Updated 1 Sept 2008
"If your memory of maths lessons ranks akin to being eaten alive by a shark, try this CD tutor.
White Space has a formidable reputation with primary school teachers, many of whom already use Wordshark, the company's literacy programme. Now the company has launched Numbershark to teach numeracy to children aged six and over. It may have similar objectives to the government for teaching maths, but Numbershark's approach is quite different. Education ministers remain tentative, hoping that children will be able to cope with maths in adulthood. But Numbershark wants children to conquer their difficulties so they can positively enjoy maths.
There are 30 games, each finely graded . Some add meaning and understanding to addition,
White Space has a formidable reputation with primary school teachers, many of whom already use Wordshark, the company's literacy programme. Now the company has launched Numbershark to teach numeracy to children aged six and over. It may have similar objectives to the government for teaching maths, but Numbershark's approach is quite different. Education ministers remain tentative, hoping that children will be able to cope with maths in adulthood. But Numbershark wants children to conquer their difficulties so they can positively enjoy maths.
There are 30 games, each finely graded . Some add meaning and understanding to addition,
Reviews
PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD - By Debbie Davies
PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD -
subtraction, multiplication and division. Others allow you to practise what you know. All teach fluency in mental arithmetic. It is at its best with tricky concepts like swapping tens for units, or understanding that one of the numbers in a multiplication or division equation stands for a number of groups rather than a number of objects.
Numbershark's graphics are a surprise to those used to US west coast-style animation. The mix of stick men and silhouette shapes could hardly be more basic but they communicate with children as effectively as the simple graphics which Bandai uses on its virtual-pet screens.
In testing, our six- and eight-year-old children loved the games. Older children realised for the first time that
Numbershark's graphics are a surprise to those used to US west coast-
In testing, our six-
adding or taking away nine is easier if you use ten instead and then recalculate one up or down. As with Kumon maths, there is plenty on the value of numbers. Games make you instinctive about where, on a board of numbers up to 1,000 or more, one would place a figure.
As the price tag suggests, the content of the program is vast, and the incremental steps for each game are kept as small as possible so that the maths is never too difficult: as soon as we set problems which were too tricky for our testers, they disliked the program. The onus is on the parent to log their child in and oversee their choice of games and the level at which they play. For parents prepared to take the time, Numbershark promises to make pocket calculators almost redundant."
As the price tag suggests, the content of the program is vast, and the incremental steps for each game are kept as small as possible so that the maths is never too difficult: as soon as we set problems which were too tricky for our testers, they disliked the program. The onus is on the parent to log their child in and oversee their choice of games and the level at which they play. For parents prepared to take the time, Numbershark promises to make pocket calculators almost redundant."