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Using Your Reflex Trial

Part 1 of 2

We hope you are enjoying your free trial of Reflex! We would like to share some insights on how to get the most out of this ground-breaking product.

If you haven't read the Reflex Teacher Guide yet, be sure to look it over. It has lots of important information on getting your students up and running with Reflex.

Get the Green Light

Reflex is a lot of fun for students, and it's also high-quality learning time. In each session of Reflex, students are working towards achieving their "Daily Usage Requirement," which means they have answered enough facts to give them a good day of practice. The "green light" in the upper right corner of students' screens indicates when they have achieved this milestone.

Although the Daily Usage Requirement is based on students' responses rather than elapsed time, on average it should take about 15 minutes to get to the green light (somewhat longer in the first few sessions).

If a student has to end a session before the green light turns on, note that all gains to that point will be preserved, including all newly-fluent facts and awarded tokens. The only impact will be seen in Reflex's reports, where the Usage Detail graph will not have a dot at the base of the bar for that session, and the session will not be counted in usage-related statistics such as "Days per Week." Students who log in again later in the day can complete the session and turn on the green light.

After your students have been in Reflex for about ten minutes, do a lap around the room and see if they are starting to get green lights. If after 15-20 minutes you still see students who have not gotten the green light, you may need to spend some time watching to see how they are using the system. Are they pausing between activities, or stopping to watch their neighbor? Are they skipping from game to game after only brief sessions of play?

TIPS: You can keep students focused on their own Reflex sessions by having them wear headphones, or with the old standby of reminding them to stay on-task. Also, encourage students to try for a high score in just one of the games each day — Ninja To The Stars and Swamp Chomper are great games for getting to the green light as quickly as possible.

Of course, students can continue playing after they get the green light. But keep in mind that a few, longer sessions are not as valuable as regular, short sessions. Students who use Reflex for 15 minutes every day will likely become fluent more quickly than those who have long, but infrequent, sessions.

Starting Up with Fluency Reports

In order for Reflex to certify a student as fluent in a new fact, that student must repeatedly demonstrate fluency with it over several days. This process ensures that the student has developed automaticity with that fact.

As a result, however, all students' fluency growth graphs will be flat for the first few sessions, until the initial facts they learned in Reflex have made it through this multi-day process and are certified as fully fluent. In the Fluency Growth Graph example below, you can see that the first few sessions do not yet show fluency growth.

After those first few days, you will start to see growth on the graphs. At that point, be sure to start rewarding students' effort and progress! There are some great pointers for recognizing individual and class progress (as well as more details on the reports) in the Reflex Teacher Guide.

Keep Going!

We hope this information has helped to answer some of the questions you might have about getting started with Reflex. If you would like further assistance, feel free to contact Reflex Customer Support.

We will send you another edition of Reflex Tips & Tricks in about a week. That issue will explain more about moving students to 100% fluency and getting the most out of Reflex's intuitive and powerful reporting.

Until then, enjoy your trial, and congratulations on choosing the world's most advanced math fact fluency solution!