Learn More About A Grade Ahead Blended Learning!
A Grade Ahead has implemented a proprietary blended learning program that offers our students the best of both worlds: paper and pencil lessons and practice questions combined with online content and adaptive activities with immediate explanation and automatic grading. The cornerstone of A Grade Ahead has always been our outstanding curriculum and we are proud to continue that tradition as we embrace technology and offer our students a more efficient way of learning.
Participating Grade Levels
Our enrichment academies and Enrichment at Home program offers blended learning to the following grade levels:
- 2nd (math and English)
- 3rd (math and English)
- 4th (math and English)
- 5th (math and English)
- 6th (English)
- 7th (English)
- 8th (English)
- Pre-Algebra 1
- Pre-Algebra 2
- Algebra 1
- Geometry
How Does A Grade Ahead Blended Learning Work?
As in the past, your student’s weekly lesson will be available in a paper booklet. Academy students will go to their weekly class and an educated teacher will present the lesson, Enrichment at Home families will have the option to either teach the lesson independently, as they do now, or add-on teacher instruction with virtual classes.
Each weekly lesson includes one day of practice questions for
students to complete with pencil and paper. This helps ensure that
they have a good understanding of the lesson.
To reinforce the lesson, your student will complete online content and interactive activities at A Grade Ahead Online’s website—online.agradeahead.com. Each student will have a unique log in and password to use and can complete the activities at his or her leisure. (The amount of homework is the same as it has been in the past—the equivalent of three days of homework exercises.)
Your student’s work will be automatically graded. The online activities also have a rationale for all questions, so students can see why they got the question correct or incorrect.
You can log in to check your student’s progress, look at reports, view the badges your student has earned, and more! Just use your student’s log in and password to access his or her dashboard.
A Grade Ahead Blended Learning Components
Monthly Blended Learning Lesson Booklet
Your child should use the monthly lesson booklet throughout the month until he or she receives a new booklet the following month. Each math and English booklet consists of four sections, one for each week of the month.
- Weekly Lessons: A lesson with new topics is introduced every week to keep students from getting bored.
- Practice questions: Paper and pencil questions help students learn the lesson of the week. Answers are provided to check your work.
Interactive and Adaptive Activities
After learning the weekly lesson and completing paper and pencil worksheets, your student will log in to A Grade Ahead Online to complete up to three more days of online activities within the week. These activities are colorful and have fun features like drag and drop questions, matching games, as well as traditional word problems. It is best to complete these activities on either a computer or tablet. Mobile phones are not optimal and make it difficult to perform effectively.
Numerical Drills
If your child is enrolled in math and is in 2nd grade through Pre-Algebra I, he or she will complete numerical drills through our A Grade Ahead Online program. These drills will help your child improve his or her arithmetic skills, like addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, etc. If your student performs well on the first set of numerical drills, they will be challenged to more difficult drills, adapting to your student’s skill level.
Quizzes
At the end of each week, your student will take an electronic quiz to demonstrate his or her knowledge. The fourth quiz of the month will have a standardized testing format so that your student gains confidence and has practice preparing for these important tests.
Performance Reports
A series of reports are available on your student’s A Grade Ahead Online dashboard. To access, use your student’s login and password. You will be able to drill down into all of your student’s activities to see his or her scores, the amount of time each set of activities took, how many activities were completed and more.
A Grade Ahead Online Activities
After learning the lesson of the week and completing practice problems in their curriculum booklets, students will then complete the remainder of their course online. There are many different types of activities including drag and drop, multiple choice, matching, fill in the blank, and more. See sample activities from our 2nd and 5th grade curriculum below.
Note: Students complete multiple activities per day per subject and have three days of activities to complete in a week, similar to the traditional A Grade Ahead structure.
Frequently Asked Questions
A Grade Ahead’s blended learning program utilizes traditional and electronic methods to teach our students. Students learn lessons and complete practice problems in traditional paper booklets as they have in the past. Then students continue learning by completing interactive online activities.
Students will go to online.agradeahead.com and use their unique logins and passwords to complete the online activities at their leisure. The amount of homework is the same as it has been in the past—the equivalent of three days of exercises. (There is additional student work combined with the lesson in the paper booklet.)
A Grade Ahead Online offers many benefits to students and parents, including:
- Interactive and colorful questions with formats like matching, drag and drop, fill in the blank, multiple choice, and more.
- Automatic grading which saves times for parents and provides immediate feedback for students. They know whether they got a question right or wrong as they are going through the homework, so they can make adjustments if necessary.
- A rationale for every online question that explains the correct answer so students can learn from their mistakes immediately.
- Student progress reports that are easily accessible without parents needing to upload any data. In fact, a parent has access to raw data from all of his or her student’s online work.
- Adaptive learning paths that provide more challenging questions to students who perform well on the first set of activities.
