America's Maths Teacher - TOS review

I have another TOS review for you this week! This time it's about a maths program available online called America's Maths Teacher. This site is quite new, only coming online in August, and is based on the maths instructional materials from Maths Essentials.

Upon entering this site, you will notice there are four areas to visit:

• Learning Centers - contain a list of all the video tutorials available
• Exercise Center - for worksheets available as PDF files
• Evaluation Center - for pretests, quizzes and evaluations
• Resource Center - for charts, speed drills and free lessons

This site is designed to be used for instruction in Basic Math Concepts right through to Alegbra in the high school years (with Algebra II coming), so we're looking at grade 4 upwards. Rick Fisher presents each of these lessons in a format where you hear his voice and view the screen as a whiteboard. As he instructs and writes, the child copies the work down to learn the processes.

Mariposa was not ready to use this product. The only videos she could view and understand were a few very early lessons in the Basic Maths Skills. This will be of more use to her in future years.

We have Maestro in the beginning stages of learning about Algebraic Equations, as well as Ratios and Proportions these past weeks. To reinforce his lessons, we've been able to view the video tutorials.

A fun way to begin using this site for regular use is through the speed drills. You can select the operation on which you'd like to focus (ie: addition, multiplication or subtraction), using it as a warm-up a few times a week.

The video lessons are of a fairly short length, making the lesson concise enough to keep the attention, but also quite adequately making the point to be learnt. For example, the Basic lesson on Proportions is only just over 5 minutes long. Note, though, that some videos do go longer, and sometimes you may need to pause the video and review again before moving on.

After viewing the lessons, your children can then complete the worksheets (answer keys are available if you check the bottom of each section). From there, you can use the evaluation pages, but NOTE: the child does have to had completed all lessons in the section first. Ie: Maestro has to first complete all the lessons on "Ratios, Proportions and Percents" before commencing the evaluation.

There are some parts of this site you can access for free, but most of it requires an annual membership fee of $195US per family.

This site is still being modified with improvements, so you may notice new things after the fact that I've posted this review which I hadn't seen. I think this site is quite useful to parents who may need some extra help with math instruction, especially the instructional videos. Keep in mind the type of learner your child is as this is a visual and audio approach.

NB - I received this 60 day subscription from TOS for the purpose of review. There is no other compensation and the opinions are my own. Thank you to TOS and America's Math Tutor for the use of this product. If you'd like to read further reviews on this product, please click HERE.