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• TTM is a web-based program that is available 24/7/365 on any computer with
internet access. This means that students can work from school or home,
during weekdays and weekends, and even during holiday and summer breaks.
• TTM is grounded in research. We are based on a 13-year study done with over
30,000 students by the US Air Force.
• Since 2004, TTM has served over 500,000 students in 37 states across the
country.
• TTM won the 2012 CODiE award. During the past 27 years, the SIIA CODiE
Awards have recognized more than 1,000 software and information companies
for achieving excellence. The CODiE Awards remain the only peer-recognized
program in the content, education, and software industries.
• In TTM, students work on pathways of content that have been carefully
constructed to help students meet the requirements of the TEKS and achieve
success on the STAAR test.
• We will now look at how TTM provides students with an unprecedented
combination of motivation, differentiated instruction, and support
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Before we explore the program and how to use it with your students, let’s
take a look at a few results from TTM clients.
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• Garland ISD in Texas is a diverse school district with more than 57,000
students. TTM evaluated student performance by having a control group
that did not have access to the Think Through Math program and a
group that did have access.
• These students were evaluated based on their TAKS.
• As you can see, the control group showed a slight improvement of
almost 4 points, whereas the group using Think Through Math showed
tremendous improvement by gaining over 71 points.
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Next, I’d like to talk to you about how you can achieve these same results
with the Think Through Math program.
• TTM is a web-based math program that serves as a tool to help you, the
teacher, meet the needs of each student.
• There are four components that work together: motivation, adaptive
content, quality instruction, and actionable reports. Combined, these
provide unprecedented opportunities for differentiation. Let’s take a
look at each component now.
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The first component of the TTM system is motivation.
As you know, intrinsic motivation is when the work itself stimulates the
individual to stay with the task because the task by itself is inherently fun
and enjoyable. Extrinsic motivation comes from outside the task.
In TTM, extrinsic motivation works hand-in-hand with intrinsic motivation.
TTM offers a variety of extrinsic motivations to keep students working on
math long enough to be successful. And success is the ultimate intrinsic
motivator. Let’s see how the extrinsic motivation system works.
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• Students earn points for correct math answers. They get the most points
for getting the answer correct on the first try.
• Students may redeem points by donating to charities, contributing
toward a class reward (like a pizza party), or customizing their avatar.
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A variety of fun and motivational contests are spread throughout the year
to maintain student engagement and motivation.
Students can compete to be the state or national math champion. TTM
may come to the winning school and hold a math awards assembly to
present the winning class with a trophy. Students can also win more points
through individual challenges.
One of the main goals of these contests is to encourage students to do
more math outside of school, thereby adding additional instructional time
to the school year.
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The second component of the TTM system is adaptive content.
TTM adaptivity delivers on the promise of technology. It puts each student
into the exact math instruction needed in order to be successful on gradelevel content. Every student works in his or her zone of proximal
development. Unlike one teacher in a classroom, Think Through Math can
deliver something different to each student.
Let’s look at how TTM does that.
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[start screen]
First, a teacher enters the student and the student’s grade level. That student is
automatically enrolled in a pathway of content designed specifically to target the
content in the student’s grade-level standards. The target lessons in the gradelevel pathway focus on what each student needs to know to pass his or her highstakes test. This example might be a small part of a typical 6th grade pathway.
(Click) Second, the adaptive placement exam will establish the depth of a scaffold
that an individual student needs. This placement test starts with a question two
grade levels below the student’s current grade and selects each following
question based on the performance on the last. The test gives easier and harder
questions until it determines where the student is consistently successful. This
becomes the student’s Initial Placement Level. This is done with 25 or fewer
items; therefore it does not diagnose exactly what a student knows, but rather
gives the program a place to start. TTM gathers more data as the student works to
fine tune the lesson path.
(Click) If the student is not ready for grade-level work, he or she is automatically
assigned precursor lessons to prepare for success on target lessons. You can see
that each student experiences just the precursors needed to prepare for success
on grade-level work. This means the student is continually working towards
experiencing success on grade-level lessons as quickly as possible. As each student
moves through lessons, he or she may skip a lesson by passing the Pre-Quiz with a
score of at least 80%.
