Madness

Reuben's School does an online math program called Think Through Math (TTM). It is a self paced math practice tool. In March TTM had a March Madness competition. The schools were ranked by how many lessons per students were completed. The school kept progressing through every rank, until it was in the top two. This last battle was two weeks long, one week happened to be spring break.

Reuben dutifully completed lesson after lesson. Not only passing off all of the 4th grade lessons, but the 5th grade pathway as well. He would spend hours doing math problems both at school and at home.

During spring break he spent most of his time working on the computer. Even staying up until midnight on the last day of the competition to pass off as many lessons as possible.

TTM is not without its flaws. The teaching tool is lacking, there is no real way to focus on the concepts that are not passed in the pretest, and often those concepts aren't even addressed in the teaching/review portion. The games are redundant. And, my kid doesn't need to be encouraged to spend more screen time.

What I am pleased with is that Reuben set and reached goals. He focused and worked and sacrificed to excel.

The school had a raffle. Each student how passed off lessons over spring break were entered to win. Reuben won a Kindle Fire. He was over the moon. Then TTM had an awards ceremony for the school, complete with T shirts and metals. Reuben was a MVT (Most Valuable Thinker) passing off 686 lessons in March, with a 98% pass rate (those he didn't pass were in the 5th grade pathway), and he spent 59 Hours on TTM.

Three articles in the newspaper, and a short feel good story on Fox 13.