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Math for adv. Ris 7th grader again: EPGY, Thinkwell, Aleks, Lials, Jacobs Help!!!!!


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I showed my son the EPGY stuff. He thought it looked cool. He solved all the sample questions in the lectures before the answers were given in the pre-alg and Alg. samples. He wants to take the test next week over spring Break or the week we come back. Then he will need I guess the IQ testing done. We have never has any educational Psych testing done. He has always scored above grade level on his standard tests but that is all we have to go on. Then there is the cost of EPGY. It looks great but I would HAVE to have some financial aide. How do they determine need? Do higher educational testing, their EPGY test and standardized scores play a huge part in how much help you recieve??

 

Then I looked at Thinkwell, and Aleks. I saw that I think it was Aleks can be aligned with Lials. I was thinking of using Dolchiniani with him or Jacobs but if anyone can add any insite in using aleks with the intergrated sylabus I would love to hear about it.

 

Think well looked good as well. What is the main difference between ALEKS and Thinkwell? I like the idea that we can try Aleks for 30 days. My son wants to do that as well.

 

He is doing Saxon 8/7 ( new ed) now. So far he has not run into too much new. We are only on Lesson 40 though :)

 

My son asked if he liked Aleks could it replace his math for the rest of the year??? Thoughts on that??

 

Can the thinkwell or aleks be alligned yourself to another test such as the Jacobs or dolchiani??? to be honest I may lean that way over buying a Lial book. I think he would enjoy Jacobs alg and I own Dolchiani and what I have heard about Lials I do not think it would be a good fit.

 

My son is very strong in math but lags in the language arts department (surprise surprise) I would love to allow him to have a math program that he could move through at his own pace with out him having to wait on me to sit down and go over the lesson with him. Then I would have more time to work with him on improving language arts skills.

 

I look forward to hearing your thought on another of my late night ramblings. said son just came out and told me to go to bed - or show him so more math stuff LOL.

 

So i think I will go to bed :)

Good Night!

Chelsea

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I don't think you could go wrong with any of them!

 

Something to know about ALEKS... ALEKS is a great program--I think it is best used as a supplement but it is IMPOSSIBLE to 'allign' it with any other program. The student has a bit of room to choose what concept area they would like to work on--but they do not have the freedom to choose the exact problem type...for example they can choose to work on 'fractions'. Depending on how they tested on fractions the program will come up with a type of problem that 'needs' to be worked out. ALEKS chooses the next type of problem under that concept (student wants to work on multiplying fractions but ALEKS says that they need to work on finding common denominators).

 

I've heard that the Thinkwell program is very good.

 

HTH

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She is in 7th grade, had worked through Singapore 6B, and even spent 6th grade doing Lial's BCM (because I didn't know what to do with her). We decided on Jacobs Algebra for 7th grade and it is working well for both of us. I usually do read the lesson with her so that I know what she's doing should she have any questions, but there have been times she has done it all on her own. The book has very clear lessons with examples and is easy to use. We will be following it with Jacobs Geometry next year.

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Hi Chelsea,

 

Our Ds tested with JHU CTY which is similar to the EPGY program, but just run through Hopkins. He is a math and science guy and we are working about a year ahead of the usual math schedule for our area. He is a jr and is taking a pretty thorough pre-calculus course at home using Foerster.

 

We did Jacobs for both Algebra and geometry, both because they were a good fit and they would dovetail nicely into using Foerster for the higher level stuff. We really liked Jacobs. I don't have any experience with the newer programs that have DVDs and such to go with it as they were not around when we used it.

 

We played around with Thinkwell during Al II because I found out that CTY uses it for their distance ed math and we have considered that for our ds. We used it for the second half of AL II last year and while we liked the Ed Burger lectures, we were a little disappointed in the quality of the exercises. They were too repetitious and the word or real world application problems were all clumped together in one section for each chapter. And there wasn't much variety in those either. I really think that Foerster and Jacobs are stronger courses. Another problem with Thinkwell is there were a fair number of errors in the answers to the exercises and in the testing. There were enough that we got a little frustrated with it, because you would have to call them or email them to get it straightened out. To be fair to them, they always were courteous and always granted credit, but it was somewhat disconcerting to me.

