Gary S Tennant

As a school, we have been striving to develop strategies to improve our teaching practice, increase student learning and promote greater student success in general. The development and implementation of our school's Management and Educational Success Agreement has given us this opportunity; the primary goal being to increase the school's graduation rate (Grade 10 Mathematics is a prerequisite course required for the certification of studies in Quebec in order to graduate from secondary school)

Our Mathematics team has prioritized the integration of technology in classroom practice as a major strategy to improve students' success in Mathematics. We have also been investigating methods and tools to increase student engagement, specifically in Mathematics. The team chose student success rates in Grade 10 Mathematics as indicators, so as to reflect on our strategies and accurately measure success in the course, as well as obtaining a graduation prerequisite.

Upon learning of Math Help Services software, we decided to utilize the program at every grade level, in order to implement the above-mentioned strategies and hopefully attain our goals

We were very encouraged and validated in our efforts to positively impact student results by the 10% and 5% increase in student success rates, in Sec.4 CST Mathematics (regular) and Sec.4 ST Mathematics (advanced), respectively. Teacher professional improvement, student engagement, stakeholder communication {parents, Teachers, Administrators & Students} and student results have all increased.

Katarina Hlavnicka

Math Teacher & Curriculum Head, North Park SS, Brampton, Ontario

As an experienced math teacher I have flipped my classrooms and I have used several resources to help me with this new approach and classroom management. The most efficient resource I have been using in past two years is the software called Math Help Services. I used this software with my grade 9 applied and academic students and I consider it as the most efficient because:

1. All video lessons are in one place and accessible 24/7 from any place in the world.
2. I can create a formative assessment for any topic just in a few seconds.
3. This is my communication platform with students and parents!
4. Remediation (which I found to be extremely important for all of my students) is one of the BEST features of the software.
5. The investigations in optimization units are extremely well done!
6. Students actually displayed the sense of urgency (time limit when assignment was sent to students) for the deadlines for all of the assignments!
7. The ONLY tool in my profession that allows me to start turning my students into independent learners and actually monitor their learning process.
8. I have become a coach to my brighter students as they only needed a few minutes of the class time for a clarification or an extra explanation.
9. I have become a tutor to my slower learners and I was able to spend much more time with them one-on-one than ever before.
10. The efficiency is the key here! Immediate feedback for all of the assessments with option for remediation and improvement of students’ learning has been the most important feature to all of my students....even applied kids!

Andrea Fanjoy

Assistant Head, Academics, Kingsway College School, Etobicoke, Ontario

Excerpt from Case Study:

KCS has been following how some innovative schools are using technology to help their teachers deliver such a program. As a result, we have launched a new tool and a new approach to teaching math in grades 7 and 8. This tool and approach have been shown to significantly help provide all of the above, with the additional bonus of having math instruction and review available 24/7, as frequently as students need, all year long. The approach is called ‘the flipped classroom’ and the tool is an online program called Math Help Services. This program offers the strengths of our former program with all the benefits that technology offers.

With our new online resource from Math Help Services, KCS students have an account that gives them 24/7 access to an online collection of videos, lesson notes, sample questions and homework questions. Students watch assigned lessons on video at home as part of their homework. The video gives clear instruction and step-by-step examples. Students also take their first steps applying what they have learned from the video, doing practice questions and submitting their answers online. The program allows the teacher to monitor at a glance how well each student is doing with the questions. The teacher then uses this information to help determine who understands and who might need some extra attention during class the following day.

The benefits of this approach are numerous.

Catherine Le Maistre, PhD

Academic Dean and Professor of Mathematics Education (retired), Faculty of Education, McGill University

Teachers Don’t need one more task on top of their busy workload. They need something to help them teach new material to individual students, diagnose students’ difficulties and follow up with remediation targeted to particular problems or questions to extend ideas, keep track of what has been accomplished, and then communicate with students and their parents about what learning has (or has not) occurred. Math Help Services does all of this in an innovative unified package!