Teachers often want to know how long pupils are spending on Times Tables Rock Stars. We would flip that question around and ask, "How much do you want them to play?" 

If it was up to us, we'd recommend at least three minutes per day, everyday. This will be more beneficial to their progress, than playing for 21 minutes, once a week.

The Sessions feature allows you to be more purposeful about the use of TTRS at home. By setting a Session as a homework assignment, you'll know whether or not your pupils are spending as many minutes practising as you would like them to.

You'll be able to set the number of minutes your pupils need to play, during a particular time period, then see who has completed the assignment and how well they've done.

To set a Session, please go to Online > Sessions, then click the "New Session" button. You will be able to create an assignment for a specific class or collection of classes. You can choose:

Once the homework assignment begins you will be able to see:

To see your pupil's results, go to Online > Sessions and click Past to view a Session which has expired.

Then click on the Results button, to see a leaderboard of your pupils' performance:

Supposing your homework window is Monday to Thursday, you could set your class the task of completing 10 minutes in the Garage between going home time on Monday and breakfast time on Thursday. Then, when your pupils log in between those hours, they will be locked out of Studio, Festival and Arena, until they've played the 10 minutes in the Garage.

Two Big Timesavers:

To ensure your pupils are practising the tables you've set them everyday, set a Session to begin tomorrow at 00:00 and end at 23:55. Then select, say, 3 minutes in the Garage mode, and set the Session to recur daily until the end of term.

Then, when they log in each day, your pupils will have to complete the 3 minutes in the Garage you've set them, before they'll have access to the rest of the gamemodes. Once they've completed their daily task, the rest of the gamemodes will become available to them once again.

You'll then be able to log in to your teacher account and check which days the pupils have and haven't completed their assignments. 

The Studio Speed and corresponding Status are based on the most recent 10 games a child has played in the Studio mode. To ensure your pupils' Studio Speeds are all up-to-date, you'll want them to complete 10 minutes in the Studio. This can be done little and often (similar to previous example, however, set the gamemode to Studio, rather than Garage), or you could set them a one-off assignment:

Select a start date and time (for example, Friday at 3pm) and an end date and time (Monday at 8am), and set 10 minutes in the Studio mode. Then, when the pupils log in over the weekend, they'll be required to play for 10 minutes in the Studio, before regaining access to the rest of the programme. If they've completed the task, you'll know their Studio Speed is up-to-date.

To ensure your pupils' current Studio Speeds and Statuses are regularly updated, you could set the Session to recur each week or month.

Sessions aren't restricted to homework. You could set a short Session (for example, 10 minutes in the Festival) while your pupils are online during a lesson, to ensure they're putting their time to good use and not spending the entire time comparing guitars in the avatar store!