Maths-Whizz-The Whizz » Tips & Support

True Grit

Duncan McMillan — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 10:15:18 +0000

Grit. It’s stuff you get in your eye, or between your teeth. It’s hard, sharp, and sometimes painful, and it’s associated with one of the most important skills a human can have – resilience.

Further to Ray’s excellent piece from July on the importance of failure in Maths-Whizz exercises, comes a long New York Times piece from last month, asking ‘What if the secret to success is failure?‘.

What if, indeed?

Dominic Randolph, the principal of a hugely successful New York school, was quoted in the article as saying:

I worry that those people get feedback that everything they’re doing is great. And I think as a result, we are actually setting them up for long-term failure.

He touches on something vital both in education and in life. It’s akin to a sentiment often expressed by some of the most successful people: that they have failed more often that they have succeeded.

The Economist recently looked at the importance of failure in business:

Students of entrepreneurship talk about the J-curve of returns: the failures come early and often and the successes take time. America has proved to be more entrepreneurial than Europe in large part because it has embraced a culture of “failing forward” as a common tech-industry phrase puts it[...]

For those people, failing was a natural consequence of trying, and it actually made them stronger, better. For my own part, I have an analogy in rock climbing. Whenever I climb (with ropes, harnesses, and safety devices, naturally!) it is exhilarating. But if I am trying a particularly difficult or technical route, I sometimes get scared. I become afraid of heights, afraid of falling, afraid of failure. And, until I have tried, failed, and fallen off, I am paralysed by the fear that I might. Knowing that I can fall, and try again, makes me more confident the second time around.

To return to the NYTimes piece, a common focus is ‘character-building’. How a student can be inculcated with ‘boy scout’-style character traits of self-reliance, persistence, discipline, and so forth. A schools superintendent found that the graduates of his schools who went on to do well at college were not necessarily the academic ones, but also those:

[...]who were able to recover from a bad grade and resolve to do better next time; to bounce back from a fight with their parents; to resist the urge to go out to the movies and stay home and study instead; to persuade professors to give them extra help after class.

So, what if we aren’t teaching students to ‘bounce back’, but instead to expect success, and happiness, every time? And what are we going to do when those students, inevitably, fail?

Maths-Whizz is about happiness in numbers. And that happiness comes when a student finds he or she has suddenly acquired the keys to a palace of maths learning, and the opportunities that creates in turn; I’ve written before about how important maths is to all sorts of careers.

But we risk wrongly assuming that the pursuit of happiness entails being always happy, without pain, difficulty, or uncertainty.

A common complaint we hear from parents and children is that some exercises are just too hard, or ‘unfair’, or suchlike. Sometimes, this is the result of a bad assessment – where the child has been pushed artificially above his ability level, and is receiving advanced lessons too early as a result. But often it is because the child simply doesn’t like getting things wrong, and gets distressed as a result. And any parent, naturally, hates to see their child distressed, and wants us to ensure that doesn’t happen, and that we ensure it doesn’t happen.

The brutal answer is: we won’t. We can’t. If the assessment has been completed properly, then the lessons he or she gets should be correct, according to our tried-and-tested curriculum. If the child fails, we say: “Wait, think, and try again. And keep trying.”

Maths-Whizz provides help for students, but it doesn’t assume that if you’ve failed once or twice you’ve earned the right to pass. This isn’t a cruel-to-be-kind philosophy; it’s not even cruel.

There is a crucial difference between telling someone that they can succeed if they try, and telling them they have already succeeded because they can. In the first instance we are building confidence, but in the second we are secretly undermining it, because no child will truly understand what it means to try, fail, or pass, until she experiences it for herself.

So: Try, fail, learn, try again…

The Rule of 72

Duncan McMillan — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 10:30:42 +0000

It’s a truth not-universally-enough-acknowledged that mathematical incompetence is bad for your financial health.

For that reason, if no other, parents should encourage children to be confident and comfortable with mental maths – to work out change in a shop, determine the best mortgage, choose the right three-for-two deal, or calculate the rate of return on an investment.

This last skill is where the ‘Rule of 72‘ comes flying to the rescue.