This respects the value of intervention time; our goal is to arm each student with
the understanding and skills required to pass the grade-level exam as efficiently as
possible.
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Lessons are made up of several activities.
Each lesson follows a gradual release model; the program starts by modeling how to do the math and gradually releases responsibility to
the student. The beginning activities have more support. For example, Guided Learning and the Problem Solving Process provide access to
a Live Teacher. Support is gradually removed until the Post-Quiz where the student must do the math completely independently.
I’ll be showing you a lesson shortly. Let’s talk briefly about the goal of each activity within a lesson.
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(Click and Test-Out Option shows) If the student thinks he or she knows the lesson material, he or she may opt to take the Pre-Quiz. If
the score on the Pre-Quiz is 80% or greater, the student skips the lesson, moving to the next lesson on the pathway. The lesson path
adapts to match the student’s need.
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(Click and Revisit Related Math Ideas shows) In Warm Up, the student sees items that are precursors to the standard for this lesson.
This activates students’ prior knowledge to increase success. It reinforces the idea that each piece of math learning is connected to
other math understandings.
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(Click and Preview shows) The Focus is a short introduction or preview of what students are going to learn in the rest of the lesson.
This is the first step of instruction on the new math content. This is where the responsibility for the math is in the hands of the
program and not the student. The student should take notes in the TTM Journal.
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(Click and Understand shows) Guided Learning is a series of items that span the key parts of the standard(s) in the lesson. This is a
very interactive type of learning activity. The student may choose to either answer right away or get help before choosing an answer.
Once the student exhausts the Math Coach help, he or she can get help from a Live Teacher.
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(Click and 5-Step Process appears) The Problem Solving Process focuses on a 5-step process for solving problems that the student can
apply to any problem that can be solved by writing an equation. This process bolsters confidence that the student can get started
solving any problem without anxiety. Access to a Live Teacher is also available.
• Understand – Student identifies what the problem is asking.
• Organize – Student creates valid relationships between the values in the problem, their units, and a description of what
each value represents within the context of the problem.
• Build – Student builds a word equation that represents a valid way to solve the problem. The student can build the
equation any way that leads to the correct solution but must do so by using the word descriptions for each value. The
program also provides a checklist of equation-building strategies.
• Solve – Student uses the strategy he or she is most comfortable with to solve the equation. The program provides a
checklist of typical equation-solving strategies. Once the student has found numeric solution to the equation, he or she
must relate it back to the original word problem.
• Reflect – Student looks back at the problem and answers an additional question. For example, the student may need to
think of a different strategy that could be utilized to solve the problem or be asked to solve an extension to the original
problem.
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(Click and Prepare appears) Each student gets plenty of practice with more problems on the target standard(s). The student works
more independently in this activity. Feedback is provided for both correct and incorrect answers, but the instructional support from
the coach and live teacher is no longer available.
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(Click and Show What You Learned appears) At the end of each lesson, the student shows whether or not he or she knows the
mathematics independently (the final step in the gradual release process). A score of 60% or better on the Post-Quiz allows the
student to pass the lesson.
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The third component of the TTM system is quality instruction. TTM
provides rigorous instruction and practice aligned to the TEKS.
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The third component of the TTM system is Real-Time Quality Instruction.
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TTM is a series of activities designed to support students in learning
and practicing the math they need to learn. In the program, students
may get help from their virtual learning coach. This includes short
interventions that provide bite-sized pieces of instruction that move
students to mastery of the lesson standard and immediate, corrective
feedback on common errors and misconceptions. I’ll show you how this
works when we look at a lesson together.
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When the program recognizes that a student is repeating the same
mistakes, live help is offered. Students are asked to accept help from a
teacher who knows how the student is performing and understands the
common misconceptions. Our teachers can interact through chat and
text. If a the teacher sees that a student can benefit from extended
interaction with visual representations, the teacher will transition the
student to the concept zone. The concept zone allows the student’s
computer screen to turn into a two-way interactive whiteboard.
