IXL Learning~ An Online Resource for Practicing K-12 Skills {Product Review}

We first used IXL Learning several years ago. When we had the chance to review the annual membership to IXL again, I was curious to see how the program had changed and if we would like it. Both the boys enjoy online learning opportunities, so I hoped that this would be something we could incorporate into our routine. 

About the Product

IXL Learning is a comprehensive online resource for grades K-12 to use as a supplemental program to check on skills in Math, Language Arts, Social Studies, Science, and Spanish. While not a complete curriculum, it can be used as a practice or review resource to see how your children are doing in different areas within these subjects at their grade level.

IXL provides your child recommendations based on their continuous diagnostic results which can help you guide your child to where they need to practice on. The continuous diagnostic results are a great starting spot if you want to know where your child has holes or just needs more practice. The continuous diagnostic asks simple questions over the whole of the language arts and math spectrum, and adjusts the grade level of everything as it goes. This allows the program to help find a range to provide recommendations for your child’s work.

The program also provides analytics to help you see real-time stats for pinpointing the correct grade levels and what their levels are on certain key strands within the subjects. The analytics provide current student activity, scores, questions for practice sessions, and to check standards with state standard alignments.

IXL Learning is aligned to the Common Core State Standards, making it easy to find practice questions specifically tailored to each required standard with the subjects of Math, Language Arts, Social Studies, and Science. You can tailor it to whatever state you are in to provide even the standards for state childhood development.

Example of how the skills are associated with the common core standards

IXL works on a computer, tablet, or phone with an internet connection. There are apps for iPad/iPhone, Kindle Fire, Android, and Chrome books which can be downloaded for free, making it a program you can take anywhere. 

Setting up your children is easy. Once you receive your subscription, you can set up the profiles for each of your children you will be using it with. Pick their name, an icon for signing in, and a secret word to access their account. You don’t have to pick a grade, because the diagnostic allows you find cater their learning experience to where they need to be in any subject. They also are able to move between grades in any and all of the subjects.

Here are the current diagnostic reports for each of my boys. Because this is a continuous diagnostic, your child can continue to fine tune their diagnostic scores/ranges. The ranges are easy to translate—if they get a 500 level, it means 5^th grade work. 700 levels are 7^th grade work. You will notice that both of them have a fairly wide range on their diagnostic reports—this is because I didn’t have them keep working on it endlessly (it seriously is CONTINUOUS). I just wanted to explore what it was, as this is a new addition since we reviewed the program last.

Language Arts Diagnostic: Child 1 (7th grade)

Math Diagnostic: Child 1 (7th grade)

Language Arts Diagnostic: Child 2 (3rd grade)

Math Diagnostic: Child 2 (Third Grade)

One thing I will add—my youngest child discovered an “I don’t know this yet” button which saved him from a lot of incorrect answers. His brother did not. Interestingly enough, my youngest (age 8) was placed in junior high and high school level recommendations which made us laugh. We’re sure he’s just a good guesser. LOL. This is why we didn’t use the recommendations for the boys. They were way too off the wall in their recommendations for starting points. I let them simply dive in using their grade levels as guides—one worked in third grade, the other in seventh grade.

So what does it look like in use?
In the 7th grade social studies and science, it could be for them to read a passage and then answer questions, or it may be matching terms with images. Or putting things in a certain order. Or labeling things. My oldest enjoyed the reading passages in science as they gave him information about things like the Apollo missions, or rockets, or things relating to physics. He found the geography he did easy as it as about maps and earth's crusts. There were harder topics, but I discovered he went for the things he knew first.

The 3rd grade math and language arts was what you would expect in a workbook. There were math problems that involved simply solving them, or identifying wrong answers, or putting things in order--usual math stuff. The language arts involved some reading and comprehension questions or identifying parts of speech, or other usual language arts review. My 3rd grader also did a little science and enjoyed reviewing parts of matter, and classifications of living/non-living. There was a lot of matching or simple clicking--no writing. 

