Frequently Asked Questions

We wanted to help our own children get ahead in math by teaching them mathematics outside of school. We tried a number of existing solutions (tutoring places, number of books, on-line sites, etc.), but none of them satisfied all of our criteria. Finally, we decided to build OntaOnta, our own solution to learning elementary mathematics. If you like it, spread the word.

Material on this site is created to help parents and teachers with children in grades 1 to 12. We offer a number of courses that can be used for day-to-day classroom teaching, for homeschooling, e-learning, extending knowledge, and preparing for standardized tests and contests. We plan to continually expand the material we offer with the addition of new courses and grades.

We did the work for you. Our experts created a full learning experience that includes: on-line lessons with carefully chosen videos, handouts for your students, detailed solutions for teachers/parents, on-line quizzes with a large question bank, engaging activities, homework, labs, etc. If math is not your forte, OntaOnta can help you not only expand your knowledge of the subject, but also give you confidence to teach even the more challenging topics in mathematics.

It is simple. First, select your course and ask your students to join it using the code that you will be provided with. Use the ready to go lessons with our hand-outs for classroom practice. You can go over the solutions with your students. Assign a homework sheet and/or practice assessment for homework. Many students will be able to complete all the work in class. Monitor the work done by your students by checking their online quizzes and assessments. Enjoy all your extra time. We did the work for you.

You should start by asking your child to work on the lessons in an orderly manner. We worked hard to organized material in such a way as to maximize learning through adequate repetition, reuse of, and building on previously learned knowledge.

• Each lesson has on-line content that include examples, practice questions with answers, embedded videos, etc. A student should start with going over the online lesson and then move to printed handouts. We recommend printing handouts and solve the problems on the printed copies by hand. The detailed solutions are provided under 'Teacher: Resources' tab and are accessible to the parent/teacher only. Take a few minutes to check your child's solutions. Do not expect that everything will be done correctly. If you spot that your child makes a mistake that repeats multiple times, direct her/him to go back and redo the relevant lesson. Systematic mistakes should be corrected as soon as possible. Students with gaps in their knowledge should focus on building specific skills and might want to omit the challenge questions until they build their confidence.
• Assessments vs. quizzes: There is a very important difference between the two. Assessments can be done an unlimited number of times to master the skills and prepare students for the final test. For many questions students will get a detailed solution, and can therefore learn through practice. Please encourage your child to redo assessments until she/he is happy with their mark. Quizzes can only be attempted once and a parent can review the results with their child. All online practice, except unit tests and the final exam, are pre-set as assessments. A parent can change them to quizzes.
• At the end of each unit there is a test. The child should do well on the test before proceeding to the next unit.
• If you and your child follow these steps, you should be spending about 5 minutes per day monitoring your child’s progress. We hope that OntaOnta material will be attractive to you as well, and that you might browse through it too.

Each course includes:

• Subscription gives parents/teachers an access code for their students to join the course. Depending on the type of subscription you choose, you will have a set number of students that you can add to the course. Parents/teachers can also add an additional student at US$34.95/child.
• (Alerts) post important messages, reminders, or notifications to the course page for your students to see.
• (Info) gives important information about the course.
• (Contents) shows the main units and lists the lessons included in each unit. Our simple layout will help you navigate the page and easily find the lesson you are looking for. The provided units and lessons follow the curriculum, but also provide additional extensions for parents and teachers looking for enrichment for their children. We suggest following the order of lessons as shown on the Contents page, as each lesson builds on the basics from the previous lesson.
• (Resources) contain solutions for hand-outs, activities, assignments, etc. for parents and teachers. Please do not post the solutions for students as explained in the Terms and Conditions for this site.
• (Students) lists all your students alphabetically to allow you to monitor their progress. You can check an individual student's progress by clicking on their name. Here you will see a detailed progress report with all the assessments the student did in the course.
• (Handouts) are worksheets, assignments, activities, and homework that you can print and give to your students to work on in class or at home. Students should be encouraged to complete as many practice problems as possible. Parents and teachers also have an option to unlock each handout so students can print them themselves. To make it easier for the user, all handouts are pre-set as unlocked to allow students access to the worksheets. Locking this option and only allowing specific worksheets to be accessed can be done by a single click, by pressing the blue (Deactivate) button found when you go to (Handouts).
• (Evaluations) lists all the evaluations per course, or per unit if you are in the unit tab. Most evaluations are pre-set as assessments to allow students to re-take each evaluation until they master the topic. With assessments students also get to see where they made a mistake, and often are offered a full solution to the problem, so they can learn how to solve the question. Parents and teachers can change the type of evaluation to quizzes or tests, and set up the due dates by clicking on each individual evaluation. Remember that quizzes and tests can be attempted only once by students, and only the parent or teacher knows where the mistakes were made.
• (Stats) show a quick graph of students' grades. A teacher or parent can also download a comma-separated values (CSV) report which can be saved as an Excel or PDF file.

