distancia
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Posts posted by distancia
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As an example. I have TT Algebra 2 here and it is more Alg 1 and the first couple of months of Algebra 2. It does not cover Conic Sections or Matrices, which are usually covered in an Alg 2 textbook.
Here's a cute story: At one time my D was enrolled in a small, private homeschool group of 6-9 year olds. Well, the teacher had a high-school age (15) daughter who was an absolute genius but this girl had never learned her multiplication/division tables at ps, and she was failing math! So her mom--my D's homeschool tutor--pulled her D out of ps and worked with her to start her from Grade 1 math all over again. This girl (15) would sit at the same table all the 7 and 8 ands 9 year-old students in her home. She worked with manipulatives, alongside the "little kids". She did the "child" workbooks. After a couple of months she raced forward, whizzed through her advanced math, and went away to college (that's another story) at 16.
I, also, am having a terrible time finding the "right" math program for my D. She had 700s for English SATs, but a measly 500 for Math.
It is really a struggle to watch these kids. Personally, I think they have missed something along the way--maybe they were out with the flu one crucial week?--and that crack in knowledge has now expanded into a canyon.
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I have not been able to look at many examples of Singapore Math. Please help, those of you familiar with it.
1) Are there textbooks? If so, are they like US textbooks, wordy, ponderous things cluttered with paragraphs of explanation prior to the actual problem?
2) From what little I HAVE seen it appears that the text is very, very simple...one line instructions with absolutely no extraneous information or tangential references about previous chapters, etc.
3) Is the format--whether textbooks and/or workbooks--more like a step-by-step process, or is it a long spiel about how to do the problem, and then the problem is finally shown?
4) Can one utilize the workbooks as a learning tool and refer to the textbook as a reference, if needed?
After a lengthy and tortuous talk with my daughter (17) last night she said she prefers to see ONLY problems, and the more English language mixed in with the math "codes" (she sees math as a coded language) the more confusing it is, because she has to flip back and for the between languages. Does anyone understand this?
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Has anyone used Teaching Textbooks without focusing on the textbook?
Have you used the Lecture CD as a primary source of information and only resorted to the paper Textbook as a reference, if needed?
My D age 17 is impatient with text and prefers to just jump in and tackle a problem. Only if she DOESN'T understand it does she like to refer back to the text and find the answer. Very backwards way of doing it, but that's what works best for her.
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I relate!!!!!!
I am also so tired of trying to find "the right" curriculum for my kids and worry about if I got it right or if there was something better that I should have done.
Same here. I continue to vacillate for my daughter in her senior year.
Should she spend her time studying for the CLEP exams and accrue a bunch of CLEP credits? [Right now she has been earning about 1 per month]
Or would she be better off spending that same amount of time in doing more in-depth study on just a couple of subjects for AP credit?
And most of all, should we go back to Grade 1 and review math from the ground up so she has a truly solid foundation on which to proceed with college math? Will she even cooperate with me in doing so?
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Just want to mention that D looked at VideoText, Kinetics, and Singapore math. She liked Singapore the best, it had the least "fluff". All she wants to see if formulas and simple one-sentence directions.
BTW, I was reading on an ADD forum (my daughter has ADD) that these ADD kids love Plato because it doesn't have "all the fluff".
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What is a GGM book? No daughters - two sons.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
NOTHING against males/females reading alternate gender fiction, but it usually happens that males prefer males, females prefer female characters. I mean, how many guys really enjoy sitting down to Pride and Prejudice?
Home is the Sailor by Jorge Amado http://www.amazon.com/HOME-SAILOR-JORGE-AMADO/product-reviews/0002711370/ref=cm_cr_dp_all_helpful?ie=UTF8&coliid=&showViewpoints=1&colid=&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending is great reading for guys, as is Chronicle of a Death Foretold (both have male protagonists and are filled with subject matter than teen boys can relate to).
When I was in college I was a bit older (25) and I had no preference toward gender in novels. But with my 17 year-old daughter, she always leans toward female lead characters. I think this is something that lessens with age (???)
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Does anyone have a copy of Harold Jacobs Elementary Algebra on hand? If so, can you tell me what the last 5 chapters are or what type of material is covered towards the last 1/4th of the book? The book is 876 pages so that makes me think there is material in there that is reviewed in parts of Algebra 2.
Thanks!
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I keep asking for advice on specific math (algebra) programs, and I think I should be asking for help on what methodology or technique I should use for my daughter. Her brain works differently than most. She does not do well with introductions to a problem, or lengthy instructions on how to do something prior to the problem.
Her method is to look at a problem and then attempt it without any introduction whatsoever, just jumping right in. She then backtracks to see where she has gone wrong. She pieces the steps together on her own and tries to recognize a pattern. Of course after a few problems she has figured out how to do them (she sees a pattern) t but she has never fully grasped why. She is impatient and moves on to the next problem, which, unfortunately, she will solve in a few short moments (through induction) and again, plow on.
If you try to explain it to her in terms of rules of Algebra it's like talking Greek, the words mean nothing, they actually confuse her. She likes to know what to do with the numbers/variables, why, and see it all in action. After a few seconds she understands it--the pattern--and can solve the problem. But she has never understood why her method works.
She is a whiz at decoding patterns--CryptoQuip, Cryptograms--and her precociousness with this kind of stuff has unfortunately gotten her into a jam.