 

I still buy Thinkwell products, but I just use it as a supplement now as opposed to a full course subscription. I would be more likely to fully use their products if it were part of a course ds was taking through CTY because then he would have the input of the tutor as well and would, at least I would hope, have more real world problems and applications supplied through the teacher.

 

We are planning on having him take Calculus at the local CC next year if possible. I think he needs a teacher to work with for that and I don't feel up to the task. But, if for some reason he doesn't test into their Calculus, I think I will probably go with Chalkdust. The biggest drawback I've seen this year to doing the courses on our own at home is that I don't have anywhere to turn for help. And so it often takes a lot out of me to keep the progress in math up. I feel like I am not really able to keep up with ds at this point.

 

I don't know anything about the EPGY programs or how they calculate aid....maybe you could call and find out so that you know what you could reasonably expect from them. Also, you could try posting on the gifted board, I've seen other EPGY reference over there.

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My 7th grader is using Jacobs Algebra and Kinetic Books Algebra this year. She switches from one program to the other at the end of each chapter. This has worked out really well. Jacobs seemed intimidating to her after years of Singapore Math. She could do it, but the look of it was overwhelming to her.

 

She does Kinetic books completely on her own and only calls me when she can't figure something out. I have to "present" Jacobs to her.

 

The combination is working really well for her and I figure the extra time it will take her to do two complete programs instead of one is just fine. She's only a 7th grader and she's a very young 7th grader at that.

 

http://www.kineticbooks.com

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Kinetic Books is a program all by itself. You can sign up for a trial period at their website.

http://www.kineticbooks.com/support/algebratrial.php

 

I know they are willing to work with hsers because I was part of a hs focus group they held a week ago.

 

I don't know how long the trial period is. I was able to download the entire program at no cost during the free trial program they offered when they first introduced the program. Up until September 1, 2007, you could download it for free and use it until June 1, 2008. My dd won't be done with it yet, so I'll need to pay for it in order for her to continue with it.

 

The whole program is done on the computer. The text has lots of interactive examples and a lot of the text (but nowhere near the whole thing) has an audio feature. Many of the sample problems offer you the option of asking for another example and I think those examples are unlimited (all they do is change the numbers). You really need to see it in order to tell how it works.

 

There are some games, but they really aren't that frequent, maybe one game every two chapters.

 

The TOC is here: http://www.kineticbooks.com/algebra/tables.html

If you scroll down to "content by section", you will see a complete listing of all the sections. My dd just finished the chapter on functions last week.

 

KB doesn't divide up easily into daily lessons, so I just have my dd set a timer for 40 minutes. When the timer goes off, she finishes the section that she's in and stops for the day.

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I showed my son the EPGY stuff. He thought it looked cool.

Chelsea

 

My dd took EPGY Math 6 and 7. While she loved her tutor and enjoyed the program overall, I felt that dd's retention of the material was poor, so we switched to Jacobs Algebra this year. We both LOVE Jacobs (dd's using it alongside a dvd from http://www.KingdomTutors.com ). Although dd has always been strong in math, she never felt self-confident in it until we started using Jacobs. For her the textbook approach was a better fit than the online EPGY material (where it's simple to get a "wrong" answer by mistyping the response).

 

I've heard that it's not difficult to receive a financial break from EPGY.

 

HTH.

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I think I have a game plan... Thank you ladies :)

 

For 7th grade I will use:

Jacob's Elementary Alg.

Aleks for math (30 min - 1hr daily)

And will do LOF Beg. Alg with all kids as as intro for one, an enrichment for another and a review for the oldest)

 

Vanderbilt has an enrichment Sat for gifted and talented kids that looks interesting and only 45 min away so I think we will look in to that as well.

 

We will see where we go from here at the end of next year or when ever he finishes the jacobs book.

 

Thank you!

Chelsea

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