TrashCat: A Parent & Teacher Guide

Welcome to TrashCat! We're excited to partner with you to help your student build mathematical fluency. This guide explains what TrashCat is, how it works, and how you can support your student's learning journey.

What is TrashCat?

TrashCat is an educational game designed to build mathematical fluency: the ability to recall basic math facts (like 7×8=56) quickly and accurately.

It follows the story of a cat trying to find his way home, solving math puzzles to navigate obstacles. The platform combines this engaging game with a sophisticated, research-backed learning algorithm to make practice effective and fun.

Important Note: TrashCat is not designed to teach mathematical concepts from scratch. It assumes students have already been introduced to what multiplication is (for example). Our goal is to take that conceptual knowledge and build automatic, fast, and accurate recall.

Key Terms

Understanding a few terms will help you support your student's learning:

• Skills: The four mathematical operations covered by TrashCat (Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication, Division).
• Facts: Individual math problems like 7×8=56 or 12-5=7. Each skill contains many facts.
• Fact Sets: Small, logical groups of related facts (like "doubles" or "×5 facts") that are practiced together.
• XP: Experience Points. A measure of active practice time, where 1 XP equals 1 minute of the cat running and answering questions.
• Speedrun: A fast-paced daily challenge that serves as a diagnostic assessment.
• Practice: The main learning mode where students build fluency through adaptive, spaced repetition.

Getting Started: The First-Time Experience

The very first time your student opens the app, they will be guided through a short, mandatory tutorial. This teaches them the core game mechanics: how to move the cat, how to select answers, and what obstacles look like. This one-time tutorial ensures they understand how to play before they start learning.

After the tutorial, all skills are immediately available to practice.

The Daily Journey: How TrashCat Works

The Home Screen

The main screen of the game shows the available mathematical skills. We recommend progressing in this order, which is how they are displayed:

1. Addition
2. Subtraction
3. Multiplication
4. Division

From here, your student will follow an intentional two-step "Daily Journey" for the skill they are working on.

State 1: Start of Day → The Challenge (Speedrun)

When your student starts, the game will highlight the Speedrun button.

• What it is: A fast-paced, timed challenge. The student races through a selection of facts that covers the entire skill.
• Purpose: This is a quick daily diagnostic to see what your student knows today.
• How it Works: This is a finite race where mistakes or hitting obstacles trigger automatic time penalties (slowing the cat down). Faster times indicate higher accuracy and fluency. A typical run takes less than 10 minutes.
• Protective Fail-Safe: If the system detects your student is struggling significantly (answering many questions incorrectly in a row), the run will automatically stop to prevent frustration. We will guide them to Practice mode, which is the better place to build fluency. A stopped run awards no XP and doesn't count as their daily attempt.
• Rewards: To get rewards, the student must complete the entire run. Only the first completed Speedrun of the day (per skill) provides:
  1. XP: Equal to the completion time in minutes (e.g., a 3-minute run awards 3 XP, a 7-minute run awards 7 XP).
  2. Placement: If your student answers facts correctly, the system "places" them out of the early practice stages for those facts. This respects their knowledge and saves them time.

Subsequent Speedruns on the same day are just for fun and to compete on the leaderboards. They do not grant more XP or placement.

State 2: Speedrun Complete → The Training (Practice)

After the daily Speedrun, the home screen will highlight the Practice button. This is the core learning experience.

• What it is: A "smart" endless runner game where the system's algorithm selects the perfect fact for your student to practice at the perfect moment.
• Purpose: This is where new fluency is built and long-term memory is strengthened.
• How it Works:
  • Fact Sets: Individual facts are organized into small, logical groups called "fact sets" (like "doubles" or "×5 facts"). These fact sets move through several pedagogically informed learning stages designed to build fluency step-by-step.
  • Lives System: Your student starts with a set number of lives. Each mistake costs one life. If they run out of lives, the Practice session ends.
  • Dynamic Difficulty: The game adapts to your student's performance. If they are struggling, the system will adjust to a more supportive learning path. This may take more time to master material, but the difficulty will always be appropriate.
• How it Ends: Practice sessions can end in a few ways:
  1. Your student runs out of lives.
  2. All available facts are on cooldown (the system uses strict spacing to build long-term memory, so if no facts are ready, the session ends naturally).
  3. Your student reaches the recommended daily practice time (about 20 minutes). A message will appear encouraging them to rest, but they can choose to continue if they wish.
  4. Your student decides to pause and exit the session. Any rewards for milestones completed during that session are saved.

