How to Use This App

What’s on the site

Dozens of games, one math engine. The themes change (something to defend, something to climb, something to chase off) but the questions, the settings and the scoring underneath are identical. Let a kid play whichever one they like. The practice is the same either way.

• Two modes. A 60-second run for when time is tight, and an endless mode that goes until they finally lose.
• Settings you control: which operations show up, how big the numbers get, whether negatives appear, whether a problem has three terms with order of operations, and how fast it starts.
• Five ranks, Rookie through Legendary, decided by those settings. Each rank keeps its own leaderboard, so a kid drilling small addition isn’t buried under somebody running three-term problems with negatives. Harder math is also worth more points, so the way up the board is harder math, not more rounds of easy.
• Three boards to look at: your own scores, this room, and everyone. For a class, the room board is the one you want.
• Simple student sign-in. Each student gets a fun made-up name (like HappyPuppy) and picks a 4-number PIN. No email. You can look up or reset any PIN from Manage Room.
• Runs in a browser on Chromebooks, laptops, tablets and phones. Touchscreens get a keypad on screen. Anything with a keyboard can just type. The music has a mute button, and each run gets a few pauses.

Rooms: running this with a class

A room is a shared scoreboard with a code on it. Setup takes about thirty seconds.

1. Create it. Hit Create Account at the top of the page — just an email and a password, which are only for you. You land on Your Rooms: hit Create New Room and give it a name your class will recognize. Next time, choose Teacher Login and every room you’ve made is right there. Students never see or need your account.
2. Share the code. You get a short room code. Put it on the board. That’s the entire student-facing setup.
3. They join. A student picks any game and either signs in or gets a new Brainy Badger name and 4-number PIN. Then Join Room, type the code, play. The room is saved with their name, so it follows them to any computer, and their scores land on your room’s board with everyone else’s.
4. Check the board. The This Room tab on any leaderboard shows only your class, split by rank and mode.
5. Come back whenever. With the code and your password you can see your students and their PINs (handy when someone forgets), clear the scores, change the settings, or delete the room.

Scores stick around as long as the room does, and anyone holding the code can join. Treat it like any other link you hand out to a class.

Classroom Controls: locking the math

By default every kid picks their own difficulty, which is usually what you want. When the whole class is working on one thing, open your room’s management panel and switch on Classroom Controls. Set the number size, the operations, and the negatives and three-term switches once. From then on, every student who joins with your code gets those exact settings, locked, with a line on their screen telling them their teacher picked them.

Two things stay unlocked on purpose: game mode and starting speed. Neither one changes the math. A kid who needs the slow setting to keep up shouldn’t have to raise their hand for it.

Since the locked settings decide the rank, a class running under Classroom Controls all lands on the same leaderboard without you doing anything. Switch the controls back off and everyone goes back to choosing.

Ways teachers use it

• Bell ringer. Code on the board, one 60-second run, finished before announcements are.
• Warm-up. Two minutes of facts right before a lesson that depends on those facts.
• A station. One rotation in math centers, and after day one there is no setup at all.
• Early finishers. Something to point at when a kid says they’re done.
• At home. Skip rooms entirely. Pick a game, set the difficulty, one or two rounds a day.