I have never heard of sentence frames in math and had to go look it up. At first it looked too difficult for him, but when looking through the earliest stages of this- I can see where it would be very effective. I definitely think the method of only picking out key words limits understanding of word problems and I've always been hesitant towards doing this. Honestly, I was beginning to feel like that might be the best he could manage at this time and at least it would help some. But likely it's just about finding the right method to teach him better math skills. This has given me a lot of think about.

I had not heard of this series before! We use Singapore, so this may provide the extra help he is needing while keeping with the same curriculum. Thanks for the idea!

Peterpan- Thanks for your suggestions! I will look into them. Many of the general word problems workbooks don't focus on actually teaching how to solve the problems, but are more of an additional set of practice problems. I will look into these ideas for sure. Hopefully I will find a gem!

I definitely think phrasing is an issue! The more intricate the language, the greater the struggle. When I attempted to begin walking him through it this last spring, I highlighted key words and phrases to look out for and started to help him define them. But because it is math terminology and phrasing, I thought maybe there was a curriculum (perhaps written for special needs) that covered this is detail. I'm imagining an introduction to a phrase, teaching what the phrase means, and then MANY practice problems with this specific phrase. As new phrases are added, the practice problems would keep up a review of the old phrases as well. This was they would slowly learn to pick out a plethora of phrasing but in a very organized manner. The picture approach doesn't help if he doesn't understand the phrasing yet.

I haven't posted often here, I tend to just learn from others questions and suggestions. This has been such a great resource that has helped me so much. My 9 year old has an array of speech and language delays along with learning difficulties. This has led to a very asynchronous progression through math (at least, I think asynchronous would be there right descriptor). He has progressed in math computation but struggled A LOT in comprehending the language of word problems. So - I let him progress in computation skills and just kept working on language and comprehension (unrelated to math), with a goal that we would eventually get to the point where we could start working on word problems. He's currently about mid-2nd grade level with computation and kindergarten level with word problems. But he is now ready to begin with word problems. His language and comprehension have improved a lot! Yay! He will need me to present this is a VERY organized manner, simplified steps with easy computation until he gets a grasp on the language of word problems. I expect lots of consistency in teaching and lots of repetition. So basically the plan is to go back to kindergarten/1st grade level word problems and start there. Last spring I tried just walking him through the process on my own but found that I was not organized enough to do this without some sort of curriculum guide. I was trying to pull from kindergarten/1st grade blogs because that seemed to provide the most simplified training, but it was so hard to keep this organized and consistent. Do you have any suggestions? Ideally, I'd LOVE for the curriculum to be specific to word problems (since we've already covered the other areas of math at those early levels). I've only found books that offer extra practice with word problems - but they don't TEACH them how to process the problems. Am I going about this all wrong? I'm open to ideas and experiences!! Thanks!

Thank you for the suggestions. I will go research both of these choices!

My son is finishing Ellen McHenry's Carbon Chemistry this week. He completed The Elements last year. He like EMH and wanted to continue with her other topics... until he saw the other subjects and was just not interested. He was hoping EMH had another book in the chemistry series. He says he wants to continue on with chemistry using a different curriculum. I'm having a hard time finding a good follow-up to EMH Carbon Chem. Any suggestions? He is in 6th grade.

Thank you everyone for your thoughts and experiences! It helps to hear perspectives. The quote from FB Beast Academy is interesting too. I'll try to come back on to share what our final decision is... and then whether it was a good one or not!

We completed Beast through 5D as well as Singapore 5 (and some 6). He loved Beast and asked to finish it instead of Singapore 6 (which seemed much easier to him). I just got Aops Prealgebra since it was the next in line and am now reviewing it. It looks like a repeat of Beast (with the exception of the Geometry chapters). I'm wondering if it would be better to go straight to Algebra. My son doesn't like to rehash the same concepts again and again. I also know Aops can appear easier than it really is and so maybe it really delves deeper than his Beast did (especially since they recommend PreA after Beast 5??). I looked through old posts about skipping Apps PreAlgebra but they were all written before Beast 5 was completed and so most people were coming to Aops from a different curriculum. Is there anyone that completed all of Beast that can weigh in on the idea of skipping Aops Prealgebra? My other consideration is that we potentially only have 1 year before he enters a B&M school, so I'd like to get whichever program will really provide the best foundation for upper level math. I really love Aops and already dislike the idea that he will not likely move through the entire program if we switch schooling. Thanks for any help!