Community reviews for Sumdog

I am very pleased with this product. The games are fun and challenging and keep my students interested. They really enjoy competing against their classmates and other schools. The ability to dress and design their own avatars is motivating and fun for the students. I use sumdog quite often in my classroom. My students beg me to "play" sumdog!

Use only as a review for basic facts. I like that the kids can compete among the school/class. The kids like the different choices of the games. I do not like that students will click answers without working out the problem or knowing the correct answer. It doesn't give feedback of the correct answer if wrong.

Overall I like this website! Students are able to work at their own speed and on their own level. I would not use this website as my sole activity for the day. I would use it as a reward. The students like to challenge themselves as well as each other!

I am a huge fan of Sumdog in the classroom and not just for Special Ed. students. I think all students Elementary through Middle School ( and high school Special Ed. like myself) can benefit from "playing" this game. It is a good tool for remediation also. It is so much fun that it could be used for homework or as a "reward". For instance, I sometimes assign 20 minutes on Khan Academy or iXL and the reward is being able to get on Sumdog and play against their friends after applying themselves diligently for those 20 minutes. The engagement factor of Sumdog is huge for me as a teacher. If your students actually "want" to use an educational website then they are more likely to use it out of school as well as in school. My students actually go home and "play" Sumdog for fun at night. Assigning Sumdog for homework means that my students will do the homework and have fun while learning. I think having fun and learning are an awesome combination. My students are completing 1000's of Math problems in a school year with an average of 83% accuracy and I couldn't get those results from traditional methods if I tried. Sumdog is a tool teachers need in their toolbox and I highly recommend it.

I like this program because the students get excited when they are given time to use it. It is great for skill review as well as for students who need practice. It is also good for the higher level students as they compete against each other.

It is a good resource that the students do enjoy and are excited to use. I'm not so sure how much actual learning or retention of specific skills is gained from the games.

I like it a lot for the kids, and parents love it as a way to engage their children at home.

It does seem "game heavy" at times but it did increase motivation and enthusiasm at the beginning of the day. Some of my students that were much weaker in basic addition and subtraction facts first had to go to a "fact practice" site and reach a goal of 50 completed before going to Sumdog. This really helped increase their rate with facts because of the desire to "play" and "challenge" others on Sumdog.

Overall, this is a terrific way to engage students to practice basic math skills but the site provides an extensive amount of time devoted to selecting things for your avatar. Students with lower math skills may spend too long on the gaming aspect and little time polishing their skills.

I felt that this product was a very useful and very engaging tool for my classroom. The students were extremely excited when they began seeing their scores and when they were playing against other students in our school.. I will continue to use this as a part of my technology piece of my lesson plans because of the enthusiasm and the learning that took place. The only problem with this product in my classroom was with the excitement the noise level is much higher .