Sunday, November 2, 2014

Homeschool Review: Standard Deviants Accelerate

I won a FREE year for my son on Standard Deviants Accelerate via a giveaway and later was asked to do a review... So here I am! :) 
"SDA can be used as a supplement to whatever material you already use and is a great addition to any homeschool curriculum. For example, the videos and quizzes can be used for a fresh angle on a challenging topic or as a review before standardized testing. All the important areas of a subject are condensed into concise lessons that cut out the busy work and get right to the point. Or use SDA as a homeschool curriculum spine by adding on extra reading assignments, practice exercises, and projects to accompany our outline of the content."

Standard Deviants Accelerate is pretty straight forward and really easy to follow. I had no trouble getting started. First things first, you will need to make your teacher account, set up your subjects, and classes.

Standard Deviants Accelerate offers 14 courses that include: Earth Science, Nutrition, Biology, Chemistry, Arithmetic, Fundamental Math, Algebra, English Comp., US History, AP Biology, AP Chemistry, AP US Government & Politics, AP US History, and AP English Composition.

You can find out more about what each subject covers, HERE.
Once you get your classes set up, you will give your students the invite code, and then they can access their lessons with that. I know it sounds a little complicated, but really it isn't. They have a step-by-step tutorial video to help you out or they offer a webinar. I will share the video at the bottom of this post.

When your student signs in, they will see this page:
When they click on a subject, you can see all the lessons/assignments for that subject. They just click the one they are on and they are set. Easy Peasy!
Now they will be able to complete their work via the tabs at the top.

My son, Bailey, hasn't complained at all when asked to complete his assignments on SDA. He doesn't say he loves it, but he doesn't complain, and that in itself is a WIN. He likes that it doesn't take very long to complete an assignment, so I often ask him to do two or three assignments at a time, which he doesn't like very much.

He hasn't had trouble completing the assignments in Arithmetic, as it is mainly review of what he has done before.

Bailey is doing great in Earth Science as well. The only other subject he is working on at this time is Nutrition. He does struggle with that one a little, but you can go back and redo the lessons and quizzes, so we've been doing that fairly often. He loves that he can type in notes (on certain topics) and save it, rather than having to write things down.
When your student has completed their assignment, you can go into your account and check their grades. It will notify you with flags if their grade is below where it should be.

As you can see, it is super easy to find all their grades in one quick glance.
And even easier to create a report card for each subject. 

For us, Standard Deviants Accelerate has not only been a great review but also a fantastic supplement. We are so blessed that we won that giveaway.

Pricing for core subjects is $24.95 per month per student. AP classes are $14.95 per month per student. That's a little out of my price range, as we are strapped for cash, as usual. However, I don't think this is a bad price for a high school course.

It's definitely worth looking into.
Learn more about how it works for homeschool, HERE.


Here are the video tutorials.

Teacher:

Student:
"Standard Deviants Accelerate is a secular or non-religious homeschool curriculum; we like to think of ourselves as neutral. We welcome and encourage people from all backgrounds to use SDA. If you are a member of a religious group that teaches creationism, please be aware that our Biology teaches the theory of Evolution, and our Earth Science teaches the Big Bang Theory."

Want to try Standard Deviants Accelerate FREE? Click the photo below for details or to sign up. This was originally available until 11/15/14, but has been extended until sometime in January.

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