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.
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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):
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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.
Related posts:
Hi,
Just to confirm for others reading this page, home educating parents in England and Wales aren’t required to send reports to LAs. I think Wendy might be home educating in the USA in a state which monitors home ed or possibly Scotland, I don’t know Scottish Education law.
Kind Regards,
Fiona
Hi
As this is a UK site please could home educating could be referred to by the term generally preferred by UK home educators which is ‘home educating’ and not ‘home-schooling’.
Regarding the quote from the home educator above ‘Home Edders have to send reports to their LEAs’, it does not seem appropriate to promote your product exploiting information that is not correct. It was pointed out to you in October by Fiona above, shame her correction has been ignored. It may seem a small thing to you but LAs acting outside the law is a very big issue to many families.
Jo
Jo: I have updated the post further to your comments that home-educating parents prefer to be called ‘home educators’.
Fiona and Jo: I have added a comment to Wendy’s testimonial in square brackets. I’m afraid I cannot confirm the circumstances of Wendy’s arrangement with her LEA, nor that home-educators are generally required to send reports to local education authorities in general.
Thank you both for your input.
Regards,
Duncan McMillan
Whizz Curriculum Manager
I home educate two primary aged children and they enjoy using Whizz math. I use this as their main math tutor, and then give extra help if there are areas which they persistently find difficult. (I check their percentage scores to find this out)
We’ve been using it for five months now, and they haven’t complained yet about doing half an hour most weekdays.
I must say, they’re not really bothered about the credits though. They dont seem to need any external motivation to use the scheme.
[...] can also read my blog post from this time last year, where I provided some tips for home educators using Maths-Whizz Tutoring Plus. Read the full post for Whizzer mum Wendy’s own suggestions about how to use [...]