Ability for students to earn badges for every course they complete.
There are a mixture of interactive activities like drag and drop, fill in the blank, matching and other unique question formats. Our A Grade Ahead curriculum writers have converted our traditional questions to electronic questions, ensuring that there is still a focus on critical thinking and advanced logic.
Since the online interactive activities are automatically graded, the system has the ability to challenge students who do well on the initial questions. Those students will move to a series of more difficult questions to practice the topic at an advanced level.
English grades 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 and math grades 2, 3, 4, 5, Pre-Algebra 1, Pre-Algebra 2, Algebra 1, and Geometry are participating in the Blended Learning Program.
Yes, families can opt out of the Blended Learning Program and use the traditional format of learning.
Our fees and discounts remain the same.
When students terminate the program, they will be able to complete their online activities through the month in which they paid plus an additional ten days into the next month. At that point, their access to A Grade Ahead Online will be terminated
The program is not designed to be used on mobile devices. We recommend that students use a tablet, laptop, or a desktop computer to complete their online interactive activities. Please make sure your system and/or browsers are updated.
A Grade Ahead Online does not have an app. The interactive activities are accessed through a website with a dashboard for each student.
All of the online activities will be automatically graded and parents will not need to grade anything. They also no longer need to enter scores into the Parent Portal.
Each activity can be only completed one time. However, there is also a rationale for every question so students will know why they got a question right or wrong immediately.
The new blended learning program integrates testing differently. Students have weekly quizzes to show their knowledge. At the end of the month, students will have a 30-minute test over all four lessons of the month in the format of a standardized test. All of these quizzes and tests are automatically graded with scores shown once submitted.
Parents can log in to AGA Online by using their student’s credentials and click on the Reports tab to access scores, data, and reports to track your student’s progress.
Yes, provided that the student returns within 12 months, any completed work will still be accessible. However, previous work will not be saved if a student has been terminated from the program for over one year.
A Grade Ahead Blended Learning Terminology for Parents
Course
A course is all online activities that need to be completed in one week. The activities will be broken into 3 Days of work.
- Math: All the curriculum related (curriculum facts and word problems) activities for 1 week.
- Numericals: All numerical online activities for 1 week.
- English: All Vocabulary, Grammar, and Comprehension activities for 1 week.
The name of the course (displayed below the image) specifies the subject: Topic (week number). In the image alongside:
- Math: Place Value – Tens/Hundreds (W3)
Day of Homework (also referred to as an Adventure)
Online students have three “Days” of online activities to complete over one week.
Activity
An activity is a set of exercises within a course that students complete. Three sets of online activities should be completed each week.
- Math: Curriculum facts and word problems
- Numerical Drills: Online numerical drills
- English: Vocabulary, Grammar, and Comprehension
Adaptive Learning
The student is presented with challenging or easier questions based on his/her performance in the initial exercises of a course.
Our normal path is “intermediate” for Activities 1 and 2.
Numerical Drills: If a student scores greater than 85% in Activity 1 and Activity 2, the student is given an “Advanced” track in Activity 3.
If the student scores < 71% in both exercises, he/she is given an easier set of questions under Activity 3. These are called “Standard”.
Math: If a student scores greater than 85% in Activity 1 and 2, the student is put on an “Advanced” track for Word Problems” under Activity 3. Otherwise, the student remains on the “Intermediate” track.
English: If a student scores greater than 85% in Activity 1 and 2 of Comprehension, the student is put on the “Advanced” track under Activity 3. Otherwise, the student remains on the “Intermediate” track.
A Grade Ahead Online
The website at online.agradeahead.com that students will use to complete their online interactive activities.
Badges
A digital “badge” is awarded to a student who completes one full month’s courses of either Math or English. The badge displays on the Dashboard.
Blended Learning
Incorporating both traditional and electronic methods to teach students. A Grade Ahead is using lessons taught by teachers or parents that include practice problems on paper along with a website using interactive online activities.
Dashboard
The main screen where the courses that are assigned to a student will show. Each student has a unique dashboard.
Logging In for the First Time
STEP 1: An email with a unique login and password for each of your students will be mailed to you. Please go online.agradeahead.com and sign in. You may change your password to something you will remember.
STEP 2: Before your student begins working online, you will need to login and approve the COPPA agreement acknowledging that your child will be using an online website to complete educational worksheets.
STEP 3: At this first session, a tour of A Grade Ahead Online will begin. We suggest watching this with your child as it shows how to maneuver through the website.
STEP 4: A second video for your student is available under the Tips and Resources tab on your student’s dashboard. This will walk you and your student through the online activities and provides tips on how to successfully complete various tasks.
STEP 5: Your student is ready to start completing online activities after learning the weekly lesson in the blended learning lesson paper booklet!
