Covering two math levels in one year. CLE or Saxon for this?

[tld]

It has recently come to our attention that we may need to put our soon-to-be 5th grader into public school sooner than later.  The public school here uses Saxon.  5th graders us 6/5.  Having just finished CLE 3, DS tests into Saxon 5/4.  So I'm feeling the need to catch him up so long as he can internalize the concepts at a faster pace.  In my ideal world, we do just the odd problems and two lessons a day in either Saxon or CLE in order to make it through two levels this next year so that he could start Saxon 7/6 in 6th grade.  CLE has worked for us this far, and I love how easy it is to teach, but I've been planning on switching him to Saxon around 5th or 6th grade anyhow.  Any thoughts as to whether we should jump to Saxon now or stick with CLE for our "lightning year?"

[momtofive]

I'm not going to suggest which curriculum you should choose, but can offer some insight into how we accelerated our dd last year with CLE.  To back up a tiny bit, she struggled in math, but had come to a point where things were clicking much better, which is why I felt she was ready for a bit faster pace.

 

To accelerate CLE, we went over the lesson instruction for two lessons, with her completing any problems within the initial lesson part.  Then, she moved on to doing the We Remember section of the second lesson (skipping the first lesson's We Remember).  I had her skip the quizzes, but she did do the test for each lightunit.  This was an excellent way to move her forward, and allowed her to complete two CLE levels in one year.  If at any point this was too much, we could easily go back and review by doing the We Remember sections that we had skipped.

 

I don't think you could accelerate Saxon in the same way.  Really, each and every problem is very important to building retention of the concepts.  This is an item of debate, as there are families who do reduce the number of problems in Saxon and are able to do it successfully, however Saxon recommends that each problem be done.  It's been our experience that if we skipped anything with Saxon, we had trouble with forgetting concepts and not retaining.  I will say that my dd easily moved into Saxon 7/6 right after completing CLE 5.

 

Best wishes! ;)

[OneStepAtATime]

I've never accelerated Saxon.  No idea how well that would work.  Hopefully someone who has can advise you.  I HAVE accelerated CLE, doing similar to what was mentioned above.  I find CLE easy to accelerate or slow down as needed.  

[Hunter]

There is a huge amount of overlap in Saxon. It might be better to skip a book, than play around skipping problems.

 

But first and foremost, I would want to make sure the child was doing developmentally appropriate work THIS year.

 

Personally, if the school was using Saxon, I'd switch to Saxon. If he tested into 54 and finished CLE 3, that sounds like the right book.

 

I'd rather have him finish 54 strong and jump to 76, and tutor alongside that book, that ruin the opportunity next year to get in another developmentally appropriate year of instruction. The beginning of 76 is a lot of review. Some gifted children will make that jump without a problem. Others would need a little supplementing.

 

If I finished 54 early, I'd try and jump right into some of the LATER lessons in 65. Not WAY at the back, as those ones will certainly be reviewed in 76, but the ones around the end of the second quarter and the third quarter of the book.

[Ellie]

It has recently come to our attention that we may need to put our soon-to-be 5th grader into public school sooner than later.  The public school here uses Saxon.  5th graders us 6/5.  Having just finished CLE 3, DS tests into Saxon 5/4.  So I'm feeling the need to catch him up so long as he can internalize the concepts at a faster pace.  In my ideal world, we do just the odd problems and two lessons a day in either Saxon or CLE in order to make it through two levels this next year so that he could start Saxon 7/6 in 6th grade.  CLE has worked for us this far, and I love how easy it is to teach, but I've been planning on switching him to Saxon around 5th or 6th grade anyhow.  Any thoughts as to whether we should jump to Saxon now or stick with CLE for our "lightning year?"

 

Your ideal world should include doing every.single.problem in Math 54. :-) You could just power through, moving right into Math 65 when he finishes 54, regardless of when that is (IOW, no summer off). Saxon's problems are carefully planned such that each one is important in the learning process, rather than being merely practicing a concept.

[elmerRex]

We use the eBook version of Saxon Math 54 and Math 65 with all of our children. I highly recommend it. We do not skip problems, but I feel experienced enough now that I could skip if I needed to now. Though you may not need to skip anything. You can read my review of Saxon Math 54 here.

 

Just completing 1 lesson a day and all of the investigations, Math 54 can be done in 136 days. If you start now and work diligently through the summer, you will be done with the book right by the time that school starts in the fall.

 

Since he tested into Math 54, you could begin that book with him now. There doesn't seem to be a strong need to accelerate with Saxon Math, but if I wanted to accelerate here is what I would do.

1) I would schedule math for the most productive period of the day.

2) Commit myself and my student to reading each lesson and working out all of the examples together (to be sure that lessons are fully understood) and immediately giving similar problems to make sure that enough practice is gained with the new skill. Then supervising/pacing the student as they complete the mixed Lesson practice.

3) Make Math a 7 day a week subject

4) (optional) Work 4 day sup-plan and a 3 day sub-plan. Where your son will do 2 lessons a day, some days and do only 1 lesson a day on the other day, depending on the student and the lessons themselves. This will let you do 10 or 11 lessons a week, instead of just 7

Sun--Mon--Tues--Wed--Thu--Fri--Sat   So for a week, the number of lessons that I'd do are like this

....2.......1.......2.......1.........2......1........2..  

 

or like this

Sun--Mon--Tues--Wed--Thu--Fri--Sat 

....1.....2..........1........2........1........2......1..

On days that we do 2 lessons, we would read through both lessons fully. Work all of the new lesson problems  and do the complete Mixed Practice problem set from the 2nd lesson.

 

You should look in the mixed practice for the 1st lesson to see if the new concept is practiced/assigned in that set, if so do those problems, for the additional practice of the new skill.

 

For us, Saxon Math is very, very succesful, but we do not ask our children to do it independently. We teach every lesson and supervise closely to be sure that work done is work done right, and work done swiftly.