For one week only, everyone can try Sumdog English free of charge.

Normally, students need a Sumdog English subscription to use these new questions. (This is different from Sumdog Mathematics, where games are free to play, and you only need a subscription if you want to access the reporting and activities.)

Also, during February, we’re offering a very special introductory discount to schools: save 75% on the full price of a Sumdog English subscription. During March and April, though, the price will rise as we add more to Sumdog English.

Find out how to try Sumdog English here. Hurry, though - it’ll only be freely available to unsubscribed users until the end of February!

Last year over 10,000 schools around the world took part in one of Sumdog’s local maths contests. 

Students had a great time, and many teachers noticed a significant improvement in test scores.

We are now working with educational professionals to run the largest series of contests Australia and New Zealand have ever seen! 

The first national contests start on 1 March. It’s free to enter, and the top school will win a maths software package worth AU$750!

Click here to find out how to join in the fun - we hope your students can take part!

During February, we’re launching a brand new part of Sumdog: Sumdog English.

It has thousands of questions covering vocabulary, reading and grammar for ages 6-13.  They’ve been developed with the help of hundreds of teachers around the world, and use all the Sumdog games that students know and love.

Students can practice many skills - ranging from fundamentals, such as sight words, plurals and opposites, through tenses and sentence building, to conditionals and synonyms.  Sumdog English learns about each student as they work, and tailors the questions to each one’s ability.

In addition, teachers get access to all of Sumdog’s premium tools for their subscribed students.  You can run detailed progress reports, create tailor-made student activities and customize what each student works on.

To use Sumdog English, your students will need to have a Sumdog English subscription.  (This is different to Sumdog Mathematics, where games are free to play, and you only need a subscription if you want to access the reporting and activities.)

During February, though, you can save 75% on a Sumdog English subscription.

Meet Snowball, the latest addition to the Sumdog family.

In the game, you get to stop the evil chihuahuas in their tracks by pounding their snowmobile with snowballs!

This is what happened when a lively group of 7 year-olds tried it for the first time.

Good news: we’ve extended our Holiday Offer until January 31, as we’ve heard from some schools who couldn’t make it in time for the December deadline.

Schools that purchase subscriptions for at least 100 students between 1 December 2012 and 31 January 2013 will get two great extras:

• Yenka Mathematics for your whole school: Sumdog’s sister software lets you experiment with 3D shapes, coordinates, probability and statistics.
  
  
• Play new games before anyone else: our new games are now only available to subscribers for the first few months.
  
  Snowball is hot off the press this week. Stop the evil chihuahuas in their tracks by pounding their snowmobile with snowballs…
   
  
  
  
• And we’ve added some new 10% discount vouchers for the early birds.

Sounds good?  Click here to find out how to get it.

At the end of October, Pleasant Elementary’s third grade students dominated Sumdog’s US national contest, with an overall score of 869!

They loved the contest so much, they even got Sumdog T-shirts printed!

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Ezra: “I think Sumdog is a great educational game for kids of all ages!” 
Nick: “Sumdog is a game where you can learn things you didn’t know.” 
Jade: “I think Sumdog is a fun way to do math!”
Mia: “I LOVE Sumdog!  It taught me how to do division.”

If you’d like Sumdog T-shirts for your students, visit Sumdog’s store.

To bring in the holiday season, we’re running a very special offer.

Subscribe 100 students or more by December 22, and you’ll get two great extras:

• Yenka Mathematics for your whole school: Sumdog’s sister software lets you experiment with 3D shapes, coordinates, probability and statistics.
  
  
• Play new games before anyone else: our new games are now only available to subscribers for the first few months.
  
  Snowball is hot off the press this week. Stop the evil chihuahuas in their tracks by pounding their snowmobile with snowballs…
   
  
  
  
• And there’s a 10% discount for the early birds. Just because we’re feeling festive.

Sounds good?  Click here to find out how to get it.

We’ve almost doubled Sumdog’s coverage of the Common Core State Standards this week. 

Sumdog’s questions now cover 96 new skills, spread across grades 1 through 6.  

The key new areas are percentages, negative numbers, fractions and decimals. We’ve also included money skills - such as percentage discounts, and how much change you should receive.

To try the new money skills, go to the “training” activity on the student homepage, click the “Money” topic under “Select your topic”, and then click “Choose skill”.  You’ll see all of the money skills listed.

If you’ve not yet switched to Common Core State Standards, you can do so on your school’s skills page.

Sumdog’s local and national contests have been a success so far, with a total of 4206 schools taking part since the beginning of the school year.

Two of the UK national winners - both from Scotland - have shared their experience with us.

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From St John’s Primary, Port Glasgow:

“St John’s pupils are really enthusiastic and motivated to play Sumdog. They are learning new maths concepts each day and love playing in school and at home. A fantastic site that has captured the attention of our pupils!”

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From St John’s RC Primary, Edinburgh:

“The energy from the pupils seems to grow with each passing competition in which they take part, as does their mathematical ability. The pupils were very excited and wanted regular daily updates with this contest. Speed, accuracy and confidence have all improved, and continue to improve, with the help of Sumdog.”

As you know, students answer a lot of questions on Sumdog.  And with each question they answer, we gather information about their mathematical skills.

Teachers can use Sumdog’s reports to access this information, and find out more about their accuracy and speed across all the skills.  You can choose which students and skills the report covers, and over which time period.

This week, we’ve made some big performance improvements to the reports.  They’ll be especially helpful if you’re comparing a lot of students.  

Remember, too, that we’ve given every teacher 10 free reports - so you can use them to learn about your students’ progress even if you don’t have a subscription.  

Knockando Primary School was the overall winner of one of Sumdog’s UK national contests in September.

Fiona Burness, the teacher who led the team to victory shared her thoughts with us:

“I think Sumdog is a great, motivational, educational resource which improves students’ mental maths ability as they can learn from their corrections which are shown. My class are so enthusiastic about using the website and having the competitions makes them even more determined to do their best.”

If you would like to share your experience with us, we’d love to hear from you also.

Sumdog’s contests are now in full swing. Last week alone, we had around 1000 schools taking part!

Congratulations to the national winners so far:

It’s not too late to join in the fun - local and national contests are running until the end of December. Find out more here.

Over the next few weeks, we’re running our biggest ever series of inter-school contests. 

We’ve set up over 500 contests in partnership with districts and counties right across the USA.  In the UK, we’re working with around half of the local authorities.

It’s free to enter, and there are prizes to be won.  To take part, students just play Sumdog’s games.  Every correct answer adds to your score.

Click here to find out more - we hope your students can take part!

We spoke to Kelly Beleckas, a teacher from Long Beach, NY, about her students’ experiences with Sumdog. 

If you would like to share your experience with us, we’d love to hear from you. 

Good news for everyone out there with long hair - and for those who’d like to try the look, too.

Sumdog now lets you choose long hair for your avatar.  There are loads styles to choose from. You’ll find them in your profile.

As usual, you can choose the colour - and complete the perfect look by buying clothes, musical instruments and sports gear. 

Also, from the start of September, we’ve changed the opening hours of Sumdog’s shop. It’ll close at 9am on weekdays, and re-open at 3.30pm.

Your teacher can also open the shop during these hours, by starting a lesson.