What is Algebra By Hand™?

Algebra By Hand is a web app that will give your students advanced procedural fluency with

• Simplifying expressions
• Expanding expressions
• Solving linear equations

It corrects your students’ assignments for you and gives you a full grade report so that you can grade less and teach more.

Algebra By Hand

• is a set of highly-engineered manipulatives that your students can actually manipulate,
• allows your students to drag and drop terms and factors to help them visualize the algebra-solving process,
• prevents students from skipping steps and chronicles their solving process with a coherent narrative that you and they can review,
• reduces their cognitive load allowing them to take a broader perspective and learn new solving strategies,
• and takes away the fear of making a mistake because it will not let them perform an illegal algebraic operation. It’s like algebra with training wheels − you can go in the wrong direction, but you can’t fall off the bike.

What level Algebra is Algebra By Hand for?

Algebra By Hand is best introduced to your students after you have given them a basic understanding of algebraic concepts such as isolating variables by applying arithmetic operations to both sides of an equation. Typically this is near the completion of their first year of algebra. It is NOT designed for students with NO knowledge of the subject. We depend on your ability to teach them algebra's principles of balance as you currently do. Only after they understand WHY algebra works are they ready to make the leap to visualize solving equations the way most experts do − using advanced procedural fluency the way Algebra By Hand shows them.

What hardware do my students need to use it?

Algebra By Hand works in all modern web-browsers such as Firefox, Safari, Edge, Chrome, and IE 9+. It works on touch devices as well as mouse or track pad-driven devices. This means that your students can do their assignments on Android smartphones and tablets, iPads, iPhones as well as Mac and PC desktops and laptops.

Do I need to create an account?

You can learn to use Algebra By Hand without an account by visiting the tutorial and trying our sample worksheet.

Granting yourself a free teacher account enables you to adopt worksheets from the public library or create your own worksheets and answer keys using an easy-to-use built-in equation editor. You can assign worksheets to your students and ABH will grade them for you automatically.

Does it cost anything?

No. We have made this tool free for everyone.

Do my students need to buy anything to do an assignment?

Students must have access to a smart phone, tablet, desktop computer, or laptop with an internet connection. There is no charge for students to create a student account and do worksheets in the public library or your assignments. Algebra By Hand never charges students to learn algebra.

What will this do for me?

It saves you time, because you do not need to correct assignments - Algebra By Hand does it for you. You get a full live grade report for each of your students' assignments. It lets you easily track who in your class is having difficulty and what types of problems are giving your students the most difficulty. At a glance it gives you a helpful chart that shows you how each student performed on each problem. You can also dive more deeply into the report to see the exact steps each student used to attempt to solve each problem - just as if they had done it on paper, but without suffering through messy handwriting. You can also see which steps required a student to request automated help. You even get a complete listing of which algebra skills each student has and has yet to demonstrate. All this information allows you to enter your next session with a more focused plan.