Cake and Pi Posted August 24, 2016 Share Posted August 24, 2016 My DS#2 (turns 7yo in a little over a month) just started in a brand new, full-time program at a public charter school. They are trying to place him in math and have asked for my input. They originally wanted to rely on his most recent standardized testing for placement, but that's not going to help. He took the MAPS test this past spring and scored 228 in math, which is supposedly the mean score for a beginning-of-year-8th grader. It's an adaptive multiple choice test, so obviously he just has really good deductive reasoning and testing skills, because he really hasn't gone that far in math yet. Last year he did Beast Academy 3A and 2/3 of 3B, along with word problems from Singapore 3A, and we stopped at about 3/4 of the way through 1st ed. Right Start level D in May. He's solid on multi-digit addition and subtraction, multiplication facts, multi-digit by single digit multiplication, division within 100 without remainders, measuring in inches and centimeters, and just about any geometry thing you can come up with for an elementary student. So I gave him the Saxon "early grades" placement test and he got all but 2 questions right. He missed reading the thermometer that had tick marks representing 2 degrees, and SAID three eights but wrote 8/3 for the shaded figure problem. The instructions suggest placing him in 3rd by his score. I also gave him the "5/4" part of their "middle grades" placement test, and he got 11 out of the 20 questions right. That test says that 0-15 correct should place in 4th. So I'm very confused about if I should tell the school I think he belongs in 3rd or 4th grade Saxon math. What would you do? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ellie Posted August 24, 2016 Share Posted August 24, 2016 My DS#2 (turns 7yo in a little over a month) just started in a brand new, full-time program at a public charter school. They are trying to place him in math and have asked for my input. They originally wanted to rely on his most recent standardized testing for placement, but that's not going to help. He took the MAPS test this past spring and scored 228 in math, which is supposedly the mean score for a beginning-of-year-8th grader. It's an adaptive multiple choice test, so obviously he just has really good deductive reasoning and testing skills, because he really hasn't gone that far in math yet. Last year he did Beast Academy 3A and 2/3 of 3B, along with word problems from Singapore 3A, and we stopped at about 3/4 of the way through 1st ed. Right Start level D in May. He's solid on multi-digit addition and subtraction, multiplication facts, multi-digit by single digit multiplication, division within 100 without remainders, measuring in inches and centimeters, and just about any geometry thing you can come up with for an elementary student. So I gave him the Saxon "early grades" placement test and he got all but 2 questions right. He missed reading the thermometer that had tick marks representing 2 degrees, and SAID three eights but wrote 8/3 for the shaded figure problem. The instructions suggest placing him in 3rd by his score. I also gave him the "5/4" part of their "middle grades" placement test, and he got 11 out of the 20 questions right. That test says that 0-15 correct should place in 4th. So I'm very confused about if I should tell the school I think he belongs in 3rd or 4th grade Saxon math. What would you do? Are his reading skills such that he could easily read the instructions and word problems in Math 54? If so, let him do that. Notice that Math 54 is not "fourth grade." :-) It can be either fourth or fifth, or it can be for any child who places into it. :-) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EKS Posted August 24, 2016 Share Posted August 24, 2016 I am assuming that the school is trying to figure out where to place him in Saxon Math and not some other program. Actually it says 0-15 correct *and* the student is an average to accelerated fourth grader. This means that they are assuming that anyone taking the test is ready for 5/4. That said, my son was one or two questions from placing into Math 3 back in the day, so I followed the rules and placed him into Math 2. It was mostly a waste of his time, and I now wish I had gone with Math 3 (actually I wish I had gone with Singapore, but that's another story!). The major issue with 5/4 is that the format is not little kid friendly. Otherwise, I'd lean towards placing him in 5/4. That said--Saxon is a poor choice for a gifted math student. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StartingOver Posted August 24, 2016 Share Posted August 24, 2016 I really dislike K-3 of Saxon. Have not seen the new books. I would go with 5/4 it has a lot of review in the beginning. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cake and Pi Posted August 25, 2016 Author Share Posted August 25, 2016 Thanks you guys for your input! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ellie Posted August 25, 2016 Share Posted August 25, 2016 That said--Saxon is a poor choice for a gifted math student. And yet I know children who are gifted in math who like Saxon, so there you go. :-) 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cake and Pi Posted August 25, 2016 Author Share Posted August 25, 2016 And yet I know children who are gifted in math who like Saxon, so there you go. :-) Hopefully that will be my DS#2 as well, since Saxon is his only option this year! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
debi21 Posted August 25, 2016 Share Posted August 25, 2016 My son finished Saxon 3 in first grade in his charter. As I recall, it just barely introduces single digit by multidigit multiplication in the last 10-20 lessons (which they gave us for the summer and didn't get to in school really). He had done Saxon 1 in K and then skipped 2 to do Saxon 3 in first. I would say based on your post, skip over Saxon 3. It is slow and easy for an advanced kid to keep up, especially if you look over his stuff for the first little while. The other thing is that are you sure they are using 5/4 for the next grade? In our charter they continue with Intermediate 4 rather than 5/4. I think that Intermediate 4 is still a workbook, so you don't have the copying the questions from a textbook issue that is difficult for younger kids with the 5/4 textbook. That would eliminate that potential concern. Although I can see why many say Saxon isn't good for gifted math students, I think it's mainly because it can be boring. IMO, the slow approach isn't awful; it's gentle and easy for them to do independently when a teacher can't really work one on one, and I thought the math being taught was still pretty solid. I also liked the investigations they had and that there was some explicit discussion of problem solving strategies for these lessons. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StartingOver Posted August 26, 2016 Share Posted August 26, 2016 (edited) My daughter started 5/4 in 2nd and is working on 7/6 now in third. I really wanted her to love Math Mammoth or Singapore, nope. I wanted to use something new but she wasn't having it. Her brother in 5th is on level with 6/5. Edited August 26, 2016 by StartingOver 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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