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Teacher Name: Andrew
School: Rosemary Elementary
Grade: 4-5 Math Specialist
Like many Title I schools, our two biggest challenges are teaching time and relevant curriculum. Our schedule and staffing is organized in a way that pushes math into two blocks of a 50 minute lesson with me, the 4th + 5th grade math specialist, and 30 minutes of independent work a day with their regular teacher. This is simply not enough time for really rich and rigorous instruction!
Also, as a Title I school in a diverse district, the adopted curriculum really wasn’t designed with our kids in mind. It assumes that all students bring a foundation of conceptual understanding and language fluency that often leaves behind a large number of our kids. At the same time, we do have many students who are ready to work at grade level (or beyond) and shouldn’t be held back.
Woot Math helps on all fronts!
In my whole class lessons, I use the Interactive Problem Bank to provide my students with the constructive experience of manipulatives, but without losing all the time managing the physical materials. We open our tablets, follow the links, and are ready to go! So much more time can go to discussion and really building students’ understanding. I also love the specificity and clear, sequential development of concepts in the Problem Bank. This lets me really pinpoint student misunderstandings and provide very precise support.
In workshop, the Adaptive Practice allows me to have all my students working at their level and pace. The workshop teachers and I reflect on the very accessible, color-coded data to identify who is struggling with what standards, and quickly organize mini-lessons and small groups. Because the materials are so engaging, it means the vast majority of our workshop time can be spent supporting kids, and not just managing the classroom. Additionally, the Woot exercises are very intuitive and the interface is accessible to all our learners, regardless of their language fluency. If students need help, it’s with the math, not the program!
We have seen tremendous results this year in 5th grade math, where we used Woot Math most consistently. On our internal, district assessment, our growth results were the highest in the district – with over 60% of students making a full year of growth, and almost 30% making their “stretch” goals to bring them up to proficiency. On the extremely challenging state assessments, we more than doubled the percentage of students achieving proficiency from 18% to 41%.
For students working below grade level, I also saw significant improvement. Last year, on our two key fraction standards, I had 40% and 34% of students still performing well below grade level at the end of the year. This year, I saw those standards improve to only 24% and 15% respectively.
Obviously, we want these numbers to be higher, but Woot has given us a big boost and we hope to continue this growth next year.
Many programs offer differentiated practice, but Woot Math is rare in how it actually builds conceptual understanding. Students can work at their level and pace, but they’re not just being pushed to get the right answer — they are actually following a concept all the way from model, to visual, and into the algorithm. I see my students able to apply these deeper understandings to other work we do in math and across different kinds of assessments.
Finally, while Woot is focused on fractions and decimals, it offers such great resources that I need to spend little additional time preparing these dimensions. Instead, I can focus my time on other math domains. This means my students are getting higher quality lessons across the whole year.
