Using DoodleMaths as a home learning solution is a great way to continue and support your child’s learning if they’re not in the classroom for a prolonged period of time or during the school holidays.
Below are our top tips for how you can use DoodleMaths and DoodleEnglish as effective, motivational home learning solutions.
1. Support your child in working independently
DoodleMaths and DoodleEnglish are designed to be used independently by children. Our clever algorithm, Proxima™, ensures that 80-90% of questions are achievable for your child, meaning that they’ll find 10-20% of them challenging.
Reassure your child that finding some questions a bit tricky is completely normal and that it will help them to learn – with a bit of practise, they’ll be able to answer these questions in no time!
If they’re finding a question challenging, encourage them to use the ‘help’ button, the ‘hint’ button and the ‘tricky questions’ feature so that they can come back to any problems later. You can then help your child with these questions or save them for a teacher to take a look at when they’re back in the classroom.
2. Aim to complete three exercises a day
During a prolonged period away from the classroom, we don’t suggest using DoodleMaths for hours at a time, but instead recommend using it for 25-30 minutes, which is slightly longer than our normal recommended usage of 10 minutes a day.
Set your child the expectation of completing two or three exercises a day, or earning 200 stars per week.
It takes a child an average of 17 seconds to answer a question in DoodleMaths and 21 seconds in DoodleEnglish, so completing this number of exercises is very achievable within a daily routine. You could even break up usage into two or three 10 minute bursts a day.
Premium users can complete an unlimited number of exercises a day. Discover our subscription plans and start a free 7-day trial of Doodle Premium today!
3. Embark on an exciting challenge!
Print off one of our challenge sheets to get started. We recommend our popular 30 Day Challenge as a great way to promote daily Doodling.
Reward your child with a sticker when they have completed their exercises for the day. When they complete their challenge, you could present them with one of our fantastic free printable certificates.
4. Ensure that your child’s work programme is correctly calibrated
In the Parent Dashboard, hover over Analyse and select Programme. Ideally, you’ll see a green, smiley face next to your child’s name, meaning that their personalised work programme contains the correct mix of challenge and reward. This means they’ll be able to comfortably work independently and progress in their learning.
An orange face highlights that their work programme may be presenting an uneven level of challenge and that you may need to recalibrate their programme, while a red face signifies that their programme needs recalibrating. You can do this by pressing the circle icon in the Recalibrate column.
Be sure to log in regularly to check that their programme is ‘healthy’ and that they’re enjoying the best possible Doodle experience.
5. Set a motivational goal for your child
Goals can be specific targets, such as working towards meeting the year’s national curriculum expectations in an area of the curriculum.
To create a goal, simply log in to the Parent Dashboard and hover over Analyse. Select Analyse targets, press Edit goal and choose an end date by which the target should be achieved. Suggested goals will then appear; select Save for the target to appear in your child’s app.
6. Set work in topics they’re currently learning in school
Doodle creates every child a unique work programme tailored to their strengths and weaknesses. Alongside this, especially when using DoodleMaths or DoodleEnglish as a home learning solutions, you can also set work in topics they’ve been covering at school, which will enable them to refresh their knowledge and continue their classroom learning.
To do this, log in to the Parent Dashboard, hover over Extras and select Assign. You can then search for a topic and easily add it into your children’s work programme by pressing the down arrow and clicking Add.
All of our questions are aligned to the English and Welsh national curriculums, so you can rest assured that your child will always be covering relevant content that is supporting their school learning.
Premium users can set extra work in any topic of the national curriculum. Discover our subscription plans and start a free 7-day trial of Doodle Premium today!
7. Track your child’s progress in DoodleConnect
Here, you can discover their strengths and weaknesses, their average accuracy and even receive instant snapshot updates.
Plus, you can send motivational messages to your child, ensuring they’ll want to Doodle every day!
If you have any questions or would like more advice about using Doodle as a home learning solution, please visit our Help Centre or chat to our Customer Service advisors.
Enjoy all of Doodle’s exciting features by starting a free 7-day trial of Doodle Premium today!