As the wonderful h2g2 encyclopedia describes it, The Rule of 72: “…tells us how many years it takes to realize we would have had twice as many small, green pieces of paper if we had invested them at a given rate of return instead of stuffing them in our mattress”

If you want to know how long it will take your investment to double at a given investment rate, use the rule of 72. If you want to know at what rate you need to invest for your money to double after a given period, use the rule of 72.

For instance, if I invest at 6% p.a. My money will double after 72/6 = 12 years. If I plan to invest for 20 years, I will need to invest at at least 72/20 = 3.6% for my money to double.

Easy!

Michael Blastland over on the BBC News site illustrated the usefulness of the rule of 72 in demonstrating how quickly incremental changes can add up to double (with investment) or halve (with inflation) your money.

Seemingly small differences in rates can have dramatic effects in just this way. BetterExplained points out that:

If your countryâ€™s GDP grows at 3% a year, the economy doubles in 72/3 or 24 years. If your growth slips to 2%, it will double in 36 years. If growth increases to 4%, the economy doubles in 18 years.

So when government officials talk about increases or decreases in the growth of a country’s economy, or population, even a fraction of a per cent change can have a large effect, and the Rule of 72 can help you quickly see the implications of such changes.

The Rule of 72 is not magic; it’s all about powers of two. You can get stuck into the maths over on the BetterExplained site.

As Michael Blastland points out, 69 or 70 would be more accurate numbers to use for this particular rule of thumb, but because 72 has lots of handy factors (such as 2, 4, 6, 8, 12…) it’s a lot easier. And, for mathematicians trained ont the wonders of Maths-Whizz, it’s a doddle.

So, don’t be part of the human race that famously doesn’t understand the exponential function (according to Al Bartlett), learn the Rule of 72!

(Via Terry Jones)

Want to learn to code? Solve maths puzzles!

Duncan McMillan — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 10:48:05 +0000

Code is everywhere, and not just in the Matrix movies. Much of the world we now take for granted is built on logical arguments and mathematical formulae buried inside seemingly incomprehensible software and hardware code.

It's all code...

Because of this, you’d be forgiven for assuming that an understanding of computer code would be widespread, and that students everywhere would be learning basic, well, BASIC, or some other computer language, in order to function as modern humans. (Never mind that the UK jobs recovery, according to some analysts, will come in IT, amongst other sectors.)

And yet most of us treat our computers and their software programs like we treat our cars – we can use them just fine, but we generally don’t want to know what goes on under the bonnet. Those who do know these things seem to have a magical understanding (along with a special name to mark them out – ‘geek’).

Project Euler (‘oy-ler’) is a website (and community of mathematicians and coders) that long ago set out to break the novice into the principles and techniques of computer code. Named after the legendary 18th century mathematician Project Euler opens the bonnet, so to speak, with maths puzzles.

I’ll let Project Euler’s founder, Colin Hughes, describe the goal of the site:

The motivation for starting Project Euler, and its continuation, is to provide a platform for the inquiring mind to delve into unfamiliar areas and learn new concepts in a fun and recreational context.

This admirable ideal reminds me of a certain excellent online maths tutoring program I’m well-acquainted with. Hughes understands what motivates and enables people to tackle subjects that seem difficult and arcane on the surface – the human brain’s love of problem-solving and its willingness to push at the edge of understanding.

Basic maths is no different. Ask someone to prove Pythagoras’ Theorem and they may run for the exit, but give them some paper and scissors and a geometric puzzle to solve and they might actually have fun illustrating one of the key principles of maths.

Project Euler requires that you know some maths and the basics of a programming language before you start – it’s not for the utterly uninitiated. But it is designed to present the beginner programmer with a series of maths puzzles of increasing difficulty that test and expand their skills.

Many modern programming manuals walk their readers through interminable mini-projects with apparently practical applications, requiring the student to copy and memorise techniques and strings of code. Hughes’ puzzles on Project Euler have little obvious practical value, for good reason. Learning doesn’t have to be ‘useful’ for it to have value; it’s in the creative application of skills and knowledge to unexpected ends that we use our brains best. (My classics teacher once remarked that knowing Latin made him a better Swahili speaker.)

