Lexx Learn: A Cool and Free Maths Tool to Track Your Child’s Achievement
Have you ever wondered how your child’s maths performance compares to that of other children? Shuba Swaminathan, a math mom and Maths Insider reader shares details of her team’s cool new online assessment tool and how fellow Maths Insider readers can get involved.
Shuba, you’re a math mom, tell us about your maths journey.
Hi Caroline! My maths journey is similar to yours. I am an engineer by training, and grew up enjoying maths and science. I had some great teachers, and was fortunate to grow up in an environment where my abilities and interest in maths and science was encouraged.
Do you have children? Do they like maths? How do you support their maths learning?
I have a 6 year old son. He likes maths now but he was not like that always! It was challenging in the beginning until I realized that he has a very practical bent of mind. I couldn’t get him interested in doing maths for maths sake – traditional worksheets and methods never worked for us. However, when I pointed out the practical implication of what he was learning, I found I had a very interested and engaged student on my hands. That was an “aha” moment for us. I have since adapted my teaching style by creating teaching moments from ordinary events. The balancing trick is to find a practical application of mathematics that interests him, but not so interesting that he gets lost in the details of the example instead of focussing on the math!
What is LexxLearn and what motivated you to set it up?
The premise behind our product is that children learn in a variety of ways, at their own pace. One size does not fit all. On the other hand, parents are increasingly concerned about the competition their child will face, in this increasingly flat world. Given each child’s individual learning style and level, and the lack of a global standard, it’s hard for a parent to gauge how their student’s academic performance compares to their peers elsewhere in the country and the world. LexxLearn intends to address this problem.
The first step is to identify a child’s current knowledge level. This is the “know” in our motto. To do this, we identified the state in the US with the best performance in Mathematics across grade levels, over the past 10 years. The US Department of Education has ranked Massachusetts as number 1 consistently. We therefore chose Massachusetts as the bar.
A student in grades 3 through 10 can visit our web site and choose to take an assessment at their grade level. These are the original assessments created by the Massachusetts Department of Education, we did not create them. The assessments were taken by all students in Massachusetts Public Schools towards the end of the academic year. So if your student is still early in the school year, (s)he may want to take the assessment for the grade last completed.
Once a student takes an assessment, we will email you a report that summarizes all the questions, the correct answers and the student’s answers. We will also email you a detailed report that outlines what percentage of Massachusetts students who attempted the question answered correctly, and how the student performed. In addition, the report will contain mapping of each question to specific concepts as outlined in Massachusetts standards.
Future versions will recommend content based on identified knowledge gaps. This is the “Grow” in our motto. The content will be crowd sourced as well as drawn from already published content. The recommendations will be vetted by educators for relevancy and accuracy.
Once the student has consumed the recommended content, we will administer another assessment that specifically tests concept mastery. This is the “Achieve” in our motto.
You’re looking for families to beta test your system. What will families get out of this?
Families will get an accurate idea of how their student’s performance compares to that of peers in top ranked Massachusetts. In the future, we plan to add standards of other US states and countries such as China, Singapore, India, Israel, Japan, UK and Finland. Subsequent versions will also recommend content tailored to their student’s knowledge levels and learning styles.
This service is free to our beta testers.
How can families contact you if they want to find out more?
Our web site is www.lexxlearn.com. I can be reached by email at shuba at lexxlearn dot com. Or, you can call us at 716-LEXX-LRN.
