When looking for a thing that offers the learning experience for students, as a teacher, you may include AdaptedMind into the list that you want to try. As this website is paid, meaning it is not a free one, you may want to know if it is worth trying before spending your money on it and before asking your students to use it as well. So, is AdaptedMind worth trying? Here is the review for teachers:
About
Details:
- Grades: Pre-K-8
- Subjects and skills: English language arts, math, science, social studies, critical thinking
- Price: Free to try
- Platforms: Website
AdaptedMind refers to the website for learning. This website features video lessons and interactives. The main content on the website is math and reading. In addition, there are also contents for social studies, social emotional learning or SEL, and science. Apparently, all the subjects share a similar visual design. However, each of them has its own uniqueness.
In the science subject, there are some videos to watch by the students. After watching them, they can answer questions. If they succeed, they will be able to be rewarded with stars. If they have enough stars, they will be able to get customizable Adventure Badges. The topics in science include space, dinosaurs, and rainforests. All of them are tracked in their Adventurer’s Book.
In the reading experience, students can land their hands for the cast of the characters to find their stolen stories. Before displayed with the reading material, they will be introduced with the key vocabulary that they will find in the stories. Once they are done reading a passage, the next thing that they have to do is to answer a total of three questions if they want to pass the level.
The social studies give a chance to the students to travel through time and space to the country where Pharaoh existed called Egypt. In this country, they will be tasked to help two friends to recover the lost orbs of Pharaoh. It is a must for the students to learn about the likes of obelisks, the Nile, and the Rosetta Stone. In the end, they will be tested with a question. If they manage to get it right, they will be able to successfully gather each orb.
In the math experience, students will have to take a pretest before choosing any lesson in their grade or any other grade that they want. If they can answer everything correctly, they will be able to obtain visual badges. Not only that, they will also get points toward mastery. On the other hand, if they fail, the explanation will be able to be seen on the screen.
It is possible for the teachers to assign lessons and register a maximum of 35 students with email free usernames and passwords. On the student progress page, the teachers can see a summary of percentage correct for lessons as well as the total number correct out of 20. On the teacher progress page, they can see an overview for every student. Besides, it also gives access to the same student summary page for every student.
Pros and Cons
Pros:
- It has a great visual.
- The math curriculum is thorough.
Please note that the steps or each method must be carried out in sequence according to the instructions I teach below.
- It is full of issues.
- It is inconsistent and can make people confused.
Reviews
From the Common Sense reviewer:
- Carrie Garges, a classroom teacher:
Engagement:
“The design is colorful and cute, but the points-for-badges system can’t make up for the mostly rote content and questions.”
Pedagogy:
“Surface-level questions don’t challenge or inspire students to dig deeper. Math videos and explanations support different learning needs for older grades. YouTube videos have ads.”
Support:
“There are confusing inconsistencies and layouts for math problems. The audio option is nice. Videos from YouTube can be tough to follow. Some reading levels have a limited selection.”
From the community:
- Nicole C., a homeschooling parent:
“It honestly does not have a good curriculum or goal or lesson path. Hi. There have been attempts to charge my debit card ending in 0196 for almost 2 years now for a charge of $19.95. I entered the membership over two years ago and this debit card is expired but still your company continues to charge it constantly. Please stop and my membership delete my account information.” - Kelly A., a classroom teacher:
“AdaptedMind is very thorough. In each grade level, skills are broken down to their smallest parts for students to practice, and each grade level has dozens of skills for students to choose from. However, the website does not make it clear how these skills are aligned to standards (Common Core State Standards, NCTM standards, etc.). The major drawback of this website is the design. While the badges are beautiful, the fonts and page layouts are clunky. In fact, some of the text on the page could be mistaken for ads. The fonts are also troublesome when it comes to completing the practice problems – it can be difficult to tell a variable X from a multiplication symbol. Many word problems have multiple boxes for students to fill in with values, but it can be unclear exactly what they are supposed to do. Overall, for adaptive math practice in elementary and middle school, you’re better off using one of the many alternatives.” - Pam D., a classroom teacher:
“Overall, this program is great for reinforcing and mastering grade-level appropriate skills in math. AT HOME with my own child: I have a first grader, going into second grade and we had her start on the first grade skills to ensure mastery before working on the next grade level. She was actually asking to get on the computer to practice math! She loved earning points (or jewels) for getting answers right and being able to “buy” items or pets with her jewels! As a parent, I loved that it sends a daily report around midnight for me to analyze the next morning about her work progress the previous day. It will tell me how many questions she completed that day and how many she got wrong. Then, you can see which questions she missed from a particular skill. BEST OF ALL, when analyzing her data for a skill, you can easily click to have them practice more OR click for additional printed worksheets practice so you can guide them on paper with a mini-lesson before they play the game again. NO MORE searching for worksheets to practice AND it’s skill focused and data driven based on their weaknesses. You can have them work at a time increment (Ex: 30 min. each morning or after lunch or dinner) or have them work a particular skill you choose. It’s flexible how you want to use it, but if your child says they want to do more, how can you refuse! It has definitely helped my child become more confident and fluent in math!”
- Nicole C., a homeschooling parent:
AUTHOR BIO
On my daily job, I am a software engineer, programmer & computer technician. My passion is assembling PC hardware, studying Operating System and all things related to computers technology. I also love to make short films for YouTube as a producer. More at about me…
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