Equally, many of the answers to Project Euler’s puzzles could be found online with the aid of a search engine. But that’s not the point, just as lifting the answer from your neighbour in maths class is not the point – it’s how you get there that matters.

Programmers and mathematicians alike strive to find elegant, efficient, and comprehensible solutions, and these are what Project Euler encourages you to do – find the best programming solution to a mathematical problem. If you’re a budding programmer, check it out!

Maths-Whizz University – Beat Holiday Learning Loss

Duncan McMillan — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 12:25:22 +0000

Holiday learning loss; scourge of teachers and parents, eraser of hard-learned skills with each new school term, scientifically-proven fact!

With summer already upon us in calendar terms, if not yet in lazy, warm days, now is the perfect time to set in train habits that will ensure your students carry on improving their maths over the long holidays.

Holiday learning loss is the phenomenon whereby those long summer, Easter, and Christmas holidays away from study books and the nagging attentions of a teacher retard a student’s learning. Holiday learning loss is about forgetting, and the understanding that a learned skill is lost without practice.

For a teacher holiday learning loss means wasting precious time at the start of Autumn Term. For a parent it means a frustrated child and a wasted opportunity. Here’s how we can help you avoid this.

Title: Holiday Learning Loss
Presenter: Natalie
For: Teachers and Parents
Time: 2:19

Notes:
This short video reiterates the importance of holiday learning loss, and the potential for combating it with Maths-Whizz.

Students can lose one to three months’ of progress over the long summer break. Maths-Whizz provides a solution for parents and teachers to avoid this and motivate students to learn year-round, without fear of guilt for ‘ruining’ the precious holidays.

Why no guilt? Maths-Whizz works on the basis that the student wants to improve his or her maths, earn Whizz credits, gain rewards, and challenge friends. It succeeds when the student learns without realising he is learning.

In that respect the long lazy summer days, whatever the weather, are perfect for a little bit of Maths-Whizz to brush up learned skills or learn new ones, in-between frisbee-throwing, trampolining, sprinkler-running, and all that.

But in the assumption that carrying on with Maths-Whizz may not be motivation enough to spend time in front of the computer during the holidays we add a little extra to the mix – seasonal promotions.

In spring, this means a special Easter-themed student bedroom and special items to buy in the shop.

In winter, this means a seasonal adventure, complete with advent calendar-style home page, holiday puzzles, wintry maths games and more. Students can only play with our interactive winter treats when they do well in maths lessons.

In summer, we pull out all the stops, with our Maths-Whizz Summer Adventure. The Summer Adventure is a full-featured interactive comic that students work their way through by passing lessons in Tutor Mode. They must help the Professor in an adventure through the Central American jungle and play jungle-themed maths games along the way.

Teachers and parents will be kept informed of holiday features and promotions, and will still be able to view online reports and student status information.

Log on to Maths-Whizz this summer to make the most of our Whizz Summer adventure and beat holiday learning loss!

Further Viewing
We have loads of tips for teachers on getting the most out of Maths-Whizz Tutoring for Schools. I may well share some of these tips in more detail in coming posts, but in the meantime here are links to some of our other key videos on this subject:

Maths-Whizz University – Making the Most of Maths-Whizz

Duncan McMillan — Tue, 31 May 2011 14:00:25 +0000

Once you’ve got up and running with Maths-Whizz, and student and parent alike is comfortable with all our tutoring and reporting features, what’s next?

The beauty of maths tutoring with Whizz is that it is as good as you make it. What users put into their online tutoring is repaid in student rewards, greater confidence and engagement and – crucially – a higher maths age and numeracy ability.

So how can you and your student make the most of Maths-Whizz? Here’s an example of a selection of videos we’ve recorded to show you how to make your maths tutoring work now and in the long-term.

Title: Parent-Student Motivation
Presenter: Natalie, Product Manager
For: Parents, Students
Time: 3:43

Notes:
Motivation is key to learning. There’s an old joke about how many psychiatrists is takes to change a lightbulb. The answer is: “one, but the lightbulb must really want to change.”

