Blog 2

Hello.  Brandi Lantz here again.  As I said before, I am hoping to teach kindergarten in the near future.  One question that I have is do students, especially kindergarteners, really like working with programs like IXL? So, this is something I thought I should check out.  I also had the question of how can I differentiate for different students while using IXL?  These two questions, in my eyes, seem very important because if we use programs that our students enjoy it will be easier to engage them and being able to easily differentiate for my students will be very helpful in the classroom. 

I spoke to a current kindergarten teacher that uses IXL in the classroom.  She has used the program for the last two years and says her students love when they get to “play” on IXL.  “These students do not even realize that they are learning during this time, they think they are playing,” she said.  I think it is so amazing when we can engage students in learning and practicing without having to push them into it.  I also spoke to a few kindergarten students.  They first informed me that they are first graders now because it is summer and they finished kindergarten! They used IXL through the past year in their math class.  They would get so excited when their teacher would let them “play” on the iPad doing IXL.  For some of them, it seemed like that was the highlight of their day. So, I think that the answer is yes, the students do really like working with IXL.

When looking through the different lessons on IXL, it is amazing that you can find something to go along with any lesson you are planning.  I also find it so exciting that within the IXL program there are levels from preschool all the way through high school.  With having this available to us, we can work with students who are struggling and go to a lower grade and find a lesson that we think will help them to better understand and move them forward.  We can also look ahead to future grades for those students that are excelling beyond the level that we are teaching.  I love that there is the capability of helping so many different levels all within the same program. There are many good programs out there; however, having one that can move across grade levels with so much ease is very exciting and I believe will be very beneficial.