We have been reviewing IXL Learning - IXL online annual membership recently in our homeschool. IXL is an online learning program that makes practicing assignments more fun. Created for Preschool through 12th grade, IXL Learning provides over 2,500 activities that allows kids to practice and master essential education skills in topics that include Math, Language arts, Science, Social Studies, and even Spanish.
IXL Learning - IXL is a practice to mastery skills program. As your students works their way through skills, IXL Learning has Continuous Diagnostic that adjusts materials to your student's abilities. This ensures that the student continues to make progress, stay on track, and in most cases even exceed what is expected of them.
This is a program that I had been contemplating, but not sure how the girls would like it. For the most part, they DO NOT like "practicing" skills. Learning games they are ok with. And forget worksheets, they are not fans of those either. So I have been trying to figure out how to get them to "master" skills they have been learning, and also have the abilities to document those mastered skills.
IXL Learning has been a great help in this area. Caty has been working through the Spanish areas. She has had a couple semesters of elementary Spanish. So we just looked for her skill set, since this program is written for younger to older students. We were able to find several sections in her levels that she was able to review and even learn new phrases in. In one section I thought it was great that culture and tradition facts were also included to help expand her knowledge. It wasn't just about memorizing and repeating phrases.
She was able to earn certificates as she finished various levels. I received them in my email, and so I could easily track her progress.
I get a weekly report in my email to let me know how the kids are progressing.
Lydia was working in the Social Studies area. She was working on areas of Citizenship, that are not covered in our current World History curriculum. It was an area that I know she needed some extra help in remembering. These were not just all review questions. They did provide reading material and graphs to help her understand topics and answer questions.
I was very impressed with the material presentation in the Social Studies sections. Yes it was a review of topics for "seventh" grade level, but some of the topics she had not done yet, and she was still able to learn with the help of the information provided.
Depending on the topic and subject, you are looking at roughly 20 minutes, but maybe longer with upper level math to finish each lesson area. IXL could be used daily or weekly along with your current curriculum to reinforce the materials your student needs for mastery. This is all tracked inside the parent section of your login. You can see how much time they have spent in the various areas, and also what areas that they are struggling with.
The girls do get really excited when they finish a lesson and they see they have earned a reward. I honestly have not had them react to "virtual" rewards like this. As she has progressed, she asks me to print her certificates so she can see them hanging by her work area.
The User interface is very well laid out. You can simply pick by grade level or topic. There are thousands of topics for all grades levels and almost every subject that you are looking for.
Depending on your state, IXL does match up with state grade level standards. So if you need that for state records, you will have that also if you are using IXL.
IXL Learning - IXL really has created a great educational world for kids to visit and learn to mastery. It's very easy to use and provides wonderful review for so many areas of your child's education, I highly encourage you to check out IXL. You can also click on the banner below to see how other Crew members from the Homeschool Review Crew felt about the IXL Learning materials, and how they used it in their homes.
I like the feature that IXL provides different subjects with different levels, which gives students lots of freedom to find what they like to learn, and it is helping students to explore their talent. Sometimes, I would like my son to learn knowledge that teaches in school, and I would need him to practice what he has learned, so I got him some worksheets and training programs from Beestar because their learning course is affordable and great for students to enhance their foundation.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Rayman. IXL is a great source to utilize but sadly we didn't like the harsh grading system as much. The kids were really struggling with losing confidence and we also tried out Beestar. It's a really great tool.
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