State 3: Practice Complete → The Rest

Once your student has completed both their daily Speedrun and Practice, the home screen will show a message encouraging them to "Come back tomorrow!" This "rest" is a critical part of the learning process, allowing their brain to consolidate new memories.

Motivation & Rewards

TrashCat uses several systems to keep students motivated.

• XP (Experience Points): Students earn XP based on active practice time:
  • Daily Speedrun: Completing their first Speedrun each day awards XP equal to the completion time (1 minute = 1 XP).
  • Practice Sessions: During Practice, students earn XP continuously as the cat runs and answers questions (1 minute of run time = 1 XP). Time spent in interventions (error corrections) does not count toward XP—only active running time.
  • Completion Cap: Once a skill reaches 100% (all facts mastered), students can still practice it for maintenance, but no more XP is awarded for that skill. This encourages students to work on new skills while maintaining learned material.
• Cosmetic Rewards: Students earn fun in-game items (like new outfits for their cat) for completing fact set milestones. These provide immediate acknowledgment of achievement.
• Transparent Rewards: All rewards are awarded automatically the instant they are earned. You can track all potential and earned rewards on the Rewards Screen, which is accessible from the game's home screen.
• Leaderboards: Students can compete for the fastest Speedrun times across four different categories:
  • Weekly Leaderboards: Reset each week, providing fresh opportunities for achievement
  • All-Time Leaderboards: Track permanent records for long-term excellence
  • School-Level Competition: Compete with classmates and friends
  • Global Competition: Compare performance with students worldwide

A Supportive Learning Environment

The platform is designed to be a positive and effective learning tool.

• Audio Narration: Every question is automatically read aloud by the system. This removes reading speed as a barrier, ensuring that students are demonstrating mathematical knowledge, not reading ability. It also supports different learning styles.
• Gradual Speed Progression: The game starts with generous time windows for new facts and gradually reduces to faster timers as students build fluency. This gradual progression prevents overwhelming students with speed pressure before they're ready.
• Intelligent Practice Capping: We want to prevent "cramming." After sufficient effective practice, a dialog will appear encouraging your student to stop for the day, explaining that rest is crucial for learning. They can choose to continue if they wish, but the system guides them toward healthy learning habits.
• Targeted Interventions: When a student makes a mistake, the game doesn't just say "wrong." It pauses to provide a brief, interactive "intervention" (like re-building the fact with digital manipulatives) to reinforce the correct answer before they continue. The type of intervention adapts to the student's error pattern. Simple mistakes get quick corrections, while repeated struggles receive more intensive support.

Your Role as a Parent or Teacher

1. Monitor Progress: TrashCat does not have its own built-in parent/teacher dashboards. All student progress, activity, and mastery data are sent to the central TimeBack platform, where you can access detailed mastery data, session history, and time-on-task metrics for each skill.
2. Encourage Consistency: Your main role is to help build a consistent habit. Help them follow the "Daily Journey" (Speedrun first, then Practice) for approximately 20-30 minutes each day. Short, daily practice is far more effective for long-term memory than one long session per week.

Common Questions

How long should my child play TrashCat each day?

Recommended: 20-30 minutes maximum per day.

