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anyone have their child do Algebra 1 TWICE?


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I thought I read a post here several months ago where a mom commented that she always has her children take Algebra 1 two years in a row before moving to Alg. 2. She may have been using Saxon but I can't remember.

 

my daughter is really struggling with algebra. We used saxon 1 last year along with the teacher cd's. She ended up watching a lot of the solutions on the cd's. By the time she was in the last 1/3 of her book she was having to watch almost all the solutions be worked out. She was clueless.

 

This year I had her using Life of Fred Beginning Alg. Went great the first couple of chapters but now she is really struggling again. Should I have her go back and just repeat Saxon alg 1---without the cd solutions?

 

the toughest part for her is the word problems. She has no clue how to even begin to work them out.

 

Thanks

Tracy

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I understand where she's at! We just decided to go a different route..I LOVE Saxon's spiral method for up to grade 8 but found their Algebra and even LOF's Algebra was not the 'way' for my son to master Algebra, he was getting it, but not getting it all the way...I wanted him to build his confidence, so we bought Foerster's Algebra, it's a GREAT fit, it's going piece by piece, building on a foundation and not assuming things, it has enough work problems that give him sustained confidence leading into the next chapter...there are about 120 lessons, he's doing 2 lessons a day with ease..so he should be done in 3 months...so I guess you could say we're doing Algebra 1 twice! :) We started Saxon Algebra and LOF last January...just neither clicked, this one is doing great....

 

I think it's all about the type of learner your child is and sometimes you hit a path where it's easier to just change the text rather than trying to make something work..we'll still go to LOF to recheck his aptitude along the way and even Saxon..but Foerster's has helped him regain his confidence.

 

HTH!

Tara

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We haven't repeated Algebra 1 (yet), but we did have to go back and repeat pre-algebra.

 

My dd took pre-algebra in 8th, then tried to do algebra (chalkdust book and video) in 9th. We made it about 2 months in before she was failing miserably. She just didn't get it.

 

So we went, repeated pre-algebra with a different program (abeka the first time, chalkdust book, no video, the second).

 

She is now getting through it with some more understanding, and we are in month 4. It is still a struggle, but she is able to keep a B average. We also switched to the Lial's algebra book.

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I just found a website called purplemath.com that looks like it explains how to do the word problems. That's where my daughters real struggle is. For the most part she can work through pages of equations but when she sees a word problem it might as well be written in a foreign language. She can't even begin to think of what the first step would be.

 

I'm going to look this website over a bit and see if it might help. they talk about being able to translate the english into mathematical terms. This seems to be her problem. In fact, she has been using Life of Fred for algebra this year after doing Saxon Alg 1 last year. But it's the same problem so I don't think it's a matter of not having the basics down or missing some info. I think she just doesn't know how to translate it into an equation . Definately not an abstract thinker. If you translated the word problem into the equation for her, she would have no problem working the problem to it's solution. Just can't get from the words to the equation.

 

We did e-mail the author of LOF and he felt her problem was translating the english to the math. He helped her with one of her problems by asking her questions about the problem and then it was easy....BUT, given the next word problem she was stuck again. Sigh.....

 

Thanks for reading,

Tracy

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We did algebra twice, and there have been several on the boards who did, for various reasons.

 

Ds "did" algebra in a Waldorf school with a 90's Dolciani book which ended with the quadratic equation but they didn't get through it. I didn't consider that to be an algebra course, so we repeated. We redid it with an 80's Foerster book, where the quadratic equation was half way through.

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There's a little paper back called Solving Algebra Word Problems, by Judy Barclay, that starts with the very simple "translation" from English to math, and goes on from there. She introduces a five step method and applies it to a variety of problem types.

 

Here's a link: http://www.amazon.com/Solving-Algebra-Problems-Judith-Barclay/dp/0534495737/ref=gfix-submit-correction-product-detail

 

I suggest buying it used -- Despite the description on Amazon as having 208 pages, it's only 108 pages, and $18.95 is pretty steep!

 

It looks great to me, but I haven't actually put it into action. So far, the ds I bought it for hasn't had a need.

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We did algebra twice, in 8th and 9th grades. I actually did the same thing way back in the. . . well, I won't say, but there is still much debate about whether all kids are developmentally ready to do abstract algebra in the 8th grade. I repeated it in the 9th grade and ended up majoring in math in college, and loving math. Algebra is the foundation for all higher math. It's worked out well for us here. I expect my younger dd will be ready for algebra earlier because she's such an abstract thinker, but it depends on the child, IMO.

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We did algebra twice, in 8th and 9th grades. I actually did the same thing way back in the. . . well, I won't say, but there is still much debate about whether all kids are developmentally ready to do abstract algebra in the 8th grade. I repeated it in the 9th grade and ended up majoring in math in college, and loving math. Algebra is the foundation for all higher math. It's worked out well for us here. I expect my younger dd will be ready for algebra earlier because she's such an abstract thinker, but it depends on the child, IMO.

:iagree: Even though I got A's in Algebra in ps 8th grade, my dad thought I didn't have a firm enough grasp and made me retake it in 9th. I was sooo mad, because all my friends were going on to geometry. By 12th grade I had passed them all by. It was the best thing my dad could have done for me.

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I wouldn't go back to Saxon if she didn't, but go online and find sites that help understand what you're working on. Purple Math is one of several we've used in dd's transistion from homeschool to ps (for Algebra 2). I haven't saved them all, but rather google what it is we're working on until we found something that helped.

 

I am one of those who has my dc do Algebra 1 twice. My eldest used a few things for Algebra 1 while we found a good fit & ended up with Lial's. Later she did Dolciani (and some Gelfand's). My second has done LOF Beginning Algebra and is now using Foerster's.

 

I personally don't like Saxon or its method, but my eldest did use it for 3 grades before Algebra.

 

Another option, but it may be a bit late for this year (not sure) is for your dd to take Jann in TX's online Algebra 1; she used Lial's. Or you could get a tutor or something like ChalkDust where you can get help on the phone.

 

Hands on Equations helps kinesthetic learners with Altebra.

 

As in every subject, some dc will take longer to understand Algebra, and that's okay.

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We don't do it twice, but kinda do :) We do Singapore all the way through, MUS pre-alg. Our Algebra cycle is then MUS alg, then Chalkdust alg. then Chalkdust Intermediate Alg (Alg 2). Essentially, MUS provides a nice primer intro. and then Chalkdust takes it to the next level. It takes about 3 years to complete the cycle. If they're interested, they can read LoF, but so far, one of my kiddos will use Lof and the other 2 are content with the cycle above.

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