As I mentioned before on this blog, Homeschool curricula abound. One can become very overwhelmed as the plethora of material that are out there for you to chose from. Math is not immune to this abundance of resources, especially online products. Today I am here to talk to you about one of these: LearnBop. When it first came up for review I knew nothing about it. So I had to customize myself to this program. LearnBop is an online Math curriculum that offers a grade 3-12 program called LearnBop for Families. They offer two types of subscriptions, one for 1 student and one for multiple students up to 4. We got the 2-4 student subscription.
I decided to use LearnBop wih both my children (grade 6 and 7). First I had them take the suggested test (called warm up) corresponding to their grade that is supposed to assess where they are at and what learning gaps they need to fix, or as they would refer to it, what building blocks they need to understand before they dive into the next concepts to master on their learning road map. Once they complete the test, they set the lessons and exercises to go through for you, and now all your student has to do is go though them.
Now, the program is very exhaustive. It covers a lot of Math concepts and goes through them quite in details, and step by step. You can at any time change the learning roadmap of the child, either by grade or concept.
Your learning roadmap is divided in units that cover different concepts. So for grade 6, the units were:
- Rates and Percents
- Operations and Decimals, Division, and Distributive Property
- Variables and the Relationship Between Them
- Positive and Negative Whole Numbers
- Four Quadrant Coordinate Graphing
- Equations and Inequalities
- Area of 2-Dimensional Shapes
- Volume and Surface Area
- Analyse and Display Data
- Expressions With Variables
- Collecting Data and Studying the Distribution of Data
Within each unit, you also have a list of concepts. This is a sample of what is covered in the 1st unit: Rates and Percents.
The lessons are made up of videos that cover different aspects of the concept, and then followed by exercises for practice. The video are to concise and to the point. The program requires you to do at least 5 problems, called bops, in order to award you an award. Unfortunately I have not figured out how they assign mastery of a concept, since it can show mastery without having completed all 5 bops.
The problems are quite elaborate. If you are not able to solve them, they take you though it step by step by clicking on the ask for help.
Then they take you through a set of 3 steps.
The boys found the process quite tedious. This was not their favorite program to use. Beside the tediousness of it, they thought it was confusing to follow, and sometime glitchy. I had to report an error in one of the question even. I personally had a hard time making sense of some of the ways the questions were framed.
That said, there is a lot of good to be said about this program. As I mentioned earlier it covers A LOT of topics. It is very flexible and adaptable to your needs. It contains a lot of encouragement and incentives. Everywhere in the program you have reminders about your progress. They even have a section dedicated to achievements; it covers your learning achievement and milestones achievements (which records completed units).
One more thing to note about this program is that the parent does have an account where he can access the roadmap for all his/her students that are doing the program.
All in all this is a great Math tutor or help program. It just takes some used to and familiarization. Now that I have a better sense of the program I will definitely have the boys use it as Math help during this coming year.
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