“We like that it teaches concept of maths and goes over things that aren’t understood . I wish there was an option to reinforce what has been learnt early to recover areas automatically as part of tutorials rather to double check what has learnt has been understood without having to go back into topic bank .”
“My son really enjoys the new version of Maths-Whizz and seems to understand most of it. He Likes the the interactive sessions, which are then re-enforced with the ordinary maths, which we like! My husband was sceptical, but agreed to give it a go and we are glad that we did. Our only gripe is that once you log-in, it defaults to the student page and we can’t find the parent dashboard. My husband who is good with computers can’t find it either, so we can’t review my sons progress. We would like to have a link which is easy to find and we can log-in ourselves without spending hours looking for it.”
“My 9 year old is enjoying many of the exercises and does love the new look. Her favourite is the jungle scene.
My only criticism is that where she finds a topic challenging eg rapid recall doubles and halves, although it resets to a lower level, I would like to have the ability to manually adjust the setting for this topic to go significantly easier where there are explanations instead of just taking the timer off.”
“Absolutely dreadful. Like a parody of a website from 1998. And it's not just the visuals. The test at the beginning missed a load of stuff and in the report seemed under the impression my child needed help with some areas it hadn't asked any questions about. Also, the tutorials were neither engaging nor actually instructive in any sense and the practice that followed was hilariously repetitive. I'll take another look when the product moves to HTML5 to see if the overall experience and approach has been revamped. For now, we're sticking with the immeasurably better DoodleMaths.”
“I have three children (aged 10, 8 and 5) all of whom have used Maths Whizz, with the 5 year old starting recently.
I like the fact that the maths is central: when you are doing maths, it's all about maths. There is "game-ification", but you have to earn points by doing maths in order to go into a separate "game" section. I have seen another product where the games are integrated into the maths, but the students end up focusing on the game and ignoring the corrections when they flash up at the end of the game.
The maths is tailored to your child's ability. This means that if they don't like a task (usually because it's difficult for them), you can point to the fact that their assessments indicate that more is required. It also avoids the child repeating their areas of strength.
The maths tuition is good. I've seen rival products that offer good testing, but there is no tuition, so you either have to teach your child or use the program for revision only.
The games are popular: I've seen my children (particularly the youngest) being motivated to do maths because she wants to buy a monkey or feed it or whatever.
Overall, I've found it expensive, but worth it.”