It’s a silly joke, but it is relevant to learning. As Natalie explains, learning just “When I feel like it”, or “When I get a bad report” will not yield long term-results. Maths-Whizz is about building strong patterns of learning and motivations to improve.

Build those patterns of learning by scheduling Maths-Whizz for a regular day and time. Print our downloadable scheduler (available from the parent account dashboard) to help with this.

Schedule regular sessions of between 15 and 45 minutes in Tutor Mode at a time, and add extra time for playing in the student Bedroom. Ensure students don’t ‘burn out’ through over-use.

The scheduling applies to parents, too. If you make a note regularly to view your student’s report you’ll have things to talk about – strengths and weaknesses, likes and dislikes, etc. Send messages or print certificates from the reports console.

We know, and research seems to show, that parental engagement is key to success. As Natalie points out:

The greatest motivation for children is knowing that the people they want to impress or influence are tracking their usage and making comments.

Maths-Whizz makes this easy, and we hope you enjoy using all our features to keep your student improving his or her maths every week of the year.

Maths-Whizz University – School Maths Reports

Duncan McMillan — Fri, 20 May 2011 12:23:40 +0000

Maths-Whizz Tutoring Plus for Schools would be nothing without the Reports tool.

Maths reports are the glue in the relationship between parents, teachers, and students, what we call the ‘triangle of success‘.

Our maths reports allow teachers to track student progress and send feedback to students. They allow parents to view their own children’s reports and discuss those with teachers. They ensure that students are responsible for the maths progress they show to parents and teachers.

Watch our detailed video to find out just how powerful our reports for teachers can be.

Title: Reports for Teachers
Presenter: Liam
For: Teachers
Time: 7:44

Notes:
Watch the video for the full rundown, but read the notes below for a summary of the key points.

Class Report – dashboard

Students in a class are shown arranged along a maths age number line. This allows at-a-glance comparisons between students, and draws attention to the strongest and weakest students, the hardest workers and the ones who lack motivation.

From here teachers can also send students motivational messages direct to individual students, or print customizable certificates.

Class Report – student tab

This tab lists all class students and gives easy, traffic-light alerts for low effort or achievement, with recommendations for improving these aspects.

Class Report – usage tab

The usage number line shows clearly how much students in your class are using Whizz. Usage is key – without a minimum usage (we recommend 3 sessions of 15-45 minutes, according to age and ability) students will fall behind and not see the 1.6 year maths age improvement every 12 months. We tend to see this level of progress with 60 minutes per week of usage.

Use the usage report 7-day view to quickly see which students have completed assigned homework time with Maths-Whizz.

Student Report – dashboard

Clicking the student report link next to a student’s icon in the classroom report dashboard takes you to the student report dashboard. This is where you can view a student’s individual maths age profile and find key information to share with parents.

The dashboard shows summary charts for maths age improvement since assessment, and dials for usage and performance averages.

Student Report – history tab

The history tab gives a breakdown of the student’s use of Maths-Whizz Tutor and Replay modes. It highlights the scores in each exercise, the number of times help was needed, and the time taken. The history tab provides the detail that may be hidden in overall reports, showing which objectives might be tripping a student up, or how efficiently the student is passing lessons.

The history tab also allows you to view messages sent from teachers to students via the Whizz Reports console.

Student Report – progression tab

This horizontal bar chart is the best indication of a child’s maths age spread across maths topics covered in the online tutor. The colour-coded bars show progress since assessment and overall maths age.

Schools often print out the progression charts for parent-teacher evenings, and parents find them an easy way of getting to grips with their children’s maths profile.

Student Report – text report

puts much of the key student report information into text form, for filing or distributing to parents.

Student Report – edit

allows you to re-set a student’s assessment. We only recommend re-sets where students failed to complete their assessments without help, or who have not been using Maths-Whizz for many months (see future videos on ‘summer learning loss’ for information on countering this effect). The Maths-Whizz Tutor is designed to account for changes in ability, which is why re-setting the assessment is an action of last resort.

