For just over a month now, my family has been using TenMarks. Both of my boys were provided with an account for the purpose of this review.
TenMarks is a math program that enables your child to succeed in a subject that is not always popular. It is both parent- and student-friendly. It is also easily adaptable, depending on your family's needs.
To give you an idea of my family's needs, let me tell you a bit about my boys.
My oldest loves math and science. Before he started school, I had to purchase math exercise books because he would beg for them. My youngest would rather be doing anything else but math. It isn't that he doesn't understand it, he just doesn't like doing it and finds it a chore.
My oldest went through his first set of assignments in just under 30 minutes and only got a couple answers wrong. No sooner did I tell him that I needed him to work through this program so that I could review it, he was finished. On the other hand, it took just over a week of 'convincing' to get my youngest to even look at the program. When he finally sat down to do it, he finished the assignments in a couple sessions, consisting of 30 minutes each, and received very good scores.
The way TenMarks is set up is very simple. When you sign up, you enter your student's grade level and state or province of residence, and TenMarks tailors a program based on the math curriculum of your home state or province. Each week, your student is given a new unit, consisting of four assignments and one test.
For the parents, there are a number of tools. You can check on your student's progress. If they finish their assignments early, you can give them extra work. You can also set up rewards for your student. An example: If your student completes 100 assignments, you will take them to their favorite restaurant. The parents also receive weekly emails notifying them of new assignments, reminders that assignments are near due and weekly progress reports. The parents are also informed on how many hints their student used, plus they see a breakdown of how the student did for each question.
The student also has a number of tools. They get to see how they are progressing, both on their weekly assignments and how far they've progressed towards any rewards. If a student is stuck on a question, there are a number of ways they can get help: text tutorials, video tutorials and step-by-step hints. TenMarks is set up so that your student never gets completely stuck on a question. If they click the hints three times, they are shown the full solution.
I asked my children what they thought of the program.
My oldest remarked that he found it extremely easy and he wished there were more challenging assignments for him to do. Thankfully, soon TenMarks will be implementing a program that allows parents to assign more challenging exercises. Plus, TenMarks will be including your student's strengths and challenges, and recommend assignments based the areas that pose a challenge and recommendations based on their strengths, in the weekly reports. These extras are currently in beta.
My oldest also remarked that he found the text tutorials to not be all that helpful, as they used terminology not used by his teachers. He found the video tutorials to be very thorough and helpful, even if they explained every little detail and he wished he could skip to the part with the explanation of what he needed help with. Also coming soon to TenMarks, video tutorials that are broken up into chapters, allowing the student to skip to the part they need help with.
My youngest didn't have much to say about it that my oldest had not said. With him, it was just getting him to do the assignments. We don't use rewards in my house. I've raised my children to do things because it is required of them in order to be productive members of the household and society. Because of this, setting up incentives for him would not have worked. For other families, it will work quite well. What would have worked for him was instant rewards or badges, like he receives in video games.
When I spoke with one of the developers of TenMarks about my family's specific needs in this area, I was happy to learn this is also something that will be implemented in the future. Not only will there be instant rewards, but there will be a leader board of sorts, allowing for some friendly competition among other students.
Other things in the works include TenMarks being made available on iDevices and other tablets, allowing your student to work on their assignments while in the car, etc.
Also new to TenMarks is the summer math program. From the TenMarks press release:
I think TenMarks is a good program. I'm also very happy to hear about all of the ways they are planning to improve TenMarks, for both the parents and the students.
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