Back in October, I blogged about a pilot project for Middle School Math students called IXL. IXL is a play on words rather than an acronym, expressing the outcome of this online skills practice program. I have noticed a growing feeling on the part of my math students that might be best described as “I EXCEL” at Math, or IXL!
In October I reported students had completed 10,000 math problems. Now I am raving about the 25,000 problems attempted in the Middle School! How about some math about this? 25,000 problems, divided by 20 students equals an average (or mean) of 1,250 problems per student. And 25,000 problems completed over 157 school days works out to 160 extra problems per day for our classes. Plus, all these problems are in addition to their daily homework from the Math curriculum and textbooks. And if you are tallying the rich vocabulary in this paragraph, you would find some embedded math terms; IXL keeps you playful with your skills and understanding.
Students in Middle School Math courses spend 15 minutes in this online, skill-building program every day, seven days per week. This 15 minutes is in addition to the weekday homework assigned by the Math teachers, who customize and monitor IXL to improve each student’s computation and conceptual skills.
In the recent winter MAP achievement test results, Grade 7 and Grade 8 students significantly exceeded the national norm for Mathematics. Trinity students do excel in Math, thanks in part to their diligence with IXL.