Key points:

60 minutes of Maths-Whizz per week will boost a student’s maths age by 1.6 years over 12 months (average).
Keep track of homework with the seven-day usage report view.
Celebrate student success with Maths-Whizz messages and certificates.
Compare high- and low-achievers, high- and low-usage.
Schedule Maths-Whizz usage with your students.
Use individual reports to view personal maths age profiles.
Use the ‘History’ tab to get a detailed view of a student’s usage and messages.

Tips and Tricks:

Complete the assessment as soon as possible
Use stickered messages to students as ‘house points’
Print out reports to give to parents
Consistent usage is key – routine is best
Explore the various reports, and discuss report data with other teachers and parents. Maths-Whizz provides a wealth of information to help you raise standards in maths.

There’s loads more to see in Maths-Whizz reports for teachers, so log into your teacher account now and have a look around!

Further Viewing

Maths-Whizz University – Maths Age

Duncan McMillan — Mon, 16 May 2011 12:16:22 +0000

Whether you’re new to Maths-Whizz or an old-timer with our award-winning online tutoring, you’ll need to understand ‘maths age’: what it means, how it works, and why it’s so important.

Just as every young person can be said to have a ‘reading age’ that describes their literacy level in terms of age-equivalent targets they might be expected to meet, so we have ‘maths age’.

This concept is spreading, as we discovered when MathsInsider included Maths-Whizz amongst the best tools for finding your child’s maths age.

Watch our video introduction to maths age, presented by Whizz CEO Richard Marett, and read on for some detailed notes on how it all works.

Title: Maths Age
Presenter: Richard Marett, CEO
For: Parents, Teachers
Time: 3:38

Notes:
Maths Age is what the Maths-Whizz Tutor is all about – it’s what we use to calculate a student’s maths ability, plan his or her maths learning, and show progress in maths.

The key thing to remember about maths age is that it is unrelated to chronological age. In other words, a confident and able seven-year-old Whizzer can have a maths age above eight, whilst a struggling nine-year-old might have a maths age of seven.

This fact is important, because maths age is all about a student’s personal, and diverse, maths ability. Maths-Whizz teaches maths in up to 17 different topics, from handling data to fractions, place value to equations, formulae and identities.

During our initial assessment we identify a student’s maths age in key topics and extrapolate that performance to related topic areas for our Whizz Tutor to teach all the subjects a student at that level ought to learn.

When parents and teachers view a student report they will see at a glance how a student’s maths age profile can show large differences between different topics at assessment. The tutor tried to iron out these differences and improve overall maths age.

Because maths age is independent of chronological age it is an excellent tool for comparing performance between students, or over periods of time. The Maths-Whizz report console makes both such comparisons easy, providing at-a-glance information.

The overall maths age for a student is calculated by averaging the maths age in all relevant topics. Maths age profiles often show just how varied a student’s individual maths abilities can vary between topics.

For instance, a student confident with data and geometry may struggle with worded problems and number-heavy tasks, or vice-versa. This is just one example, but we often see differences in maths age between best and worst-performing topics of two years.

But these differences are not static, thanks to the Whizz Tutor. The tutoring engine continuously assesses its students, tweaking their lesson plans as students improve their maths skills and confidence.

The maths Whizz tutor does its best to narrow differences within students by emphasising weakest subjects and consolidating stronger ones. Equally, differences between students in a classroom environment can make teaching much harder; students who lag can slow the whole class, so Maths-Whizz recommends more time with the tutor for students who are performing below their expected maths age level.

With Maths-Whizz and our unique maths age, students never stand still. The brightest and best are challenged as much as the weakest and least confident, and Maths age puts the progress they all make into an easy-to-read context.

Here are the key points about maths age:

Maths age is unrelated to chronological age.
Maths age works best as a comparative measure of maths ability.
Parents and teachers can use maths age to easily compare maths ability and progress.
Maths age is calculated for each relevant topic.
Average maths age across all topics gives a student’s overall maths age.
Maths age is assessed and adjusted continuously.