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Holiday and summer hours are subject to change.
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The fourth component of the TTM system is actionable reports. Educators
and students have access to the data about how students are doing in the
program. This allows them to make educated instructional and learning
decisions.
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As you see, your teacher dashboard is where you can instantly see
students’ progress on mastering their grade-level state standards. This is
just the tip of the iceberg.
• The program continually gathers information on how students are doing
on their math and adapts to keep them in their zone of proximal
development. This is all part of the adaptive content that we talked
about earlier.
• There are more reports that allow you to use the information the
program gathers about your students’ math performance to inform your
daily instruction, if you choose.
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This is the TTM system.
• Motivating students to do more math
• Focusing student work on content that meets their needs while
continually driving toward grade-level proficiency
• Providing students with the necessary support, including live help from
certified math teachers
• Providing teachers with reports and data that help them make datadriven instructional decisions in their class
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We find that the best results come from following these three
recommendations.
1. Utilize adaptivity to fill in gaps in students’ math knowledge. Adaptivity
helps repair and strengthen students’ mathematical foundations so
they can build on a strong base.
2. Data shows that students who complete at least 30 lessons have
significantly better high-stakes test scores than matched students who
complete fewer lessons. We strongly encourage a 70% pass rate on
these lessons. On average, pathways range from 30 to 45 lessons, plus
added precursor lessons.
3. It’s important to work frequently enough in TTM so forward
momentum is maintained. We recommend at least twice per week for
a minimum total of 60 minutes per week.
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In addition to providing access to students, it is important to set up your
classroom to engage students.
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Now let’s talk about how we meet the challenge of STARR.
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Revised Math TEKS, as approved by the State Board of Education on April
20, 2012, will be implemented beginning with the 2014–2015 school year.
Notice that adding and subtracting fractions is currently a 6th grade
standard and there is little detail about what types of mathematical
thinking students need to satisfy this objective. The problem ½ + ¼, or a
word problem involving similar fractions may assess this item.
Starting in 2014, students first encounter adding and subtracting fractions
in 4th grade. The new TEKS are rigorous and there is a lot of detail about
the kinds of mathematical thinking that will be required of students.
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This is where we demonstrate the student side of the program.
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Click the hyperlink above. Log in to your teacher account.
Click the Preview Activity link on left side of the page
Select the unit, Number and Operations - Fractions
Select the lesson, Adding and Subtracting Fractions with Like Denominators
Select the activity, Guided Learning
Click Preview Activity
Click Start
First Question
1. Show the language support by clicking one of the speaker buttons. If the
speaker buttons are not showing, click the English button at the bottom of
the page.
2. Answer the first question correctly to demonstrate feedback for correct
answers.
9. Second Question
1. Click the learning coach in the lower right corner of the screen.
2. Click the shaded region of the model to show the second slide of help.
3. Click More Math Help.
4. Click the word Addition to show the addition model.
5. Click the word Subtraction to show the subtraction model.
6. Click Close.
7. Select the incorrect answer 6/6 – 3/6 = 3/6 to show the feedback targeted
at specific misconceptions.
8. Click More Help again, and then select Connect to go to a Live Teacher.
9. Work with the Live Teacher for a few minutes.
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It’s an extremely easy process to get started.
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Transform good teaching into great teaching. The TTM educator dashboard
includes embedded tools you can use to maximize effectiveness.
1. Classroom Coach – No more waiting for returned calls. Educators can
rely on our expert classroom coaches while they teach.
2. Data Upfront – Teachers have anytime/anywhere access to the most
important implementation and student performance data to help drive
instructional decision-making and planning.
3. 24/7 Resources – Support tools include downloadable classroom
resources for teachers and leaders, along with live online webinar
trainings and exclusive online events.
4. Video On-Demand – From the Dashboard, teachers can access short,
practical video tutorials that focus on using the program effectively and
model teaching.
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