Sports Desk with Jim Shortz with Easy Track

Item Description:

Sports Desk with Jim Shortz is a FUN Math program for grades 2 to 6. Sports Desk with Jim Shortz is published by Micrograms Software and is available in different configurations to fit your needs.

The setting for Sports Desk is a TV sports show. Host Jim Shortz is joined by a retired coach (Coach), a sports journalist (Terri), and a former pro athlete (TJ). As students work on sports-related math word problems, the sports panel comments on their work, encourages them, and describes their efforts with a wide range of sports cliches used by the media. In addition to strengthening and extending student math and reading skills, we hope students grow to understand and enjoy the panel's cliche-ridden comments too.

Of course, reading skills are important when solving word problems. Though reading levels match math levels to some extent, weak readers face a double challenge mastering word problems. By turning on the Audio Support option, teachers can enable students to hear words pronounced by simply clicking on them.

The program's Summary Page shows the range and types of problems which can be chosen by the teacher as work for a single student, a small group, or the entire class. The easiest work involves addition to ten. Most challenging are problems involving combined operations, and those requiring a basic understanding of fractions, decimals, or percents.

Each of the 1000+ problems in Sports Desk generates its data randomly from within set ranges. Thus, a repeated problem very likely will not contain the same numerical values on its second appearance. Both the Summary Screen and Easy Track can display how each student has performed in each of the 42 data categories.

Results can be viewed for the latest session, the last 5 sessions, or students’ cumulative work. Scores can be displayed as right / total, a percent correct, or as a letter grade with the grading scale being established from Easy Track. (Students can access the Summary Screen, but only to view their own work. Students do not access Easy Track.) The Sports Desk Options screen provides teachers a great deal of control in tailoring work to individual, small group, or class needs.

An additional option for teachers is to set a starting point for students and then turn on Auto Advance. Sports Desk then automatically moves students forward in a logical sequence as they demonstrate success, and moves them backward to less difficult material if performance is poor. The scoreboard on the screen below shows the student has missed one out of the four problems completed, is working on all types of problems in the program except those requiring estimation, and is working at Level 2 with Auto Advance turned on. When all markers left of the 2 on the scoreboard are red, the highest level of Auto Advance has been reached

In addition to individual student records, class totals are also kept and shown on the Summary Page and in Easy Track. At a glance, teachers can quickly assess the classes’ overall performance on a given objective.

Sports Desk with Jim Shortz Features:

Addition
Subtraction
Multiplication
Division

OVER 1000 MATH WORD PROBLEMS
OPTIONAL AUDIO SUPPORT

Combined Operations
Fractions, Decimals, Percents
Estimation
Problems with Extraneous Data

AUTO ADVANCE FEATURE
OPTIONAL CALCULATOR

Program Requirements for Windows: Windows Vista, XP, 2000, 98 running on PC's < 6 years old.

Program Requirements for Macintosh: Programs with Easy Track Mac OS 10.5.3 Leopard to OS 9 running on Macs < 6 years old, including Intel Core Duo machines with Rosetta.

Programs without Easy Track Mac OS 10.2.8 Classic to OS 8.6 running on PowerMacs or above

Using Windows 7, Vista, XP, and 2000
Micrograms products compatible with Easy Track run under all the Windows operating systems listed above. Network versions can be served off of Windows 2008, 2003, 2000, NT, and Novell (>3.x) servers; or they can be run from the local hard drives of individual workstations and/or stand-alone machines. We offer nothing, at present, designed for Cytrix, NComputing environments, other terminal servers, or the "CD tower" environment. We offer no web-based products

Using Macintosh
Micrograms products compatible with Easy Track run on OS 10 native and on Intel Core 2 Duo machines with Rosetta. This means OS 10.2 thru OS 10.6. Snow Leopard initially requires that Rosetta be downloaded free from Apple. Network Macintosh program versions can be served off of Windows 2008, 2003, 2000, and Novell servers with Macintosh partitions, as well as from Macintosh machines running OS 10 Server. They also can be run from the local hard drives of individual workstations and/or stand-alone machines. Micrograms programs run fine in hardwired Macintosh computer labs, and they run better with newer versions of AirPort than with old.

Easy Track Updates
Easy Track is designed to be easily updated from time to time. When new programs are released by Micrograms, Easy Track will be updated to accommodate them. Suggestions from users may be added to Easy Track, and if any issues are discovered regarding Easy Track's operation, updates can resolve the problems. So before you begin importing student names into the Easy Track management system, we strongly suggest you download Micrograms latest Easy Track update for free from www.micrograms.com. And, from time to time we suggest you revisit the update page of www.micrograms.com to keep your school up to date with the latest Easy Track version.

Buy ANY Micrograms Network/Site License, and get a second Network/Site License (of equal or lesser value at the same school) for 50% OFF!