As a teacher with a particular interest in mathematics I am always on the lookout for fun and easy to use websites which can back up and re-enforce both teaching and learning in my classroom. Last year as a school we invested a lot of money into setting up the whole school on Mathletics which was a superb site that allowed us to monitor the progress of each child in the school and encouraged and motivated the children to practice their maths skills after school hours. All of the teachers found this an extremely beneficial tool to monitor progress however as with everything as a school we had to tighten our budget and so this was one of the things which we felt we would unfortunately have to forego in favour of other more pressing needs.
We were delighted then when the Maths Recovery teacher in the school found a new, and best of all free site, which can do the same as mathletics at no cost. This site is calledwww.mangahigh.com. Mangahigh is an English site which was set up by Toby Rowland and a team of mathematicians who had a great interest in providing a fun and interactive way to improve children’s maths skills. The site is compiled of purpose built casual games which balance fun and learning. The games cover many aspects of the curriculum. Once the school is registered each teacher can create a login for themselves and from there can monitor the progress of every child in their class. The site gives the teacher the ability to set challenges for the children and set a date of completion for the task. It is then possible to monitor how the children do in the task and if indeed they do complete it.
From the students point of view it provides each of them with a profile which they can edit to suit themselves. The children are told about any challenges set by the teacher when they log in and are encouraged to take on other children in challenges. If the child has completed all the challenges set they can then request another challenge from the teacher or join A+ Quest on the site itself which involves a series of different activities. All in all we have found as a school that this is a superb free resource that has great benefits for learning.