Wowzers

Math instruction, practice, and assessment completely individualized for the students. Wowzers is a math technology tool designed for grades K to 8 based on Common Core Math standards. Students follow a designated curriculum path based on their needs. This means that you can assign students different assignments based on data from assessments. Unfortunately, only grades 3 to 8 have pre- and post- assessments built into the program. The other grade levels will have to use data from classroom assessments or district pre-assessments. Once you set the students on a curriculum path, they work at their own pace. The students work through a teaching progression where they take a try-out (pre-assessment) and based on that score, they either move to a video lesson or practice. They then work through a quest, quiz, and the next day they can master that skill to move to the next skill.

Negatives: Wowzers is only free on a trial only basis. The trial lasts for 2 weeks.

Lesson Ideas: Wowzers is a great app for students to use on an everyday basis, especially if you pay for the product. I would include this in a technology rotation during math workshop. I recommend having students bring in their own devices to use this app so they can stay signed in. This also allows students to get through a whole lesson progression in a class period. If students finish their lesson early, or you do not have enough devices for students to use at the same time, break the class up in two groups.

The first par that you will need to know about this program is how to set up your classroom. There are a lot of steps and settings that you have so make sure you read each section carefully when you decide to set up an account.

The first screen you will encounter after you sign up is your homepage. This is an overview of your account. On this page you can navigate to your classroom(s) or groups easily from the left side bar. In the center section at the top, you can navigate to look at the curriculum, edit your profile, and view archived classrooms.

When you select the plus button on the left side bar of your home screen next to Classrooms, you will start setting up your new class. You will name you class and then you will have to select from the following settings. These settings are very valuable to you as a teacher so make sure you don't just accept the default settings. The first section is Remediations. This tells the program that if the students score poorly (70% or below) on any activity, then a video will play for them to watch reviewing the skill that they are on. The next section is Adaptive Lessons. This changes the lesson for the students based on performance. So, if a student scores well on the tryout, they will be able to skip the lesson and go straight to the practice section of the lesson. You are able to choose where these students go within the lesson if they score well. The third section is Free Time. When students complete their content for the day, they will be allotted a certain amount of free time where they can explore the app, buy items with coins they earn, and decorate their avatars. You set the time limit for this in this section. Finally, the last section is Performance Settings. If you have a slow network or your devices are slow, you can enable the Network Performance Boost and the Device Performance Boost in this section. If you select the Device Performance Boost, know that the program will automatically skip over quests, quizzes and some videos.

The next step in setting up your classroom is to add your students. You can add them manually or upload an Excel roster. Here you will also create their usernames and passwords, or you can have the computer choose them for you. I find that having the computer choose them is easier because they create usernames using their names from the usernames that are available. If you type your own usernames and passwords, they may already be taken and you will have to start over.

The next screen will be a list of the students that you just added with their usernames and passwords. It is important to save this because you will not get another chance to see them. I recommend downloading the PDF file and printing it off for your records.

After adding your students, you will be redirected to your classroom's dashboard view. The above screen is what you will see. You are able to navigate the classroom sections by using the tabs in the upper right corner of the screen (they read Class Roster, Dashboard, Path, and Reports). Here you can also select individual students and access their student profiles. This will show you where your students are in the curriculum path (I will explain this soon).

This is what an individual student profile looks like. You can monitor their progress, assign them individual assignments, view their reports, and even review how they responded to word problems!

This next section is VERY IMPORTANT! When you select Path in the tabs at the top right of your Classroom Dashboard screen, you will be redirected here (except you will only see all blue bars). This is the curriculum that the students will follow. If you select the black triangles next to each section, the section expands to show you more. So, the first topic has 7 days of lessons within that one topic. You are also able to preview the practice section on each day. You can even see the Common Core Standards that the specific day covers. The best part about this is that you can edit your Classroom's Path by simply clicking the blue EDIT button at the top right.

When you click the blue EDIT button, a screen with all blue topics pop up. This is where you can edit your whole class path. To move topics around simply select the topic and hold the mouse while dragging the topic to the spot that you want it to be. So, if your district already has a pacing chart out for the standards that you are supposed to teach and when, change your class curriculum path to reflect that. This way, your students will be working on something close to what you are teaching them in class. To have the right section appear like in the picture, select ADD NEW SECTIONS. This is another option you have in this program which is to add topics from other grade levels. For example, if you know your students need more practice on a particular topic, have the students complete that topic for your grade level AFTER they complete the same topic for the previous grade level.

Another option that you have in this program is to enable and disable specific activities. If you select Disable/Enable Activity Type in small blue letters, this screen will appear. From here you can choose on specific topics or days or across the entire path to enable or disable specific activities. For example, all activities will be the default, but if you start to notice that the students try to stay playing the game for the whole class period instead of working through the whole lesson, you can disable that feature for the students. That way it does not become a distraction.

Once you have edited the curriculum path for the students in your class, make sure you select SAVE CHANGES.

These screens are your Reports for your classroom. When you have students that have completed anything in their Wowzers account, you can pull reports for your class. You can pull quiz scores, usage reports, individual score reports, standards reports, or summative reports. To get here, all you need to do is select Reports in the tabs at the top right of your Classroom Dashboard.

Another section from the Classroom Dashboard screen is the Manage button with the gear symbol next to it. This will allow you to edit the settings of your class (the features that you set up first). It also allows you to review extended responses. Some of the programs have the students respond to word problems and you have the chance to review them through this section.

If you select Review Extended Responses, this is the screen that will appear (until you have students that respond to extended responses in their program). It also includes a rubric that you can use to grade their responses.

Finally, you are able to create Groups within your classroom. On the left side of the screen, there is a tab that says Groups. If you select this and select the plus button, you are taken to this screen and you can create a group from your classroom students. You would choose a name for the group and select the students that you want to be a part of the group. Once you hit SAVE CHANGES, this group will have the same properties as you Classroom. You can even change their Curriculum Path to be different from your other students in your classroom. For example, you can have students that are working on higher (or lower) skills in different groups. You can delete your grade level skills completely and have only higher (or lower) grade level skills for that group. You could also simply add the higher (or lower) grade level skills to their curriculum. Talk about DIFFERENTIATION!!

Now that you have your classroom set up, the students can start working in their Wowzers account. To have an idea of what they will be able to see and do, here are some screenshots of the app in action!