Teaching continues outside of the classroom

I really love using tenmarks.com. It is very easy to create assignments and navigate through the website. I like that you can see how the students answered and you can reassigned the same standard if they did not do well on it. I think that tenmarks can be used a great reteaching tool. When students are not doing well on a specific skill/concept, you can use the data to create small groups. A student can also use hints to watch videos when they are struggling on a standard. I also like that you can communicate with parents and print out reports. Finally, I like the fact that it provides a diversity of questions. I think the questions can assist teachers by helping them come up with different ways to teach a skill/concept.

It was touted as the best aligned math support. Sadly as the questions became more and more difficult to tackle, I looked more deeply at the questions and realized that within the depth of language required for students to attack the math questions, they worded many of their answers grammatically incorrect! How horrible. So, to add insult to injury, we are trying desperately to align to the PARCC test and implement this program, yet, we have not forced them to use proper grammar such as definite and indefinite articles so students can properly chose an answer, which is imperative in the math choices. There is a HUGE DIFFERENCE between "a" and "the" when you are deciding which variable would fit in to solve an equation, especially when the question asks the student to select all the answers that apply. Happily, we agreed to reject this program after a year in our program. While at first glance, this program may seem to have all the bells and whistles, I would look more closely. they have also closed the parent portal effective October 2016. So far, Khan Academy still continues to outshine, from both the teacher report and parent interaction portals. I think the key is to review, review, and review.

Tenmarks was the greatest program I could have found! I can differentiate in so many ways just for a small group or individual, nevertheless, the whole class. I really like how they give students the opportunity to still have fun through playing games, but they need to collect coins to buy time to play those games. This extra push gave my students the motivation they needed to complete the practice they had.