Maths-Whizz University – Teacher Account & Console

Duncan McMillan — Fri, 13 May 2011 12:18:32 +0000

In our Friday instalments of Maths-Whizz University we’ll show you how to become a Maths-Whizz Tutoring Plus for Schools whizz.

[All the videos we feature for teachers and users of our schools products are available to view both on the Whizz Education Youtube channel, or on the Whizz website.]

Today we start at the beginning – logging-in. Tutoring Plus for Schools is used by tens of thousands of students, teachers, and even parents, worldwide. It’s a service that brings together all three corners of our ‘Triangle of Success’.

Tutoring for Schools raises standards in maths by ensuring parents, teachers, and students mutually benefit from the personalised learning, powerful reports, and teacher feedback tools available in the service. Students don’t learn in isolation, teachers can manage their progress, and parents are kept informed and engaged.

Anyway, enough chitchat, here’s our introduction to Tutoring Plus for Schools for the uninitiated, hosted by the charming Harry.

Title: Teachers logging into their school account
Presenter: Harry Baptiste
For: Teachers
Time: 02:20

Notes:
In this video, Harry gently introduces teachers to Maths-Whizz schools accounts, and indicates the importance of linking your school site to Maths-Whizz.

Link to Maths-Whizz. As I mentioned earlier, Maths-Whizz works best when the three parts of the triangle of success link up. We’ve tried to make this as easy as possible by providing communication and information tools that link parents, teachers, and students.

If your school is new to Maths-Whizz the first step in creating your own triangle of success is to link your school website or intranet to the Maths-Whizz homepage.

Putting a simple Maths-Whizz banner on your site is easy, and will save teachers endless hours spent telling students or parents (or even colleagues) to “…go to w w w dot whizz dot com…” when they can instead click the Whizz button on your site. The banner will also help raise awareness of Maths-Whizz at your school and among parents.

Log in. Harry then shows us how easy it is to login using the parent/student/teacher login panel at the top-right hand corner of every Whizz.com page.

Carefully enter your teacher credentials after clicking the teacher logo, and click ‘Login’. Note that passwords are case-sensitive, usernames are not. The teacher welcome page will show (with ticked boxes) whether you have a licence to use Teachers’ Resource, Tutoring for Schools, or both.

Click the Tutoring for Schools button on the welcome page to visit your account summary page. From here, you’ll be able to:

Upload new students to the system
Edit or delete existing students
Manage your active tutoring licences
Launch our powerful school, class, and student report tool

Further Viewing
If you’re too keen to wait until next week, you can skip ahead and find out how to upload students to your Tutoring student management console, and also edit student details.

Maths-Whizz University – The Assessment

Duncan McMillan — Tue, 10 May 2011 15:00:56 +0000

The assessment is one of the cornerstones of the Maths-Whizz Tutor – it’s how we work out a new student’s ‘maths age’ and set him or her on their personalised learning journey.

It’s hard to understate how important the assessment is, but we’ve designed it to be a fun challenge, a self-test that won’t catch students out or ask unfair questions.

Title: Student Assessment
Presenter: The Whizz Professor!
For: Students, Parents
Time: 1:41

Notes:
The Maths-Whizz assessment is built on our ‘exam-style’ exercises, questions designed to replicate classroom tests. All our exercises are graded according to ‘maths age’, which is based on the level a young mathematician would expect to reach at any particular age.

We start our assessment at a maths age roughly appropriate to the Maths-Whizzer and ask a series of questions in different topics.

We ask three questions at each maths level in each topic. If the questions are too hard, we ask easier questions from a lower level; if the questions are passed (2 out of 3 is a pass) we move up and ask some harder questions.

Students don’t need any preparation – we’ll find the right maths level for them – but here are some tips and tricks for the assessment:

If you don’t know an answer, guess! If you don’t understand the question, click ‘Don’t Know’.
Don’t ask for help from a parent or a brother or sister – the Tutor will be much more fun if you do the assessment yourself.
The assessment lasts 20-45 minutes, depending on age and ability, so make sure you are are relaxed and alert.
But, if you get tired, just close the assessment window; when you log in again it will pick up where you left off.
If you think you did badly, don’t worry – when you start the Tutor it will automatically adjust.

