Math Detective: Beginning
© 2006 The Critical Thinking Co.
This is a collection of 37 multi-step math story problems, many of which use graphs or tables in order to get the answer. Of the six products from The Critical Thinking Co., this is one of the best designed. For example, in one story, a boy's dog dies, and he uses a table to better understand the relative life span of different types of pets. Questions are presented in the form of eight or so multiple choice questions. In several of the questions, children must also highlight the sentence in the story that supports their answer. Mistakes are not well-explained. Other features include the ability to adjust the font size on the fly, and an administrator panel that can be used to turn off the answers to create a test mode. Higher scores win tokens that can be used in three very crude arcade games. The program uses a sign-in feature to remember the progress of multiple students. We tested the Mac OSX version, with no problems. See also Reading Detective: Beginning.
$29.99, Windows XP, Windows 98, Mac OSX
Teaches: math, reading, story problems, tables, charts and graphs
CTR Rating: 80%