5 reasons to Drop Math Worksheets and Use “Smart” Online Programs

To learn a new math skill well, we know that students need to get adequate practice with it – successfully answering a number of problems before considering the skill mastered. Traditionally, students have gotten this practice with photocopied worksheets or a textbook. However, with the technology we now have, online “smart” programs like IXL do the job significantly better than a textbook (or worksheet) ever has. Below I will use my experience with IXL to explain how.

1. Immediate feedback

Giving feedback as quickly as possible is something that’s always on teachers’ minds. We know that immediate feedback is extremely helpful for student learning, but it is impossible in a classroom of more than two or three students to give it to each student during independent practice time.

With IXL, as soon as a student clicks in their answer, there is a little sound (a kind of ding, but surprisingly not an annoying one) and a green bar on top either goes up or down. When students correctly answer questions, the bar will move up and up until it gets to 100% and the child passes. If the answer is incorrect, the bar goes down and an explanation of why appears on the bottom.

In addition to students being able to learn from their mistakes, feedback is also motivating. Students are proud when they move up. When they move down, they don’t get too frustrated, because it is clear that moving down just means more practice – they can still work to get the certificate.

2. Extra practice on the types of problems students are missing

When a student gets an answer wrong and the bar goes down, more of the same kinds of questions are asked. These same types of problems will continue until the student shows that they now get it, allowing students to get the right amount of extra practice when they need it. No extra copies of revision worksheets are needed.

Additionally, because students are immediately aware that they are having trouble with a certain question type and they are motivated to pass, I’ve found students who are prone to shyness are much more likely to ask for help when they need it.

3. Differentiation is seamless

Unlike many online programs, on IXL the teacher doesn’t assign a grade level to the students. Instead, all students have access to all activities. What that means is that if a child is doing extremely well on one topic, they can easily practice one grade level up just for that skill. Likewise, if you notice a student is missing background knowledge for an important subject, you can have them work a grade level down.

4. Easy to use data to inform your teaching

The Analytics tab on IXL compiles data into the following sections: Trouble Spots, Students, Skills, Scores, Questions Log, Progress and Real Time. My favorite of these is Trouble Spots.

Trouble Spots does exactly what the name implies, it looks for areas that you should focus on for small/individual intervention groups. It even chunks the data into groups, for example “Ways to help 5 students at once…” and then tells which kids are missing questions on what skill. To help even more, there are additional questions of the same type for you to use in your small groups. This makes it incredibly easy to give extra help to students who need it while the rest of the class practices independently.

5. The kids LOVE it

I honestly believed that the novelty of the green bar going up and the little ding when you get an answer correct would wear off, but we have just finished the third quarter of the year and my students love IXL as much as they did in the beginning.

Compared to a textbook or practice worksheets, IXL is able to offer the same practice problems, but in such a more effective way.

Has anyone used IXL or another similar online program before? What experiences have you had? Please comment below!

By @SGroshell