Our worksheets come with full solutions that are available to teachers/parents under the 'Resources' tab Resources in the Educators' Panel : Classroom.

Our courses come with on-line assessments, quizzes and tests that are automatically marked, however, for best results we encourage teachers/parents to check written work done on our printed worksheets and homework. While it is possible to check final solutions via machine, there is no such neural network that can check the logic involved in producing solutions for different types of problems.

Yes. We insist on strong foundations. Our lessons amplify the understanding of basic skills in a creative but logically natural way. For instance, our Grade 6 Math program uses different types of numbers (integers, decimals, fractions, percents, variables) through the whole course, ensuring that the students develop a deep understanding of math. If your child is struggling, you might want to skip the challenge questions and focus on basic skills. Make sure to let your child practice with online assessments by taking multiple attempts when mastering their skills. Please remember, some courses may take two years to complete and should not be rushed.

Your child can definitely benefit from OntaOnta. Our material is given in a logical order with increasing difficulty. Even strong students with strong foundation in mathematics will find challenges in our extensions and 4 levels of challenging problems. A selection of problems appearing in various mathematical contests is provided and embedded into the lessons. We strongly believe that even the most talented students can benefit from our programs.

Our experts handpicked numbers that do not require calculator. In our math problems, the numbers often can be simplified, resulting in 'nice' looking solutions. We highly discourage the use of calculators and the few questions that require students to use one have a calculator logo beside the question.

We designed OntaOnta with flexibility to adapt to different educational scenarios. By default, all lesson material and all quizzes are unlocked and ready to use by students. If a parent chooses, the handouts and assessments can be locked/unlocked in seconds. On-line quizzes and tests are automatically marked by our system, but for best result students should put much more effort working on our worksheets and homework. To have your daughter excel in learning, try to find time to check her written work. Detailed answers to all worksheets and homework are provided. You can expect to spend ~5 minutes per lesson to check her work.

Yes. The parent/teacher has the option to lock/unlock material available to students all at once, per unit, or per lesson. All material related to a whole course can be locked/unlocked using a single button. Similarly, material inside a unit can also be unlocked with a single button. The same applies for material inside a lesson.

Various lessons contain different amounts of material. Some lessons are quite long, and students are expected to work on them for a few days. There is no 'best amount of time' since it would depend on the student’s pre-knowledge, focus, etc. In addition, please understand that every student absorbs knowledge at a different rate.

The teacher/parent has an option to create alerts that are passed to all students in a particular classroom. For example, a teacher can notify students about due dates, or assign certain problems as a homework, etc.

Our material includes extensions that cover advanced topics that are often used in contests. In addition, most lessons include challenging questions that go beyond typical school work. Our ultimate goal is to give students a broad understanding of topics with strong fundamentals. It will certainly help when working on contest problems.

We provide on-line lessons, videos and quizzes/assessments that are supplementing our handouts. If you want to minimize your child’s screen time you can print handouts and let your child work on them by hand. We strongly believe that certain problems should be done by using a pencil and paper. On-line lessons and videos can be used as needed in order to help in grasping certain topics. You have absolute control over on-line quizzes so you can lock/unlock them as necessary and check details regarding your child's progress: number of attempts, day and time the quizzes were completed, the last five marks per each assessment. Use them as a means to reinforce certain lessons.

Yes. The Educators' Panel provides information on on-line assessments, quizzes and tests for each student. You can see date/time, number of attempts, and mark.

No. We believe that students should work independently as much as possible. If a teacher is 'easy to reach', some students would ask for answers/hints every time a hard problem is encountered. We would like students to think more about solving problems rather than looking for help. Also, we do strongly believe that in-person communication between students and their teacher is much more beneficial compared to the exchange of digital messages, or a video-conference type of conversation. If you believe that we should add two-way communication between teachers and students, please let us know.

No. See the previous question.

Make sure you choose the OntaOnta course that fits the one you are supposed to teach. Instruct your students to join your OntaOnta classroom. Enjoy the semester.

Definitely. We are here to serve and protect, as well as assist and support. Our courses include all material needed to run a classroom: ready to print handouts, on-line quizzes to help you monitor students' progress, and much more. OntaOnta can help you not only expand your own knowledge in the subject, but also to give you confidence to teach even the more challenging topics in mathematics. We are all lifelong learners.

Yes. You can use our on-line and our printed material to supplement your classroom methodology: additional material to broaden a specific subject, on-line assessments to help your students master specific skills, or lessons to help students catch up on something they missed out on. Even with a strong background in what you teach, you can always supplement your teaching with OntaOnta material.

No. We did the work for you. Our lessons, handouts, unit reviews, online assessments, and more were created by our experts and are waiting for you to use them in your classroom or at home.

Yes, but it offers its own spin on it. We decided to satisfy the curriculum requirements, but also fill some missing gaps and assure that students build strong fundamentals they will need to be successful in mathematics and science at the high school level.

