fours of 44 there's a remainder of three and that remainder we put over the four to make three quarters
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is our answer there 11 and three quarters excellent well that concludes the lesson good luck with your questions
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does all that make sense okay Okay
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Okay so. So right now
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Carly is obviously doing the questions. These come right after the lesson and it's going to tell her immediately if she got something
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right or wrong. And then you could see the progress part at the top, then also there are stars
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here that show that she's working towards mastery. And if she missed one, it did take that box
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way, right? So once she missed one, it's going to show her what the correct answer is. And let's
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take a look at it. I always encourage them to try to figure out what exactly you did wrong
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I know. Oh, it takes four. So why is that a four instead of a two
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and five plus two to five plus two times because why because seven because 30
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five goes into 39 how many times seven times and what is five times seven equals 95
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so what would your remainder be four okay so good so that's from that 14 from right okay so you've got it
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You just have to be careful about typing in that answer. So the progress bar is done
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That 80% because we missed two of them. So we're going to keep trying
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I don't think you need to review the tutorial. But we're going to try, because I have their grade set a little bit higher that I want them to reach before they can pass it
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So we're going to try a few more questions. And we also are going to try to reach that mastery level
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How far? All right. Yeah
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All right, good job. So I can be a grade now. 100 awesome job Okay so that should give you an idea of what a typical lesson is like with CTC math Concepts are broken down so kids are focused on one thing at a time So lessons are short and not super overwhelming for them
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And I was just thinking about this, but I really love how as they are going through the questions
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they just have one question or problem at a time to focus on. And they get immediate feedback on their answers
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When we used BJ Press math a couple of years ago, there were things that I loved about it
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but one thing that was so overwhelming to my kids was that there were a lot of problems staring at
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them from the page. CTC Math is definitely not overwhelming. They can see their progress on the
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progress bar, but it typically is really encouraging to my kids as they see it moving towards
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the next star. The other thing is that the immediate feedback is so valuable, not to be
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gonna lie some days I would get behind in grading my kids math work when we used our old curriculum
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and I kind of trusted that hey they watched the video they completed all their problems without
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asking for help or anything like that surely they're acing everything well that was not always the
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case in fact there were many times I would get around to grading their work and realize that they
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had completed an entire page incorrectly with cTC math they're going to learn immediately if
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they're doing the problem right or not and have a chance to fix it as they'll get new questions
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to match what they need. Now if they miss a question, the program will tell them what the correct
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answer is, but it won't break down the steps to show them how to do it. That I think can be both good
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and bad. I think it really challenges kids to think about the problem and solve it themselves. A lot of
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times I'll have my kids refer back to the lesson and try to find a similar problem and see if they
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can figure out their mistakes from there. So instead of just looking at and memorizing steps
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they are doing more problem solving. And I think this makes it more challenging. I know that this
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might make it difficult, especially when kids get to higher level math, difficult for you as a parent
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to help them if they get stuck, but there are ways to do it. And like I said in another reason video
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I've heard that CTC math is working on providing worked out solutions. I don't know in what capacity
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or when exactly this will be, but I think it's in the works
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Okay, so remember when I mentioned the weekly revision set that I was going to have my daughter do on Friday
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let me circle back to this and tell you what this is. The weekly revision sets are CTC math's answer to that spiral of review
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They are completely optional, but I do assign them every week to my kids
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You can set them up automatically to be assigned to your kids each week
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which I did originally, and you can do that here. You can assign it automatically
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But now I actually print them out each week because I prefer to have them do it on paper
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So let me show you where these are located and how I print them out
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You're going to go to tools. It can be kind of tricky to find if you aren't sure where they are
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And then let's say I wanted to do fifth grade and right under here is where you'll see weekly revision tasks
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And so you'll see in here you have semester one and then they go through
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about 16 sets for semester one, and then they go to semester two. And then there's another 16
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sets for that. So the semester one sets, from what I understand, they're going to cover some of
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the things from fourth grade math, I believe. And then once you get into semester two, they're going
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to cover some of the things from semester one, maybe some fourth grade stuff. It's basically just
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previous skills that they have learned that they want to continue practicing. So if I wanted to
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print one of them out, if I just click over it and select it and then scroll down, right down here
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is where you see questions, worksheet, and answers. So if I click on worksheet, that's going to
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open up in a new window, and this is going to give me the worksheet, and I just print this out
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It's one page front and back, and that's what I will have my kids do every Friday
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And then what I also like to do is here's the one with the answers
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So this is the same, these are the same questions, but it just gives you the answers
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So usually I will save this as a PDF. So when my kids finish their questions, I can pull up the answers and double check and see how they did with those
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So these weekly revision sets cover some material from the last grade level and or from the previous semester
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So they are a great way to keep your kids doing math problems they've already learned
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so they don't completely forget concepts that they've already moved past. And I really prefer to print these out because when my kids were just completing them online
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it was very hard for me to see the problems they were missing. And I always want them to go back and fix any mistakes that they make
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That's much easier to do on a printed worksheet than it is online
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Okay, so each day my kids have lessons that I assign them. and then every Friday they have one of these weekly revision sets
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When they reach the end of a section, I also assign a diagnostic test to them to kind of quiz them on the material and make sure that they've got it down before moving on
