Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Protection built in.

Meet the Other Phone.
Protection built in.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Secondary education

Connect with other parents whose children are starting secondary school on this forum.

Original poster

Sparx maths, how is it for you?!

90 replies

MaffsMover · 01/10/2022 15:13

DD is complaining about the new Sparx maths homework. Does anyone use it? Is it Hegarty with a deferent name? She used Hegarty before and I’m not sure why there was a change or what the difference is.

She seems to be taking hours to get to the 100 % correct answers as she finds the videos aren’t as helpful as the Hegarty ones.

Is Sparx problematic or does she just need to get used to the change?

OP posts:
Original poster
MaffsMover · 08/12/2022 18:43

@chiswick1 oh dear! You sound like where “we” were at the start of term.

Now I’ve calmed down about it I can see that Hegarty had its issues. There are still a lot of issues with Spanx (!) but I wonder if the teachers and children have learnt to work it a bit better? Sparx time is still hellish but not to the tears stage, more chocolate needed stage.

OP posts:
princesssugarplumfairy · 08/12/2022 19:02

AugustRose · 02/10/2022 14:55

If a child gets an individual question wrong then they get another one. This is true, they get another question using the same concept/type of question. But if they don't understand the concept just changing the numbers doesn't always help - and that's my DDs issue with it.

This drives us mad. It needs to give them 2 chance then explain what they did wrong. Sometimes I haven't known why the answer was wrong which doesn't help them learn?

carefulcalculator · 08/12/2022 19:05

Sparx Maths is awful. It is dispiriting for kids, it is basically bloody bullying to just keep on asking a kid to do something again and again without adequate support.

Luckily our school allow them to leave the questions once they have tried twice.

It is all crap, old-school homework in books is much healthier mentally.

Someo · 08/12/2022 19:08

My teen does nothing but complain about sparx. Discourages her from her homework.

Spendonsend · 08/12/2022 19:08

My year 11 does not like sparx and says heggarty is much better.

chiswick1 · 09/12/2022 22:38

EXACTLY

BogRollBOGOF · 14/12/2022 22:40

We're trawling through the weekly Spanx now. It's fucking awful.

DS is an autistic, dyspraxic, dyslexic y7 who is otherwise great at maths. I have to sit there as he dictates book codes to me. He can do the actual maths but comes out with shit marks due to the godawful logistics of it. I'm at the point now of doing some of it for him because it's better than the alternative of him having a meltdown over it and going into homework refusal. It doesn't really matter whether it was right or not anyway because the bastard will overwrite the correct answers anyway rendering the whole thing a bloody waste time.

It's not so much sparky spanx as my great-grandma's blousey knee-length bloomers.
Bloody awful.

The point in this household is about survival not maths knowledge.

Bimbleberries · 14/12/2022 22:44

There is a pattern to the bookwork codes at least, so if you find that they've missed one or forgotten to write them down or whatever, you can sometimes work backwards to have a decent guess at what the answer was from where it might have come in the sequence.

I hate the bookwork codes and hassle of it, but I do think the questions are good, and I like that it mixes up the topics and keeps them revising, whether the pupils like it or not.
I don't think it's helpful for schools to insist on 100% or detention, and I don't think it's helpful for the questions to just be endlessly repeated if people get them wrong.
But those are problems with the actual program, on the whole, but with the way it is used. I don't know how much control schools have over that.

Idratherbepaddleboarding · 15/12/2022 05:25

DS’s maths teacher has set Sparx homework to be due in on the last day of term. Surely that’s child cruelty 😂.

Original poster
MaffsMover · 15/12/2022 09:00

Sparks is Harvest festival knickersBogroll, all is safely gathered in.

I have no idea what a book work code is as DD is relentlessly independent and won’t let me look. I’m hearing the pain rather than seeing it.

I don’t think I ever got all the emails I should have, or the interactivity I maybe should. Sometimes I get an email saying she has three days to go. I think I’ve only ever got one where it’s said she’s completed it. I know she has because it’s a hallelujah moment when it’s over. Plus she’d get a detention if she didn’t do it and she’s petrified of those. She sometimes lets her dad or a mathsy friend of ours help if she’s really stuck but tgat happens less frequently than it did.

