My Take
The best thing about Sumdog is the extremely high levels of student engagement. My students are addicted to Sumdog like it's the hottest video game, and they are constantly discussing their rankings and coin accumulation. Of course, given that they are reinforcing math skills with an adaptive system, I am quite happy with this obsession!
How I Use It
I use this mostly as a homework option, and for reward time in my classroom. Given that my students love it so much, they'll play on the website without any reinforcement while they are at home. So, I don't like to give up too much class time on this. It is a wonderful incentive prize for the students, though.
More community reviews for Sumdog
Matthew D.
Teacher
February 10, 2019
Good to engage students in practicing simple math facts and concepts
Overall, I like the product and was willing to pay the price for a subscription. The advantage to Sumdog and other similar programs is that you always have a few kids who go home and do it because they want to do it. I am especially glad when it reaches those who generally struggle doing homework. You have to consider whether you think it is worth the money (about $200 per class), but if you are looking for ways to motivate students to improve fluency on basic math concepts, this may be a good option.
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Marsha W.
Special education teacher
P.S. 055 Benjamin Franklin School
Bronx, NY
March 7, 2018
Class Competition While Improving Math Skills
SumDog is an excellent tool for review and reinforcement. Being able to compete against classmates was a strong enough pull to keep my 5th grade students engaged. Each student has an avatar which they can customize as they acquire coins. One thing that would improve SumDog is if teachers had the ability to create sub-groupings within the class so that student could compete against students in the same grouping.
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1 person found this helpful.
Graham E.
Teacher
Mc Millan Magnet Middle School
Omaha, NE
January 26, 2016
A wonderful tool for reviewing math both in school and at home though it does not introduce new concepts.
Sumdog is not teaching new content, but it is an excellent review tool. While you may have a student that begins to understand new concepts while playing Sumdog, it is not a teaching tool for those that want to introduce new content. Because Sumdog will continue to introduce new concepts until a student hits a wall, students will occasionally be forced into answering questions they have never seen before (ex. Multiplication or division when they haven't learned it in the classroom yet.) Sumdog seems to be easy to contact through email, but I don't have a lot of experience with this.
TLDR: A lot of fun for students and a very welcome math review tool for students to use at home and at school.
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