Review: Math-Whizz from Whizz Education

Over the last few weeks I have been using Math-Whizz from Whizz Education with my 7th grader and my 10th grade daughter with special needs. I received a 12 month subscription for two students.

Math-Whizz is intended for kids who are in kindergarten through 8^th grade. You will need a separate account for each student. 

Math-Whizz tracts each student and adjusting the lessons based off your students placement and progress throughout the course. It was created with artificial intelligence and will adapt to each students aptitude in math. It will adapt in each topic and adjust it according to their skills. This isn’t meant to be a full math curriculum rather as a math tutor. It is recommended that you spend around 45-60 minutes a week in which you can schedule 2-3 times a week around 20-30 minutes each time.

They recommend that you access it through a PC or laptop. However, it can be utilized on an iPad or tablet. My kids prefer the PC and we used it exclusively on our PC.

Math-Whizz use “Maths Age” which is used to measure your student’s ability and averages it to the level of an average student their age. It calculated the “Maths Age” using the different topics in the math program. You can see the results in your Parent Dashboard.

Students start out by taking an assessment based of their age. While doing the assessment it will slowly start getting more difficult. The program adapts different math concepts to determine the placement of your child. Also after your assessment it should adapt to the math aptitude. It said that it takes around 20- 30 minutes for the assessment. For my family it took longer and we broke it up over several days. 

Math-Whizz uses the Common Core standards in math. This online math tutor is developed by a company in the United Kingdom and has been adapted for the United States Common Core standards.

 Once you’re done with your assessment you will receive an email that lets you know your students “Math Age” in which you can log into your parent account to look over the details.

Now the math tutor begins. At the beginning of each lesson they demonstrate the math concepts. A neat feature is that if they have the wrong answer, the math tutor will do a step by step guide through the problem. Or you can just click the “I don’t know” button and it will skip the problem and continue the lesson. It will add one more problem until you get ten problems correct. On the flip side if they get a certain number of questions correct that earn a “Jump Ahead” button that they can skip the tutorial.

The math concepts that are taught are appropriate for the age level. My kids have gone over place value, fractions, decimals, multiplication, division, data, measuring, percentages and ratios, and other concepts. There is a good variety of topics to study.

There is an award portion for the program that you win points for accuracy and speed. With the points you can play online games or use the points to purchase virtual items to buy animals, toys, and games. You can change the color of items also. For every 30 minutes of usage you earn coins and you also earn the coins for progress. There are other bonuses and opportunities to earn coins.

Parents and children have separate sections in the subscription. Parents can check on progress with detailed reports, printing the reports or certificates of accomplishment. I can have a separate report for each of my kids. The parent reports are fairly detailed. You can print out the reports. There is an overview report that looks like car gauges that gives you your child’s Math Age, Usage, and Performance.

If you want a more detailed report you can choose from a variety of reports from the tabs.

You can see an overview of the History in which it breaks the report down by topic. For example you can see from my report on my daughter that on Percentage and Ratios that she was doing an exercise with the date and how long it took her to do the exercise. It also showed me that she needed to request a lot of help while doing the exercise. It also flagged me. I can hold my mouse over to get an explanation.

The Progression report shows me her progress by topic. I can see her actual age and what her Math Age was from the initial assessment test. Her Math Age assessment was 12.09 and it shows me that currently her Math Age is 12.11. I can see from the graph what each topic is with her Math Age. This is a very visual report.

The last tab is the Text Report which is basically the same information as the Progression Report without the graph. It combines all the reports in one place. This is a nice report to print out for your records.

The student has their own separate dashboard too. From there dashboard they can enter the math tutor, decorate their room, buy items, and so forth. 

What did I think of Math-Whiz?

Not a bad program to add to your math curriculum to enhance some math skills. I like that it adapts to your Math Age regardless of your skill level. This has been great for my daughter with special needs as her math strengths are nowhere near her actual age and yet she has some strong strength in certain topics with math. She is slow but steady. The program did say that she spent a lot of time in certain areas. 

My daughter had one “Oh, I finally understand it moment!” That is with percentages. She has always struggled to understand it. I have tried multi approaches and it has not stuck or had any comprehension. Math-Whizz helped her to finally understand the topic of percentages. She spent a long time in it but, she called me into the room extremely excited explaining me how percentages work!

My daughter loves Math-Whizz. This is her learning style and she is slowly making progress that I can see with the reports. The reports show me what I need to work on with her more.

When I asked my daughter her opinion, “I like it a lot. I like how it gives me good examples if I don’t understand something. I can skip a problem if I’m stuck which I can’t do with other programs I’ve done before.” She also informed the one thing she didn’t like. “Mom the coin rewards are not that great and I wasn’t thrilled with it as it was kind of goofy.”

My son has a great math aptitude. He’s good in math and has a good grasp of it. He didn’t do well with Math-Whizz which surprised me. When I asked him what was going on he informed me. “Mom, I don’t like this program and honestly I didn’t apply myself and put much thought into the answers!” Not what I wanted to hear. It makes sense as he isn’t into the animated computer online math learning concepts. He complained a lot when it was on his schedule.

As you can see I have two kids with different learning styles and the attitudes and results are different. We worked on this 3-4 times a week during the review period.

One thing that did frustrate both of my kids is that they used the metric system. This isn’t something we are to familiar with. My son knew a bit and did average on the assessment in this area. My daughter was beyond herself with this concept and I thought I’d lost her doing Math-Whizz. I wish they would adapt it to the American measuring system.

I think the approach is great overall and my daughter will continue to work with Math-Whizz. It has been a good resource for her to tap into and to enhance her math skills. I felt the assessment was spot on with my daughter. I wish my son would have taken the assessment more seriously. I already had a fairly good idea his skills and he didn't apply himself. It would have been beneficial for me with him in 7th grade this year. 

Social Media Links: 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MathWhizz/
                https://www.facebook.com/WhizzEducation/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MathWhizz
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/whizzeducation
              https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCr_wrJ9jDcPLx_n8nqq0_tg
Google+: https://plus.google.com/114065875490611944121

Math-Whizz from Whizz Education is being reviewed by 29 others from the Homeschool Review Crew. Click on the banner to see their reviews.