If you desire to pick things for them to work on yourself, you can log in under your own account and then click on a subject. In the right corner, you will see the list of children you have signed up—click one. Then when you open their grade level you want them to work on, you can click small stars next to the streams within a topic and it will tell them you want to them to do those. I did this for a few things, but I mostly let them just pick skills they wanted to do on their own. 

The analytic section is useful for keeping track of your child’s progress. You can see all the things it shows you in this report I pulled up for my oldest child. These are all printable too.

Your child is able to earn awards (virtual) and certificates as they work through the various topics of language arts and math.

Here are two examples of certificates that each of my boys have earned through their use of the program--unlike the virtual awards, these certificates can be earned for any subject.

There are so many things that are on this site, you really need to get a free trial and try it out for yourself.

My Thoughts on the Product

IXL has definitely improved since we used it last. I like the diagnostic resource, and that they expanded beyond Language Arts and Math--as well as expanding on the Language Arts. These were things I actually discussed in my previous review about things I'd like to see change. I appreciate the analytics for checking in on the boys. I especially like the troublespots tab, as it shows me if a boy has had trouble on any particular skill over and over. This showed me that my youngest had some issues with odds and evens and told me he needed some review there.

The boys especially like using IXL on my Kindle because they can write with their fingers for math and it will turn it into numbers. No typing. They actually DID better using the Kindle. We never had any malfunctions with it, so we will continue to use the IXL app as the primary method for working.

My oldest had some challenges with the 7^th grade science, as it kept getting stuck on a skill and even if he completed it with a smart score of 100, it never PASSED the topic. No matter how many times he tried. I am sure this is a glitch. He also became frustrated when he had to spell things correctly when typing out names—like in social studies for continent identification. He had to remember how to spell the names AND use capital letters for them. There were times he missed problems simply for this reason which made him mad.

One thing that you have to remember when using this program—it’s NOT designed to teach. It is a review. It is practice. If your child DOES miss something, they will be given a crash course mini-lesson like this one below.

Along the way, your child earns a SmartScore. So what’s a SmartScore? “The SmartScore is based on IXL’s proprietary algorithm and is the best possible measure of how well a student understands a skill.” When a student begins a skill, they start at 0. As they answer questions correctly, their SmartScore increases, but if the question is answered incorrectly, it will decrease. The SmartScore is not simply based on the percentage of questions correct, but also is calculated based on things like the number of questions completed, question difficulty, and more. A skill is considered mastered when a SmartScore reaches 100, but there isn’t a set number of questions they have to complete that to reach mastery.  This is why it’s good to encourage your children to shoot for a score of 80 which is considered good, then a score of 90 which is considered excellent. This may encourage them if they struggle to reach the 100.

My boys had a love/hate with the SmartScore. They hated that STUPID mistakes could lower it and then they had to increase the number of questions they did to boost it back up again. Even if I said they could stop at 80, they would persist until they reached 100. Sometimes doing over 50 questions in a skill to get there.

Long story short—what do we think?

I think it is a good practice program. I like that they can work independently and I can still keep an eye on their progress through analytics, and also emailed reports I received as they accomplished something or for weekly check-ins.

I get emailed notifications like this!

I like that they each found skills they enjoyed working on and that they can move between the grades and skills according to what they want to work on. My 7^th grader exclusively uses IXL for Science and Social Studies—two of his most favorite subjects. My 3^rd grader uses it primarily for Math, which is his favorite subject, but dabbles in Science and Language Arts too. 

Will we continue it?
Yes. They like it and it gets them more practice without me nagging. In fact, they ask to do it and then persist in working through a skill for quite awhile regularly asking me for more time. I'm usually anti-common core, but I really don't mind this kind. It's just a review and lets me know how they are doing within their grade level--and see what kind of things would be expected to be known in the grade level. I don't have a problem with that. It's not LESSONS. It's simply practice.

Will I renew it when our year is up? 
No. But we will enjoy using it to brush up on skills as we have it.

Want to Know More?

We've been reviewing the annual membership to IXL through IXL Learning for the last several weeks. You have seen what we think about it, but I encourage you to visit others on the review crew to see how they used it, and what other options there are--including the Spanish!

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