Sustaining Enthusiasm and Rewarding Achievements (TTRS)

There's no quick fix to mastering the tables and improving multiplication recall speeds - it takes regular practice and commitment from students, which is why we need to ensure they remain motivated. This article will give you some ideas on how to maintain students' interest in Times Tables Rock Stars, following the initial excitement of a successful Launch Day.

With the Stats bolt-on, you are able to download Rock Status certificates for your class, auto-populated with each student's name, so you just need to print them or send them electronically as an attachment.

To do this please:

Heatmaps show you how quickly students are correctly responding to each fact. They are colour-coded based on speed:

A totally green heatmap means that a student has consistently answered all facts in 4 seconds or less. They must correctly answer each fact at least 10 times (in any game mode, apart from Jamming) in 4 seconds or less, in order for it to "go green".

With the Stats bolt-on, you are able to automatically generate Gone Green certificates for your class at the click of a button!

To do this please:

Using the Custom Leaderboards feature, you can create leaderboards focused on students' Rock Speeds, number of correct answers, accuracy, or coins - recognising improvement, as well as overall scores.

Print off your leaderboards each week for your school's TTRS wall display. The printed leaderboards not only look awesome, but can be set to show students' rock names, rather than real names, to protect their anonymity:

Print out auto-populated certificates for the leaderboards' winners to present in whole school assemblies. Continuing to share and celebrate achievements on TTRS in school, will mean students are even more enthusiastic about playing at home:

In addition to the Custom Leaderboards, there are plenty of printable resources available on the teachers' Downloads page to help you make an awesome school display. Use the individual avatar cutouts to create an inspirational rock status wall, or create a Hall of Fame to recognise the week's top rockers!

Click here to view our printable wall displays, or take a look at the following images for more ideas:

For more inspiration check out our Pinterest board, or follow us on Twitter to keep up to date on the latest ideas from other TTRS schools.

To give your students even more motivation to climb the rock star ranks and be proud of their achievements, you may like to reward them with one of our badges, available from the TTRS Reward Shop:

One way to capture children's attention is to hold regular competitions. This could be as simple as having a class Arena game once a week, where students can play against each other and their teacher in a live, one minute game. Children love to compete against their teacher and - be warned - if you allow your students to play against you, it won't be long before they're faster!

Another great competition is to hold a Battle of the Bands between groups of players - for example, between classes, year groups, or teachers vs students! You set the start and end time, and the team with the most correct answers across any game mode will be the winner. You can download certificates for the winning teams, as well as the top players in each group:

Hold an in-person, knock out competition, called a Rock Wrangle, at the end of term, between the top students in the school. Not only will children work hard to be selected, but it will be an exciting day for the whole school, who'll look forward to watching and finding out who will be their school's Ultimate Rock Hero for Eternity. 

You could incorporate the Rock Wrangle with other rock themed celebrations and competitions as part of the National Red Carpet Weeks. Fun ideas for events include:

Rock Wrangle trophies, badges, and other merchandise are available from the TTRS Reward Shop:
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