1. Beast Academy Reviews
3rd Grade Math Textbooks
Kids Consult!
Marie, Annie, and Eva

2. General Comments
 Make the material have something to do with the monsters; even
though they’re cute
 Guide books need a lot of changing and removing; remove them
entirely, and just put the “recess” activities into the practice books
because they are fun and challenging.
 Even though these are math textbooks, the
activities, puzzles, mazes, and challenges are incredibly fun and
interesting.
 It’s good to throw some fun in there, but the comic strips are a bit
too distracting.
 The order of the chapters is very unpredictable and not meaningful.
You should make the chapters go in order depending on how the
chapters relate to one another.
 Separate the solutions into another manual or booklet, because
unfortunately, kids tend to cheat! (Experience from younger sibling)

3. Books
These slides will now show our
general comments for each book
separately.

4. Guide Books
 Not helpful, (even harmful) for kids because:
 1. Kids skim through all of the mathematics and only pay attention
to the comics which are agitating and non-math related for kids.
 2. They are too distracting, colorful, and full of monsters for the kids
to actually concentrate on the math.
 3. They don’t help with the practice books at all other than giving
examples.
 4. Kids get so hooked up in them that they don’t even want to do
the practice books after that.

5. Guide Books (cont.)
 They start to make kids believe that that is all there is to
math, which is absolutely not correct.
 There is barely any story plot that is actually interesting (for
example, there are random numbers in the problem instead of
having the numbers have anything to do with the problem or
puzzle). The story plots keep changing which makes it hard to think
about the given problems.
 It’s also not good for the kids and parents because the kids will tell
their parents that they were doing math after they read this comic
textbook, (and they actually weren’t), and the parents would believe
them and say that that’s great, when both kids and parents are not
in a good condition. Kids-didn’t do math, Adults- believed it.

6. 3A Practice Book
 Things that should be
 Things that we think are changed, added, or
good and should stay: removed:
 We like how after every  For mazes and counting
part (of a chapter) of the shapes, maybe make a
textbook there was an passageway where kids
activity or puzzle following can trace so that the lines
it, making it more aren’t all covered and
fun, interesting, and traced over and over
challenging. again. Younger sibling did
 The bubbles at the top that and wasn’t able to
really do explain a lot. see the maze itself!
 The pictures and diagrams  Add more problems that
are very helpful. need explanations with
them.

7. 3B Practice Book
Things that should be
 Things that we think changed, added, or
are good and should removed:
stay:
 Excellent work having
solutions instead of just  Involve the monsters
answers. more, and make the
 Your instructions are very content have to do with
clear. Excellent. them.
 Awesome job including  There are only three
word problems. Many chapters in this book! You
textbooks lack these. could easily fit more.

8. Chapters
The next few slides will be
our reviews for specific
chapters in detail and by
page number.

9. 3A Practice Book, Shapes
 On page 9, right after problem 9, it says to watch out for
right angles. Should they be counted as obtuse, acute, or
neither? Kids might get confused.
 On page 15, explain that a quadrilateral could also be an
uneven shape, or a concave quadrilateral, because the
practice problems have questions with that.
 Don’t use toothpicks because they can poke someone or
they can be dangerous. Instead use counting sticks or
safety picks.
 On page 15, puzzle 39, it says to connect four dots to make
a rectangle when in reality (and in your solution
section), you are actually going through five.
 On page 21, explain that diagonals can only be straight/it is
not clear from your definition!

10. 3A Practice Book, Skip Counting
 On page 71, problem 30, it relates to the problem above it.
What if someone did the problem separately? Maybe you
should make part “a” and part “b”, so that people would
know that the problems are related to each other.
 On pages 39-44, we think that you should mention that
multiplication is basically the same thing as skip-counting.
 Instead of putting so much emphasis and a whole chapter
into skip counting, maybe divide that chapter into two and
make a new one called patterns. For example, Balancing
Weights, Hundred Charts, and Gumball Art are not that
much of skip counting.
 At the beginning of Skip-Counting, explain that it’s the
same thing to add for example 7, 15 times, or 15, 7 times.
 On page 53, problem 77, it asks how many sides do 111
triangles have altogether. Does that mean while they’re
connected or attached to each other in some
way, absolutely separate, or what? Make that much more
clear in the question.

