Friday, June 22, 2012

Speak Up Saturday–TOS Review–IXL.com

Speak Up Saturday

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Practice makes perfect, and IXL makes math practice fun! IXL allows teachers and parents to monitor the progress of their students and motivate them through interactive games and practice questions. Widely recognized as the Web's most comprehensive math site, IXL offers a dynamic and enjoyable environment for children to practice math. Students who use IXL are succeeding like never before.

Knowledge isn't the only treasure on IXL...

In IXL, each grade level has its own themed game board, filled with awards and prizes, so practicing math is like one big treasure hunt. But you only win when you excel!

Every time you achieve one of your math goals, whether it's mastering a skill or practicing for a certain amount of time, you just might have a surprise waiting for you. In first grade's jungle game board, you might unlock a wild animal, or in the kindergarten toyland game board, you could stumble upon… wait, we're not telling. Keep practicing, and see how many prizes you can find!

Reaching goals the fun way

IXL is not just about helping your child learn math — it's also about helping your child learn to love the subject. Unlike traditional workbooks and drills, IXL's practice game boards engage students in their math lessons. As they work for hours to uncover new prizes on their game board, they'll be gaining new math skills and confidence along the way.

IXL.com provided reviewers with a six month full access subscription so that we could get a real feel for their service. Their website has a ton of skills available to practice for each grade level, broken down by grade and by standard, such as Time and Counting up to 20. They have the standards that are to be met for each grade for each state listed on their website for your reference as well.

The things that I enjoyed about this service:

  • There was a ton of different skills available to practice for each grade and for each standard within that grade.
  • The practice problems were right on as far as skill level and interest level.

Things that slightly annoyed me:

  • While I appreciated that each of the skills was available individually, I would have also liked a guided practice of some kind, more like an overview or an integrated practice set. 20+ problems of the same skill gets rather old by the time you get to the middle of the problem set.
  • There is audio available for each problem, but you have to click on the speaker icon for every single one. Given that she’s in kindergarten, I think it would be more appropriate for it to just speak automatically, especially at this grade level. 

This might just be my style (or perhaps my laziness), but when I use a program of any kind on my computer for teaching, I would like to just set her to it and go work on something else while she’s having screen time. This service is not good for that. BUT if that’s not important to you, then this service might work great for your family.

Overall, this service is useful if you need extra practice for any of the skills at any math level pre-k thru 8th grade.

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You can sign up your child for either $9.95 monthly or $79.00 per year. Additional children can be added to the account for an additional $2.00 per month or $20.00 per year. Special pricing is also available for schools.

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~S

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this product through The Old Schoolhouse Homeschool Crew in exchange for my honest opinion. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

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