Once your child has opened the system, their own front page will automatically appear. This page is personal to them and contains some of their details, progress, current points score, stars achieved etc. There is the opportunity to add a photo of themselves, and up to four more photos of friends, family members or pets. Your child can also customise the colours used on the exercise screens, the various animals who keep their score and other details.

From the opening screen, a single click will take them to the next series of exercises specially chosen by the personal tutor, within the time limits you have agreed with your child and the tutor. The exercise screens are clear and easy to use, with attractive colours and simple instruction text. Your child can stop at any point during an exercise and come back to it later if they like. Once an exercise is complete, your child can go straight on to the next exercise but rest assured the system will never run out of exercises and not one session should be the same as the next! Your child needn't finish an exercise completely, and can stop at any time and move on to a different set of exercises. As the system records all responses, your tutor can decide whether the exercise needs to be reset at a later date.

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Mixing exercises and Tests

Most exercises set by your tutor will probably be in the form of straight practice, in which all the questions will be of the same sort, and the your child will know after answering each question whether the answer is correct, before moving on to the next question. So this gives practice in understanding the topic involved, correctness and speed.

Sometimes your tutor will set "mixed exercises" in which questions will be mixed from a variety of exercises to ensure you child can recognize different types of question when mixed up with others. This will also help highlight which individual exercises may need further attention.

Finally your tutor may set "tests" of one or a set of mixed exercises where your child will not see the answer to the questions until the test is finished. A certain time is allocated by the tutor to complete the test. Your child can finish the test at any time, or the test automatically finishes when time is up. The tests should not be stressful, and the exercises will look similar to those your child will normally have practiced beforehand. However tests are there to give your child practice in sitting tests and exams in school. We do not want your child to do well in answering questions in class but disappoint when it comes to tests.

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How do I know the exercises are right for my child?

All exercises in the system are either carefully defined to conform to the Primary Framework for Mathematics or may be additional exercises to add variety, if time permits. There are even hundreds of "mental arithmetic" style exercises for speed and correctness in case these are required.

The aim of Bucknell Maths is therefore to produce the best possible combination of all the elements involved - the child, parent, school teacher, tutor and the system itself - in order to maximise your child's success.

 

 

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How much time does Bucknell Maths take?

You and your child should agree with the tutor on how much time can be managed each week. The time period chosen should be realistic and sustainable. A child can stop at any time and re-start at exactly the same point later, or leave a given exercise for good. Exercises can be postponed if the topic seems to be something not yet come across in school.

As a general rule your child may be set one or two exercises per day, and each session should take no more than 10 minutes in total. Your tutor has data on how long each question in an exercise should take and so can adjust the number of questions in each exercise accordingly.

There is no rule that your child must work each day, but small regular practice is obviously preferable. Good work practice is encouraged and should be rewarded (the system gives more points and stars for regular work). All results are sent to the tutor, so the tutor can sees everything your child has been doing, and can respond accordingly. Of course, if there seems to be a pattern of poor working habits, the tutor may need to give you a call! If you want your child to work harder before exams, that's fine, the system will not run out of work that can be set.

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Tracking progress

Bucknell Maths records all the information generated by your child carrying out each exercise (start dates, times, number of questions attempted, questions wrong, questions correct, re-tries, help button pressed, answer button pressed etc). This is all useful information for your tutor.

Reports are available by clicking the button on your child's home page. There you can see which exercises have been completed and which are still waiting in the queue. You will see the time taken, score attained and other details, including the description of the exercise and where it sits in the national curriculum.

 

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Motivating your child

This is where we need some help from you! As each exercise is finished, the system awards points for correct answers, plus special bonus points as well, for starting, regularity, top marks etc. These will accumulate as time goes by into a grand total.

You can agree with your child about a certain target of points to be reached for an appropriate reward - something they would like to do or have, and you are happy to award. This may be for reaching a certain total for the term or for every say thousand points obtained. You can of course discuss this with the tutor as you will need to strike a happy balance between not making it too hard or taking too long to achieve (and so losing motivation) and being too easy so you have to give out too many rewards!

You can always set small interim rewards e.g. for every 500 or 1000 points, and larger rewards for example for end-of-term. Most important is to reward perseverance so you may find as the term progresses that you may need to adjust the target score downwards to ensure your child attains his/her well-deserved reward (obviously easier to do than adjust it upwards if you set too easier a target!).

Stars are also awarded by the system for continuous good work and performance in each exercise. The system will keep a running total of these. There are sticker "star certificates" obtainable from your tutor or printable from the website. Your child fills in his/her name and the "value" of the certificate at the top (for example, with your agreement £1). Once the sheet is completed with 50 stars, the certificate can be cashed in for the reward at the top of the certificate. The system keeps a running count of the number of completed certificates, and stars there should be on the current certificate.

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