11. 3A Practice Book, Perimeter and Area
 On page 69, the speech bubble keeps talking about horizontal and
vertical, and we’re not sure that 3rd graders would know what that
means. Explain.
 On pages 66 and 67, explain what the small squares around the
figures and shapes are supposed to mean.
 If you haven’t talked about parentheses yet, then in the speech
bubble on page 69, don’t use them to explain calculating the
perimeter!
 You only have pages 83,84, and 85 on area! Add more!
 We like your explanation of area, but since you just went over skip-
counting, mention that it is like multiplying the sides of the shape by
each other, not just counting squares!

12. 3B Practice Book, Multiplication
 Yes! A textbook has actually made the connection between
multiplication and addition! Add more of each of the problems on
page 7, to re-enforce this idea.
 There are a few too many times tables and fact wheels.
 Question 28 on page 12 is pretty tricky for all of us. A few more of
this type of times tables would be challenging and fun.
 Good application of multiplication to geometry, but be sure to
include more applications, like to bacterial multiplications. On pages
16 and 17.

13. 3B Practice Book, Multiplication
(cont.)
 Pages 26-27. More overlapping squares?! These are unnecessary.
 Take the Calamitous Clod example on pp. 30-31 a bit farther, and
make it more exciting! (Nice vocabulary word, by the way.)
 Include some non-geometric designs in the Gumball Art, just to mix
things up.
 We love the Number Blobs on pages 38 and 39!
 The word problems Part 2 should be placed with the others.

14. 3B Practice Book, Perfect Squares
 Nice link back to Ch. 4 with the “bots”.
 Another nice link, defining squaring as multiplication.
 Cool squaring methods. We didn’t know the one on
page 50 until now!
 Maybe start by multiplying smaller numbers on page
55.
 Perfect intro to theorems by Lizzie on page 65.

15. 3B Practice Book, The Distributive Property
 Why does the order of operations appear in a chapter on the
Distributive Property? It should be earlier in the book before the
perfect squares.
 On page 78, the method that is used for finding the areas for
rectangles is pretty cool, but unnecessary. Could one not use their
new multiplication skills to find the area instead?

16. Guide Book 3A – what to keep
 On page 29, we like the way you displayed the
chart, because it’s fun and not a distraction at all.
 On page 31, we like the way you displayed this chart
too, this time the creatures around the chart are not
really distractions.
 On page 39, we think the villain idea’s strange, but we
guess that it gets the kids excited to do the math.
 On pages 47-49, we like the way you embedded the
story into the problem appropriately this time without
putting too much info into the story instead of the math.
 We like how on pages 62-63, you added these
charts, now these pages aren’t filled with distracting
comments.

17. Guide Book 3A (cont.) – what to
keep
 On page 65, we like the board game idea; we tried it
and enjoyed it.
 On page 72, we like that you are not just filling the
chapter with comics, you added those interesting
educational diagrams.
 We like the idea of a “mathteam” in the perimeter and
area chapter is great and when we read it, it was fun
and good for learning.

18. Guide Book 3B– what to keep
and not
 We like the idea of pages 16-18, because of G*Y*M and
it’s not going overboard; just fun and learning.
 We like the idea of recess, because the activities are fun
and educational.
 On page 32, we think this is extremely distracting, even
though they are talking about math because you just go
way overboard with those crazy ideas.
 We think this is much better than Guide 3A because this
has more charts and numbers and fewer comics.
 We think the rest has pretty interesting
diagrams, charts, and activities, but really, the comics
are not good.

19. Thank you!
 Thank you for giving us and opportunity to consult
you with your work!
All in all, the practice books are
some excellent textbooks to
study and have fun with!
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