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Once my kids are finished with a section, I usually go in and give them a diagnostic test to quiz them and make sure they have learned everything that they need to learn or there's nothing else that we need to kind of review
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So I just clicked into a new task because I just want to show you how I would do this
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So let's say I was going to assign something to Carly. And let's say she, okay, we're doing fifth grade
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And let's say we are in fractions one. So each of these are like the different sections
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And so there are a bunch of lessons within each of these
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So if she is doing fractions one, these are all of the lessons that are in fractions one
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And the reason they have exclamation points by them is because I've assigned them to tasks already
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So once she has completed all of those lessons and I assigned them the next time I come in and do a task for her I going to go here and I want to assign a diagnostic test to her So when I assign a diagnostic test I do kind of the same thing I
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sort it by grade. So fifth grade, we're going to go to numbers, patterns, and algebra
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and then I scroll down until I find fractions one. So this would be a diagnostic test that I would
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want to assign. And up here you have a choice whether you want it to be short
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standard or comprehensive, just the number of questions that you want to
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assign your kids. And then once they complete that, it's going to show up in
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well, it'll show up in their tasks. They're going to complete it online. But
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when my kids take these tests, they have the option to just submit it or they
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before they submit their answers, they can save them as a PDF. So I
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make sure that my kids save the results for me so I can more clearly see how they do on each test
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Let me show you why I do this. Okay, here are the results in CTC math of one of my girls' diagnostic tests for a section on ratio
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So you can see here, this is what it looks like when I try to pull up the diagnostic test
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results in CTC math. It doesn't give me much information about specific problems
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It shows me overall how my kids do with this section, which is, Why these tests are great for figuring out
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where to place someone within the curriculum, but what I have my kids do is save their results
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as a PDF before submitting their answers, and then they save that to Google Drive
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and that allows me to see this, the actual problems that they did
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and what they got right or wrong. Again, this is great because I can have them
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take another look at what they missed and have them make corrections if needed
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or really find out if there is a particular concept they need to take another look at. Right
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And the last thing that I do want to show you is, let's say she completed this diagnostic test
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and she didn't do very well. I wanted to give her some more help with it
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Well, I could either go back and I could have her redo the lessons
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or they have this great feature with question banks. So you can create your own question banks
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Now, these are ones I've already created. So let me cancel out of here
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You have to create a question bank before you can assign it in a task. So let me just show you how easy it is to do this. This is on either your dashboard or any of the screens
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You're going to go to question banks. And this will pop up with all of the different ones you've already made
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or you're going to select new question bank right here. And you can give it a title. So let's say fractions one
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And again, narrow it down by what grade. We'll do numbers, patterns, and algebra
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And then if I scroll down here until I find fractions one, you can either select this and it's going to select all of the topics, or you could just select specific topics. If you know there are certain things that your kids need to work on. But once you do that, you click next. You can choose how many questions you want to be on here and it'll tell you about how many from each lessons will be on the worksheet. You can say, do you want easy, even like
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distributed or harder questions and then have it generate your questions for you
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And then it will pull up all of the different questions that you can use for your kids to practice
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Now this is a lot of questions right here. But once you're here, you can group by difficulty or
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by lesson. And then you can save this. And once you save it, let's see if I can find this
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Oh, there we go. So once you save it, here's fractions one. You can click print and it will give you a worksheet that you can print out. Now you can add working out space. So if your kids need space to be able to work, that is a great feature. You can add that in there and then you can print it. Finally, you can view it with answers and you can print that or save that as well. So this is just another really easy
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way you can give your kids some extra practice even you know if you prefer that they do
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this over the online questions or whatever this is just a great feature that
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CTC math offers for each of the any of the sections really okay I think that's
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about it because I know that might have been a lot here is a breakdown of my
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process for our math lessons at the end of each week I will assign new lessons
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to my kids for the next week and I will put those lessons in homeschool school planet. I will print out the next weekly revision set and have that ready for the
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following Friday. And when we hit the end of a section, I will make sure to assign a diagnostic
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test for that section. And then daily, I'm checking to make sure my kids pass their lesson. I do
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require them to get blue stars or mastery on their lessons. And if they had a diagnostic test or a
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weekly revision set that day, I am grading or checking that and having them correct any errors. Once you get
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into a routine and a habit of this, it's very simple to set everything up and assign lessons in the
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program. I hope this helped you get a good feel for everything that CTC math can do and evaluate
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whether or not it would be a good fit for your kids and your homeschool. Another big thing I love
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is that they have a family membership option in which your entire family has access to
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all grade levels for the entire year. So I pay for one subscription and all of my kids, kindergarten
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through 12th grade have access to any level they need. This means that they can work at
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their own pace. They can move seamlessly between grade levels and this is great for kids
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who either need to brush up on some concepts from earlier levels or kids that might work
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quickly and might want to work ahead. They do offer a free trial along with the discount
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for homeschoolers which I will leave in the description below and feel free to leave any questions
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in the comments below as well. I'm happy to help if I can. Give this video a thumbs up if it was
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helpful to you consider sharing with a friend who might need something like CTC math in
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their life and I would love for you to subscribe to my channel for more homeschooling
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tips curriculum reviews and encouragement thank you so much for watching I
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will see you next time
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