TOS Review: America's Math Teacher

When we received our one month subscription for America's Math Teacher from Math Essentials for review, I pulled up the website to peruse it and found this. This is all the video lessons you get access to when you sign up for the one year subscription.  There are over 300 math videos on this site for grades 4 through Algebra I.  They are working to add Algebra II to the website as well. 

The videos are categorized by Basic Math, Advanced math, Pre-Algebra and Algebra I.  This website is meant to be a complete math curriculum but it could also be used to supplement a current math curriculum.

The Videos

I started out by having Precise Prince watch a video of my choosing.  (Precise Prince loves math!  He does not get this from me!) I was informed afterward that he already knew the info on the video I chose so I let him watch whatever videos he wanted.  He went ahead and watched several videos--more than I asked him to watch.  When I asked him what he thought of the videos he said he liked most of them but didn't want to watch the ones in which he already knew the concept.  

I also sat down and watched a few videos. The videos are to the point and easy to understand. The video shows the instructor writing the problems-black ink on a white background so no pretty, bright colors. The instructor's voice is calm and his pace is just right-not too fast and not too slow. I think he does a good job of teaching the concepts. I made sure to watch a video on mixed fractions (not my area of expertise) and once the video was finished I understood how to work out the problem. More importantly, Precise Prince liked the videos and how things were explained and he understood what was being taught.  You can check out a few of their videos for free here.

The Evaluations

There is an on-line evaluation section that could be used in a couple of ways.  You could have your child start with it to help you determine where to start with watching the videos. You could also have him do an evaluation at the end of watching the videos and use the evaluation like a test.  I had Precise Prince do an on-line evaluation to see what they were like. They are a series of math questions that you answer and you receive an evaluation of how you did right after finishing it. It's like an on-line test. This is where he became frustrated. After spending some time answering about 60 questions, he did not receive the evaluation results. It appeared the website froze up. I then did an evaluation myself and I did get the results. However, the test did not score everything correctly. There were answers that I did answer correctly that were scored as incorrect and there was one answer that they had incorrect.

This is a new website and Rick, the owner said they are still working on a few glitches. He really wants glitches reported so they can fix them quickly. I reported the problems I had and quickly received an email that they were fixed. However, I took the same test again and it had some different questions on it. When I received the evaluation, a couple of the correct answers were missing. My answers showed up but I did not get credit for them. There is still some work needed to be done to make the on-line evaluations truly helpful.

The Written Exercises

There are also written exercises you can print out and have your child do.  There are answer sheets to the written exercises so you can correct them yourself.  You would not even need the on-line evaluations to use this program. 

The written exercises have review problems and speed drills on most of the worksheets.  You can print out only the pages you need so no wasted paper.  I had Precise Prince do a couple of worksheets related to the videos he watched.  He did well and since I had him work on some fraction problems we haven't done before, I felt the exercises showed the video taught him the concept well.
You can check out a few of the written exercises for free here.

On-line Speed Drills

Another on-line option offered by America's Math Teacher are speed drills.  The speed drills are for adding, subtracting, or multiplying single digits.  I had Precise Prince try it out.  As quick as he usually is to understand math concepts, he has not mastered the memorization of the times tables. The speed drills weren't his favorite part of the website, but as the mom, I liked them and would definitely have him use the speed drills to improve his speed.


I see this website has potential.  My son and I both really liked the videos however, I would not be using the on-line evaluation forms at this time. The written exercises and on-line speed drills are great.  Personally, I think this website could be a whole curriculum even without using the evaluations.

The cost for a one year subscription is $195 for the family.  You can use it for all your children, but can only be signed in on one computer at a time. 

You can purchase a subscription to American's Math teacher here. 

To see what my fellow crewmates had to say go here.

(Disclaimer: I received a subscription at no charge for my honest opinion on this product. No other compensation was received.)