In a typical session:

• Speedrun: 5-10 minutes
• Practice: 15-20 minutes
• Total: About 20-30 minutes

Important boundaries:

• Minimum: Less than 10 minutes per day (if they still have skills to work on) likely won't yield productive results. We want them at about the 20-minute mark.
• Maximum: We do not recommend more than 60 minutes per day, even if your child is highly engaged. Mass practice (playing for hours at once) is not conducive to long-term retention. Short, consistent daily sessions are far more effective.

What if my child skips the Speedrun?

They can skip it if they want—the Speedrun is not mandatory. However, we recommend completing at least one Speedrun per week.

Why the Speedrun matters: The Speedrun re-diagnoses what your child knows today. Since children learn math in other contexts (school, homework, other apps), they may gain fluency through those activities. The Speedrun detects this progress and prevents wasting time practicing facts they already know by "placing them out" of early practice stages.

How long does it take to complete a skill?

It depends on your child's starting point:

• Already fluent (just brushing up): 1-2 days
• Building fluency from scratch (but has conceptual understanding): 1-2 weeks of consistent daily practice

What should I do if my child is constantly frustrated?

The system adapts difficulty automatically, but if your child is getting questions wrong consistently, it may indicate a lack of conceptual grounding.

Important: TrashCat does not teach what multiplication is. It makes multiplication fluent. Your child needs to understand the underlying concept (e.g., what multiplication means, how it works) before using TrashCat. If they're struggling persistently, they may need more direct conceptual instruction from other resources (Math Academy, Khan Academy, etc.) before continuing.

What if my child is breezing through everything?

This is not a problem! The game automatically adapts to high performance by increasing difficulty. Let the system handle it.

What if my child wants to play for hours?

Even if they're obsessed and highly motivated, we do not recommend more than 60 minutes per day. Spaced practice over multiple days is what builds long-term retention—not marathon sessions. The system will encourage them to rest after sufficient practice, but you may need to enforce this boundary.

What happens when my child reaches 100% on a skill?

Congratulations! 100% completion means your child has achieved genuine fluency for that skill. All facts have been practiced to automaticity through our spaced repetition system.

What this means:

• They can recall facts instantly (under 2 seconds) without calculation
• Their working memory is freed up for higher-order math problems
• Practice mode becomes unavailable for this skill
• They can no longer earn XP from Practice for this completed skill (this rewards building new fluency, not repeating mastered content)

What they should do next:

1. If they haven't completed all skills: Move to the next skill (Addition → Subtraction → Multiplication → Division). They can still earn XP and unlock new rewards there.

2. If they've completed all four skills: They're done with active learning in TrashCat! They can compete on leaderboards for fastest Speedrun times or move on to higher-order math in their regular curriculum.

3. For maintenance: Run a Speedrun once every 1-2 weeks (per skill) to prevent knowledge decay.

If your child wants to keep practicing a completed skill:

Some students get hooked and want to keep playing even after 100% completion. Here's how to handle it:

• What they'll see: A dialog: "Congratulations! No more XP is awarded for practice in this skill." with options to continue without XP or return to the main menu.
• How to redirect them: Celebrate the achievement ("You've graduated from this skill!"), explain that XP rewards building new skills, and redirect to the next uncompleted skill or to competing for faster Speedrun times on leaderboards.

What order should my child work through the skills?

Recommended sequence: Addition → Subtraction → Multiplication → Division

However, if your child is already confident in earlier skills, they can skip ahead. We softly recommend doing at least one Speedrun on each skill, as it may uncover unexpected gaps.

Can my child work on multiple skills at the same time?

Yes, they can switch between skills freely. However, consistency within a single skill typically yields faster progress than constantly switching.

How does TrashCat fit with my child's school math curriculum?

TrashCat is a supplement, not a replacement. It focuses exclusively on building automaticity with basic math facts. Most schools include some form of fact fluency practice, and TrashCat is a faster, more engaging, gamified tool for achieving the same goal.

Should I sit with my child while they use TrashCat?

No. TrashCat is designed to work independently. The system provides all necessary instruction, feedback, and support. Your role is to encourage consistent daily practice and monitor their progress through the TimeBack platform.