We get a lot of questions from home-educating parents. And many parents whose children attend school nevertheless want to know how Maths-Whizz can provide a bit of extra stimulation – extension for advanced students, or support for those who are struggling.
Here follows some tips from the, er, finest minds of Maths-Whizz and some thoughts from a home-schooling mum.
Tips for home education with Maths-Whizz:
- Rule 1: Maths-Whizz is not a substitute for good old-fashioned human interaction. Maths-Whizz will teach, test, motivate, inspire and challenge, but it won’t (yet!) take questions from the class.
- Rule 2: The more you put into Maths-Whizz, the more you get out of it. A student who pays attention during the assessment gets a more accurate learning plan. A parent who follows the reports is able to suggest weak areas for revision. Most importantly, the student who works hard to complete maths lessons earns more credits to spend in the shop!
- Rule 3: Schedule for success. Many home-schooling parents build Maths-Whizz into the weekly timetable. This allows them to make like-for-like progress comparisons, and use Maths-Whizz as a bargaining chip for reluctant children: “You can log on to Maths-Whizz if you finish your worksheets”, and so forth.
Here’s Home-schooler Wendy on her son’s use of Maths-Whizz (She has some great pointers for integrating Maths-Whizz into the home education routine):
We use Whizz once a week and then back it up with related activities during the rest of the week. We found that the programme moved too quickly if we relied solely on Whizz, however the revision section is very handy.
Louis particularly likes the report board and checks his progress at the end of each session. He understands the percentages and aims for scores in excess of 80% (his own decision). ‘Home Edders’ have to send reports to their LEAs, so we print out your information for parents as part of our submission. [UPDATE: Whilst Wendy sends reports to her LEA, we do not believe such reports are required by LEAs]
A major reason we took Louis out of school 2 years ago was because he spent the major part of Key Stage 1 being convinced he was ’stupid at maths’. Whizz was a totally new approach which removed all of his angst; we never thought he would ever say he actually enjoyed maths so we feel his present confidence is mainly due to the programme removing teacher disapproval coupled with comparing himself with other children.
[Louis] works slowly and needs quite a bit of thinking time which is impossible in a class situation, Whizz puts him in charge of his progress and removes the feelings of failure if he needs to repeat a lesson.
We’re very pleased that Whizz has been extended to the beginning of KS3 and are hoping that you’ll get to GCSE level in time for Louis to benefit.