maths whizz - anyone have any thoughts about it?

[Kerryblue]

My dd is currently 2a in maths. Midway through year 3, just turned 8. She was at this level last term as well.

I have been looking at maths whizz on line and it does look very good and she is quite keen to go ahead and try it.

I just wondered if anyone had had any experience of it and whether it was any good or not.

Many thanks

Just as a point, regarding levels-

Children are expected to make an entire level's progress within years 3 and 4. As a level is made up of 3 sub-levels, it's not unusual for children in year 3 to only make 1 sub-level progress within the whole year.

I don't know maths whizz myself. I just wanted to explain that her apparent lack of progress isn't a cause for concern necessarily.

I like using www.arcademicskillbuilders.com/games/ personally. It's an interactive games website where you can play with other people around the world, or as an interactive playdate.

We used maths whizz for my daugher in Y2. She lacked confidence in maths and I wanted to make sure that she understood what she was learning at school. We paid for 1 month initially as I didn't want to pay for a year if she didn't like it or it wasn't helping. Anyway she loved it and we did it for a year. She probably spent an hour a week doing it (2 lots of 30 mins). It really helped her confidence.

We've not continued with it this year (Y3) as she has enough homework to do and anyway she is doing well enough at maths to not need extra help.

I will most likely be doing it with my son when he is in Y2, he's in Y1 now.

I used it in the Summer holidays for DS (when he was between Yr 3 & 4), it worked really well. Must admit I ended up taking out a 12 month subscription which we are now not really using as he has a very long school day/activities. I plan to use it in Easter holidays, one exercise & one test each morning (takes about 10 mins).

Thank you

I think I will go ahead with the one month trial to check she sticks to it and actually does it.

She is a bit behind in everything really and I want to try anything to help

2a is not behind!

2a or 3c is the expected grade at the end of year 3.

I'm not saying you shouldn't support her in all ways possible, but please don't put pressure on her or yourself by getting distressed over levels.

2b is the average for the end of year 2.
3b is the average for the end of year 4.

Something in between (ie 2a or 3c) is the average for the end of year 3.

I am a great fan of Whizz.

I registered my DC because she was bored at school and not stimulated with maths but is an extremely capable child. We trialled it and did the test several times, setting the skill levels at different abilities and then chose a level to start at. I actually chose a lower level than her capabilities which turned out to be the best thing I could have done because I found that there were lots of gaps in her knowledge, mainly because the various topics were just never covered at school.

Her maths knowledge is now very comprehensive and she is able to adapt complicated maths because she has been taught the basics step by step of the whole curriculum.

Whizz is a good tutorial package, but I would recommend parents sit with their child to help when required and also see what your child does struggle with and what they are confident in. With using Whizz, your child is taught a variety of methods for each topic and they are taught the methods used in schools rather than methods many parents use.

They are taught across the whole curriculum and cannot bypass topics they dont want to do

All lessons can be replayed which is strongly recommended. The more they practice the more they understand and remember.

Each lesson builds up stage by stage from previous lesson so quite often the child thinks they are doing the same exercise but it is harder and they dont realise.

Only negative I have is you cant choose a topic they are covering at school, you can only replay lessons you have already had. This is fine if the levels are the same but quite often the lessons on Whizz are different stages to what they are being taught at school.

Starting off Whizz at easier levels helps improve the child's confidence when they get 100% for everything so dont see it as a negative if lessons seem easy.

With regular use (90 minutes a week) you can easily get through a lot of lessons and move stages very quickly.

The programme is set in four groups per school year so every single topic has a minimum of 4 lessons for each topic per quarter and many have much more so you get regular revision for every topic in the curriculum

Thanks again.

Really juniper. That makes me feel a whole lot better I must admit!

i guess I maybe 'think' she is behind because her homework always seems to be a struggle for her. For example, tonight she had to do some simple division for eg 20 divided by 2, and took ages to work that out!

We find it very difficult to help her at home because she gets really defensive and stroppy about work and in terms of her ability, it sometimes feels like she is putting on how little she knows/doesn't know iyswim.

She also struggles with reading and is still not on chapter books despite being desperate to be able to read them

Hence our current plan to try maths whizz because then she can only get stroppy with a computer!

Roadart - many thanks for your detailed post, it really helps to hear from someone who has actually used the programme

x

I have purchased this for my DD aged 7 a couple of months back. Considering she hates maths with a passion it isn't a struggle to get her to use it. Only downside is they are having a few technical problems at the minute and the challenge function isn't working, and as my daughters school don't use this she has no buddies. I'd appreciate if any of you other users would be willing to share usernames so I can find her some buddies to interact with.

Why are you filling the board with old Maths Whizz threads, Jake?

I'm hoping that when my Dc's are 8 they will love an activity that I won't be trying to flog on the internet.