OntaOnta courses contain all necessary material to run your own classrooms. We would recommend teachers to manually control when students can access specific handouts, quizzes and tests. All handouts are provided in PDF format which makes them easy to print. Teachers can print/photocopy the course work for students, or alternatively, students can either print the material or use a digital device to access it.

OntaOnta can help you engage students of all levels and abilities. For students missing fundamentals and having gaps in their prior knowledge we suggest omitting the challenge questions from the hand-outs and the basic material, and master their skills using the online assessments. At the same time students who complete their work faster than others can challenge themselves with extensions and challenge questions. Many of our online assessments have multiple levels of difficulty to allow for enrichment for students who need to be challenged, but are not required for all the students to complete. It also gives students of all levels a feeling of being in control of their own learning.

Yes. Students absorb material at different paces. OntaOnta allows an individual approach. Set checkpoints or deadlines inside units (use alerts, or check on-line quiz statistics), just to make sure that all students are on the right track.

Yes. The Educators' Panel provides controls for course evaluations. You can set the Start and Deadline time/date for each evaluation. You can also change the mark weight and type of each evaluation.

Weight is a percentage of the total mark for the whole course. For example, if the weight of an evaluation is 10% and student completes 50% of this evaluation correctly, it will give her 50% (score on this test) of 10% (weight of the test) of 100% of the course. In total student will receive 5% of the total course mark.

Our evaluations include a question bank from which the teacher can select questions. For example, you can configure an evaluation to contain 10 specific questions in order to make sure that all of your students will have the same questions on this evaluation.

Our evaluations can be assessments, quizzes and tests.

• Assessments are designed to engage students in mastering specific skills. Students get immediate feedback after each question and can take the assessment numerous times until the due date set by the teacher/parent.
• Quizzes and Tests are meant to be evaluation tools: students get to attempt them only once. The teacher/parent can reset a student’s score in order to allow particular student to redo a specific quiz/test.

Handouts, homework and other materials are given in PDF format as it is a universal format used for printing documents, and will ensure that the documents will not be altered or reformatted before printing, allowing us to provide our users with top-quality material.

The most common cause is that the student didn't submit the evaluation for marking. This can happen due to Internet connection errors, the student forgetting to click on the Submit for Marking button, or accidentally closing the window, etc.

You can check student activity for a specific evaluation: Go to the Educators' Panel, select your classroom, navigate to a specific evaluation and go to (Stats). Here you can see the info on past attempts, marks, etc. You can also reset the mark, which will allow your student to work on this evaluation again.

Go to the Log In page and follow the instructions. There is a password reset feature. Don't forget to check your spam email.

Students need a classroom code. You will find the code in the Educators' Panel. Give the code you see there to the students and tell them to use it on the Join Classroom page. After inserting the code, a student has to log in or create a new account. OntaOnta is 100% free for your students.

We offer two types of classroom packages: teacher and parent. The Teacher Package includes a classroom for up to 30 students, while the Parent Package comes with a single student. The number of students can be increased at additional cost of US$34.95. Do your math and pay only for what you are going to use.

If you want to permanently remove a student from your OntaOnta classroom navigate to Educators' Panel → Classroom → Students, click on the name of the student you wish to remove from the classroom, go to the 'Edit' tab and click on the "Remove student" button. All records related to this student will be removed from your classroom. Use this feature with care: the removal is irreversible.

The teacher/parent can change a student’s password. It is not uncommon that a student joined a classroom but cannot log in again. Usually the student misspelled his or her email or forgot the password. Use Educators' Panel → Classroom → Students , select the student , click Set Password Set Password   button, and check the student's email and change the password.

Educators' Panel → Classroom → Evaluations → Find the specific evaluation → Find the student → Reset Mark. The reset is irreversible; the student will have to repeat the evaluation.

Yes. We provide reports in a comma-separated values (CSV) format. You can open them with Microsoft Office, LibreOffice, or any text editor.

Go to Educators' Panel → Classroom → Handouts. Click on a specific handout to get the form where you can change start and end time/date.

Go to Educators' Panel → Classroom → Evaluations. Click on a specific handout to get the form where you can change start, end time/date, number of questions, etc.

No. For your protection, we cannot access and do not store your credit card information, or any other financial information related to this transaction.

All transaction are securely processed via www.braintreepayments.com, which is owned by eBay's PayPal.

No. We do not keep your financial data, nor do we support automatic plan renewals. If you like our product, please renew your membership!

You can renew your teaching plan 3 months before expiry. Go to Educators' Panel and look for 'Renew' button.

Check the answer to the FAQ "How do I remove a student from my course?" above.

We could use extra help in creating more educational material. By becoming subscribed member you will not only have a full access to OntaOnta.com material but you will also support our efforts. You can also contribute by donating some of your original educational material. Your opinion is very important to use, please tell us what content would you like to see on OntaOnta.com.

Thank you for your ongoing support of this important work.