When the assessment is over you can start lessons and earn credits. You can spend those credits in the shop, or build them up to compete against buddies and Whizzers around the world on our Whizz leaderboards.

After the assessment the Maths-Whizz Tutor will continuously assess students as they improve their maths and boost their confidence. If students do badly in the Tutor, the Tutor will make their learning programmes easier; if they do well, they’ll get harder maths questions and their maths ages will go up.

Further Viewing
The assessment is just the start of the Maths-Whizz journey towards improving maths skills and confidence, and having fun in the process!

Maths-Whizz University – Introduction

Duncan McMillan — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 11:23:57 +0000

Enroll in the Maths-Whizz University* and watch Whizzers explain all on the Whizzeducation Youtube Channel.

If you’ve been using Maths-Whizz for the last couple of months you will have noticed instructional videos popping up to explain features of our online tutor to parents, teachers and students.

The short and sweet videos are hosted by members of the Whizz team from our Paddington, London offices.

Over the next few days I’ll give you a grounding in Maths-Whizz by introducing key videos along with explanatory text and links to more tutorials. Call it Maths-Whizz 101.

If you’re a Maths-Whizz parent or teacher these will help you get the most out of our award-winning service. If you’re not yet sure what Maths-Whizz can do for your student, they might help show why we have had such success bringing Happiness in Numbers.

To get the ball rolling, we’ll begin with our introduction to the Maths-Whizz Tutor:

Title: How the Maths-Whizz Tutor works
Presenter: Richard Marett, CEO
For: Parents, Teachers, and Students
Time: 3:42

Notes:
Every student completes an initial assessment on starting Maths-Whizz. The results of the assessment give a picture of the child’s unique strengths and weaknesses (confidence in fractions but difficulty with division, for instance). This is the child’s ‘maths age’ profile.

The Maths-Whizz Tutor then delivers interactive animated maths lessons according to the student’s maths age profile, paying particular attention to weaker subjects, whilst consolidating stronger subjects. The lesson plan thus created is designed to give the student a more rounded maths age profile.

Once a student logs into his customized ‘bedroom’ (or ‘console’) area and begins the Tutor he will receive an animated maths lesson that first explains the maths concepts and then tests his understanding with interactive questions.

There are three outcomes that help define the Tutor’s method:

If the child does well in the animated exercise he immediately receives a set of ‘exam-style’ questions that cover the same subject, but in a more formal, non-interactive fashion. This ensures the child’s cognitive connection between the engaging animations in the animated exercise and the more formal, pencil and paper context, of the classroom.
If the student fails the animated exercise he immediately receives another, easier, animated exercise designed to boost his confidence and reinforce the maths skills that underpin those he just failed to demonstrate. If the student then passes this exercise he will have another chance to tackle the original, failed, exercise.
This is a kind of automatic intervention that acts when the student will benefit most from targeted attention on a weak subject area.
If the student has only modest success with the exercise (neither an outright pass or a complete fail) the Whizz Tutor assumes that he understands the concepts but probably needs another try. It will move onto another subject and return to the original exercise later.
The randomised nature of almost every Maths-Whizz exercise ensures that the student won’t earn a pass the second time around merely by memorising the answers.

Students can only make progress when they pass both an animated exercise and its corresponding exam-style test. This, and the tutoring techniques described above, mean that students in the Maths-Whizz tutor improve their maths age in a particular topic only when they have shown that they really know the subject at hand.

The Maths-Whizz Tutor coaxes students towards understanding and improved confidence, but it is the students who make the progress. Students can log in without parental or teacher input, meaning that you don’t have to know what your child needs to learn – the Maths-Whizz Tutor does that for you.

Further Viewing
If you’re impatient to know more about getting the most out of Maths-Whizz, then check out the full list of videos, below. If you’re a parent or a teacher, a home-educator or a private tutor, or if you’re just curious, there’s a video for you.

Video tutorials in our little Maths-Whizz University:

Videos for Parents

Videos for Teachers

* NB: The Maths-Whizz University is something I just made up