Her biggest issue is she feels she feels she’s doing work she’s not been taught. That may or may not be true. Maybe she wasn’t taught it. Maybe she missed it by being off with covid or maybe she was taught but didn’t understand. Who knows.

In a years time I’d live for us to be all back here saying our DC have a better understanding and live of maths due to Spanx…

OP posts:
FourTeaFallOut · 15/12/2022 09:02

I have one teen on Hegarty who likes it and a younger teen who is most put-out that he is dumped on Sparx.

Megsboots · 15/12/2022 19:34

My year 9 who has LD and struggles with maths is getting on quite well with Sparx. It takes a long time, but it gives him questions that he can do. He also likes being a Cantankerous Octopus or whatever on the league tables.

ApissedoffSparxuser · 02/10/2023 18:46

The creator of Sparx is literally The Devil and Hitler's Brat Son.

Original poster
MaffsMover · 02/10/2023 19:42

Welcome @ApissedoffSparxuser !

DD is now in year 10 and still hates Sparx but not with the venom she did. We got her maths tutoring with a friend this time last year for about 6 weeks. Then this summer she did maths every day at Mathnasiuim. It was great but far too expensive to carry on. I think being better at maths has helped.

OP posts:
Lougle · 02/10/2023 19:59

We used to have Hegarty. The real strength was that the videos were logical and not annoying. The videos on Sparx are just frustrating. There have been a couple of occasions where following the video and substituting the numbers from the question still lead to the answer being marked wrong, when I knew the answer was right. They just recycle the question if it's wrong, so they simply change the order or numbers involved.

It has very much sucked the joy out of maths for DD3. She used to complain about Hegarty but would go back in an instant. But Mr Hegarty sold Hegarty Maths to Sparx, so it will not be.

Zimbolino · 02/10/2023 20:58

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.

Kleine · 02/10/2023 21:00

Bit of a zombie thread.

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

Spud90 · 03/10/2023 08:35

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!

Oliviamumof2 · 08/10/2023 15:28

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.

Original poster
MaffsMover · 08/10/2023 19:40

I’d quite like to unsubscribe from the emails. In fact that’s something I might do. She’s never NOT done her homework and if I ever ask about it I’m told she hasn’t started it as it’s not due for days and she’s got so much other homework.

OP posts:
Winter42 · 08/10/2023 20:09

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.

elkiedee · 08/10/2023 21:19

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.

OP posts:
Idratherbepaddleboarding · 11/10/2023 19:50

I was up until 11:30pm completing the last 3 questions of DS’s Sparx homework for him because he’d spent and hour on the rest of it by himself while I was at a meeting, then we’d both spent 2 hours trying to get the ones he’d got wrong right and the more stressed we both got, the more wrong we seemed to get them! He’s the most chilled out lad ever but Sparx always ends up in us both stressed out and yelling at each other! If they don’t complete all of the questions correctly they get detention, even if they don’t understand.

He’s in year 10 now and I’m sure the maths is harder than my A level maths, I’ve certainly never done what he was doing last night! In the end I think the issue was that we were rounding some of the decimals too early so messing up the results in the later steps.

The videos are actually quite useful if you pause after each step and follow it, but if you have to go back to the question, the video often starts again and the 2 women’s voices from last night we so annoying! (Not trying to be sexist it’s just that both of the annoying voices were women).

The worst part is if you get the question wrong twice, it changes to a qua ruin with different numbers so you have to start from scratch instead of trying to figure out what went wrong.

All Sparx is doing for DS is making him hate maths.

Original poster
MaffsMover · 11/10/2023 19:59

I’m so with you. DD voluntarily did Mathsnasium the summer and loved it. We got a good deal for 6 weeks or there is no way we could have afforded it. She came on in leaps and bounds because the teachers were nice and helped her and the maths was still targeted to her.

I hate Sparx

OP posts: