Flash Math kits are one of the tools we’ve been making for our own classes, and we decided to make a set to put on KC for Pay What You Want (PWYW) pricing. This post is an introduction to both the Flash Math kits and the concept of PWYW pricing — and how it works here at Insanitek. So, without further ado, let’s dive into Flash Math.
The kits
If all homework was done with markers, more people would want to do them. Image found on Everyday Family.
Have you ever introduced a more advanced step to a math skill and the students just didn’t see the connection? We have. We’ve sat there and stared at the sea of blank stares and panicked looks and thought, “There has got to be a better way to do this.” After a few trials, we did find a fun way to refresh their memories. We started with some problems on the board, then decided to combine that with a weekly drawing for a prize that we do. Thus, Flash Math was borne. It’s continuously evolving based on feedback from tutors, parents, students, and teachers. Meet their current incarnation.
All Flash Math kits were designed with one thing in mind: review and warm-up. If you want to think about it at Depth of Knowledge level, it would be a 0.5 to a 1. That means they are basic math skills like vocabulary, formulaic approaches, and even a little bit of plug and chug. We did this on purpose as we wanted a way to give our students a running warm-up into the topic before we just burst into it, and earn a raffle into our weekly prize lottery if they can get all the problems correct (or in some cases correct our worksheets).
Each kit contains a page or so introduction to the vocabulary, formula, and to some extent, the methodology. We wrote these using as much of the student’s language as we could so they would better grasp the concept and understand what to do. For example, on the sheet that uses absolute value, we used the student’s phrase of “goal post” at the same time we call the lines “bars”. This helps the students’ comprehension and helps them see that the absolute value is also a goal from the zero mark.
There are two types of practise problems in every kit as well: easy practise, which literally uses the base skill and applies the vocabulary, and the challenge questions which have more of an application base and look more like what the kids would see on homework problems.
And, finally, no kit would be complete without an answer key. This is the last page of the PDF that you’ll download, and if you are a teacher or parent handing it to a student, you can easily leave it out of the printing cycle. For those that need extra help, you can always ask in the forums about the questions on how to do them, and we’ll work them out for you there or jump on a quick Skype or Google hangouts to chat.
How to use the kits
We noticed that different people were using them in different ways:
- Tutors used them as little refreshers and warm up for themselves, as well as take homes for the parents.
- Parents used them to remind themselves of skills their kids were learning.
- Teachers were using them both as warm ups and reviews for tests.
- Students were using them to teach themselves and get ahead.
Basically, any way you want to use them that makes sense in your classroom!
No Flash Math kit, or any other PWYW priced item on this site has a license fee or terms of use. They are all produced and published under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike legal code. This give you permission to tweak and remix, use and sell (even commercially) as long as you attribute Insanitek and share it under the same copyright code.
What does that allow you to do? You can take the PDFs, even for free, add your own genius to it, and then sell that your new version with a hat-tip to us and allow others to do the same. Only your imagination can stop you now.