Sparx maths, how is it for you?!

I hate sparx reader I have dixlexia and alto I have changed the settings I still have trouble and if I don't do it I will get a detention :(

Grr theyve changed how homework shows in My Activity
I used to be able to see what questions had been done. To choose different ones
Now i cannt even look back so last week there are 2 lots of 1/6 showing!

No further info.
Did she just give up and get them wrong.
I usually watch her ffs. She did say she struggled but istill thought she worked them out

When revising i dont want her to end up doing whats shes already done!?

DS1 went to a school without a sixth form and I was still getting emails about his Maths homework until at least 2 weeks after his last GCSE exam. When I ask DS2 about the latest email his response is to tell me it's not due in for several days.

@MaffsMover thanks, all through the Christmas break I was getting email reminders that dd hadn't started her homework and telling me to encourage her, I'm tempted to block the Sparx email address!

Both my DCs are very good at maths but hate Sparx.

My Dcs find maths easy and usually enjoy the subject. They absolutely loathe Sparx. It's boring and repetitive.

DD now has the pleasure of Sparks reading, which apparently is also awful. She reads a lot normally.

I feel your pain

Can anyone tell me if teachers can turn off Sparx automatically generating homework every week when it's the school holidays please?

without the joke sparx is actually so fucking annoying and sure it helps with revision on the off chance that the video is helpful but 9/10 it isnt it will tell me to do a 5 minute calculation for a differnt fucking question it isnt exactly help full either i cant concentrate with so many words or numbers infront of my face so when theres constant word after word number after number in this never ending loop theres only so much breathing focusing i can do, ill then calm down just to get the question ever so slightly wrong wether it be a missclick or a mistake i have to redo the whole fucking thing because its reset and then the fucking bookwork codes make me want to travel to the mariana trench to get some strange looking fish to slap me round the bollocks 60 million times over

My daughter has Sparx. Not seen other systems so can’t compare.

She struggles with confidence at maths.

I watch the videos with her to make sure I understand the way they explain that topic.
Then I explain it to her again, drawing it out on paper (same as they do in the video but checking she is following the reason for each step and asking for her input) then she works through the question herself.

Takes forever.

It is helpful to know that others think the videos are crap. Thought it was just us struggling.

Actually having read this thread I think I'll email her 2 maths teachers and explain what's happening, and why I'm telling her to leave it unfinished at times in case she gets a sanction

We hate Sparx! Dd is year 8 now and her school started using it last year, not sure what they used before she started but I know sparx was a new thing and school were really bigging it up, imagine it cost them a lot?

It was bad enough last year with 6 sections, for all the same reasons mentioned on this thread, but this school year they've also added in a section 7. We initially thought it was optional and there to earn more xp like some other things on sparx. Something about earning a token? Plus something to do with collecting virtual cards of cat pictures Not sure how many teens would be motivated by such a reward but there you go. Anyway, these cat card earning "games" that "unlock your token" are actually a compulsory part of the weekly homework now, and if we don't do them we end up with only 85% or something of the homework done. They're times table questions and dd hates them because they're "quick fire rounds" with a few seconds to answer them - and a big red ticking stopwatch animation sitting there stressing her out while she's trying to answer! The pressure has a negative effect on her, it actually makes her freeze and start to panic if she doesn't know the answer straight away, she feels even more demoralised and yet the program is set in stone and no way to tailor it to individual needs. I told her to leave it unfinished in the end, think she did 15 of the 30 times table rapid fire bloody questions and got in a right state, she'd spent all evening struggling and her friends were all saying how hard it was this week too

We hate Sparx with a vengeance.

DD gets questions about topics and concepts that she's never been taught, and the videos that are supposed to explain it are rubbish.

She also hates that she gets difficult questions, spends ages trying to work them out, and then her 'reward' is to get questions that are even more difficult. 🙄

I think DS1 generally did his at the last minute, and it suggested he should spend an hour but I don't think he did! So maybe different schools have set it up differently. Maths is his favourite subject and he's now studying it and FM at A level. I was getting automated emails for a couple of weeks after his last GCSE exam, which seemed a bit strange, and I ignored them - what were school going to do at that point?

While I worry that I never know whether or not DS1 is actually doing his homework, apart from a period in year 9 and 10 when I kept getting the emails saying he hadn't, I'm finding DS2's approach quite a torturous affair! DS2 is driving me a bit mad because he says he wants us to remind him to do his homework and push him, then he gets cross when we try to encourage him to do it. Then he keeps saying he needs help - actually he pretty much knows what he's doing and seems to have a pretty good recall of what he's told in lessons, and I ended up saying (for History) to stop agonising and write something which attempts to answer the final point in the question. Then he can get feedback on his answers now, with plenty of time to improve.

On Sparx, today's email says he has completed 19% of this week's Sparx homework - I don't know if this means he's spent 19% of the time - just under 12 minutes - or done 19% per cent of a set number of tasks. Perhaps the latter because he seems to believe he can do it in a shorter time, and that fits with DS1's experience. I will try and find a good moment (like when he's completed this week's work and before we have to start arguing about future homework) to ask him.

My son moans about it a lot but it doesn't seem to take him any longer than Hegarty. He grumbles about the book work checks but always seems to leave it til the wknd to do the whole thing and it never seems to take long at all. He gets six tasks set per week.

I wonder if different schools have it set up differently as I don't think his makes him work for a set amount of time.

My daughter Alice hates sparx and has been using it since year 7 (she’s in year 9 now). I’m not a fan of it myself because I get constant emails telling me when she has homework due and that I should “encourage her to finish the work”. Part of the reason she does like it is because of the system that the questions get harder the more you answer correctly, but you are unable to hand in the homework if not all questions are correct? She is always complaining about it , a lot more than she does about other homework websites her school uses.

DS is in year 8 now and we are starting to have problems. The example videos are confusing and different to how they’re being taught in school and on bbc bitesize. We tend to go to bbc bitesize if he’s still stuck on it.

@Lougle we had the same problem with following the example and substituting the numbers but it still being marked wrong. Very frustrating for DS and I. It gave me a migraine!

Bit of a zombie thread.

My child is a year into Sparx now and still much prefers it over Mathswatch.

Oh dear, DS's school has just switched from Dr Frost (which was fine!) to Sparx. Am already dreading it and it's not yet started.