If there is one thing that my kids can see coming a mile off, its drill work. They hate it. I don’t blame them either. It’s truly boring and most of it is quite unnecessary. Having one child who really struggles in math and one who breezes through it, I haven’t seen it to be useful at all with either one.

Ten Marks is a program designed to help your child excel in math and they “get it” when it comes to drill work. There is no endless number of problems to slog through. Instead, your child has 10 problems daily to work through. These questions are designed to measure your child’s strength in the concepts taught. Learning is naturally a continuous process and as they develop their strengths and skills, the better they are at mastering a concept.

Ten Marks offers full courses for Grades 3 through 10. They are mapped based on individual state standards, if you follow those. When you sign up, there is a free assessment available to make sure your child is started at his current level.

Some of the things I liked

• the ability to pause the program since our school schedule does not follow a public school schedule at all.
• Rewards and charts that I could customize to encourage and motivate my struggling learner. This was not a list that I chose from but one completely up to me so I can tailor it to our family and educational values. The boys just finished saving up for and purchasing a Wii but they have to earn the time they get to play on it so guess what one of the rewards was? Yep, extra Wii time. You’ve never seen kids so serious and motivated to get their work done on time.
• Fast Tracking for my math whiz so he can move ahead if he has mastery on a subject.
• There were also video lessons to help on areas that introduced new concepts or to review old ones. Unfortunately we have a very slow, unreliable ISP so we couldn’t view the videos but we were able to view them at my BIL’s house just fine so most people shouldn’t have any trouble.
• They also have a hints feature where you can have up to 3 hints per question so I wasn’t running to the computer to help quite so often!
• Program adapability- Based on the student’s strengths and weaknesses, the program can either move ahead to the next thing if they’re “aceing” questions or come up with new lessons on the same concept to give them extra time on a subject. I especially like this because we’ve gone thru several math programs where things were going along nicely exactly by the book and then suddenly we became stuck in quicksand, it seemed. By adapting to the student and spending more time where needed, it ensures that won’t happen.
• Affordability- Ten Marks costs (per student): $10 per month or $49 per 6 months or $89 per year. They also offer a money back guarantee. That seems very affordable since I could just include that in with my yearly curriculum budget and not have to worry about it again until next year.
• Ten Marks uses multiple choice questions and that’s not a bad thing to me.  The answer is not readily apparent and you still have to work through the problem but if you can do it in your head and consistently arrive at the correct answer, that’s great.  That’s a valuable skill that is not being taught enough these days (in the US at least).  While sometimes it is useful to show how you arrived at an answer, requiring it for every problem can become a crutch and actually inhibit mathematical reasoning.      

 What my kids liked

• The rewards of course! My child who really struggles with math has Aspergers so he “strongly prefers” to be able to see what he’s accomplished and what’s left to accomplish. So for him, the charts were also a hit.
• This same child also liked the hints feature for when he really needed it but he tried very hard not to use it. He got very frustrated with himself if he used it since to him, it still felt like he got the problem wrong if he couldn’t do it without help (Things are VERY black and white for him).
• My math whiz kid who age wise would be a third grader but who understands a lot of pre-Algebraic concepts (like adding and subtracting negative numbers) loved the Fast Track feature. I have really tried to guard against gaps in his knowledge while letting him move forward at his own pace.“Skipping things” isn’t an option but its nice to the program adjust to his individual strengths and weaknesses. He doesn’t feel as if he is wasting time on something he already KNOWS. This also gives him a concrete argument for moving ahead to another concept if there is some question as to whether he truly has it down.

What my kids didn’t like

Well, they couldn’t really think of anything! My math whiz loves it. My math struggler doesn’t do cartwheels over it (its still math) but he doesn’t passionately detest it the way math related things used to in the past when he was hitting a brick wall repeatedly. To him, its doable almost to the point of being enjoyable. I can’t begin to tell you how HUGE that is when it comes to math for him!

What I would like to see

• A way to customize school days, weeks, and lessons due in advance. You get emails letting you know which student has worksheets due on certain dates and I think it was based on when you signed up. Our schedule is based on a public school schedule so I just ignored the emails.  We fit 5 days of school into 4 days each week and those days float around between Monday thru Saturday sometimes, depending on what’s going on that week and my husbands work schedule. On top of that, I plan their schedules out 9 weeks in advance in detail so I (and they) know exactly what’s due each week. After 9 weeks, we take a week off and then start a new 9 week cycle. The “On Vacation” button helped with some of that but I still would have like to been able to customize the schedule more.  Perhaps the current system could be the default with the option of customizing it more for those of us who march to our own drumbeats!

Overall, I really like Ten Marks and have added it into our math curriculum.  I think its a valuable addition and will certainly be purchasing a yearly subscription.   Their website is http://www.tenmarks.com  If you’d like to see what other TOS crew members are saying about Ten Marks click HERE. 

Ten Marks provided me with a free subscription to their website so that I could use and expressly test it with my family.  I have provided my opinion on the product and did not receive financial compensation for this review.