Anyone who has been there, done that who have an idea on what type of method would work best?
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"We" have already tried TT. At first D really liked it but then she realized that it wasn't giving her enough of the "why", and the text was too wordy. LoF goes totally against the way my D's brain works--I would've loved it, but she gets impatient because it's not right to the point.
Her method is to first attempt a problem (without any introduction whatsoever, just jump right in) and then backtrack and see where she has gone wrong. She tries to analyze a problem and solve it herself. Totally the opposite of how I would do it, I like to be told how to do it and then do it. Not her.
D's the kind who will gather all the ingredients needed for a recipe, then plow in, head first, without reading the directions. Sometimes it works, but...sometimes it's a big flop.
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In which state are you located?
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I do believe in Rhode Island there is one and it is free. also http://www.nric-ri.org/virtual-learning-academy
There is a federal law mandating that each and every state offer one by 2011? 2012? for free.
My daughter has taken several Florida Virtual School online classes and they are as effective, if not more so, than traditional classroom teaching. The teachers are certainly better, IMHO!
Also you may want to consider dual-enrollment/ dual credit....my daughter is a h/s rising senior and she is taking online college classes through Clovis Community College in NM. it is fully-accredited and credits transfer easily to practically almost any other college/university. An out-of-state student can take up to 6 credits--2 3 credit classes--at a time for only a total of $234- which includes online fees, application, etc. that is $234- total for the both classes, not each class. A real bargain and the instruction is BETTER (again, my opinion) than our local CC.!
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In our community my D was "invited" to take an AP class based upon her PSAT scores (this is when she was in public high school).
However, in another county where my friend is a high school counselor, even the ....how do you say, at-risk and underachieving minorities?--are encouraged to take AP!!!!! My friend (the counselor) tells me that her school receives additional funding for every student who takes AP, so her school gets extra funds from Title 9 AND from pushing students (unqualified as they may be) into AP.
I do not know what state you are in but most states have a "virtual" school, online instruction which is FREE to homeschoolers. [in our state it is called Florida Virtual School]. Through them one can enroll online in an AP class with the agreement the student takes the AP exam (for college credit) at the end of the year. http://www.flvs.net/areas/flvscourses/Pages/APCourses.aspx
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I am not familiar with BJU. However, my D was 1/2 way through her public school Algebra 2 course when she became ill and had to be homeschooled. Since recovering she has opted to NOT return to public school.
She has used TT, and she liked it--at first.
PROS:
It explains step by step. The solutions to how every single problem is done is fantastic. It require NO parental input. The man's voice is soothing and watching how a problem is done is very clear and informative. The text and the videos explain the WHY something is done--kind of. Let me explain: the "why" is the big hurdle to my daughter. There is the answer to why, and then there is an answer to THAT answer, which, in TT, still is not answered (see below).
CONS: In one early problem there is a time and interest word problem. It carefully explains the numbers, where they go in the equation, and how the problem is done, step by step. BUT the nice man in the video does not explain WHY the r for rate goes where it does--is one decreasing time by rate? is time multiplied by rate? is so, why? why is all this happening? Why can't they just be flipped?
Also, the highlighting (in grey) is hard to read through. I think the publishers--wonderful guys they are--should have put it in bright yellow. It might have cost them a dollar or two more, but it would be much easier to see.
Because my D has had these why questions all through her 11+ years in school remain unanswered--public school pretty much teaches you to memorize formuale/format-- she did a monkey see, monkey do, and walked away with a B. Spiral learning method is NOT a good match, and doesn't provide a strong foundation.
I am going to try VideoText Interactive with her because it seems to work in a systematic approach that NONE of the other math programs have utilized. However, if it is a bomb with my DD, I will go back to TT.
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Please, ANY kind of feedback on this program. I am so desperate. My daughter (17.5) is super smart in Math (IQ over 140) but whatever she has learned in the public school system just hasn't stuck. The scattered methodology they use doesn't seem to click with the way her brain thinks. She needs to know why why why why and a step-by-step methodical approach. Her best friends who are all math whizzes--yet not as smart as she--never ask "why", they just do it "because that's the way you're supposed to do it" or "because the teacher said so".
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Florida mom here.
MY daughter (17.5) did 125 hours of community service--over the course of a year--when she was back in public school and she received a full 1 credit for it. Among her "jobs": she was a classroom aid at the local elementary school; she was a tutor at the local Hispanic center (for adults)she was a critic and host for Saturday morning arts movies at the local artsy cinema; and she was receptionist at the local Animal Rescue League.
She kept track of all her work thus:
1) the elementary school required a log-in every time she entered through the front office. At the end of the school year they printed out a list of all her times on their letterhead, and the classroom teacher merely "signed" that is was accurate.
2, 3, and 4) My daughter had log sheets which she kept in a bubble-gum pink (easy to see) folder. The sheets were separate for each different job. There was a column for the date, hours worked, duties/responsiblities, and signature of supervisor. My D hated asking people to sign off every single time she was there; sometimes the superviosr was out, or in a meeting, etc...so finally what she did is just have the supervisor sign the top line of the log, draw an arrow all the way down the column to the last entry, and sign there. Then she would attach a business card to the log sheet. This worked fine for our county (Sarasota).
All of this supporting documentation was then turned in to our local agency (here it is a volunteer center) that coordinates the accruing of hours between the student and the school board.
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Drop it.
However I do suggest you go on to another GGM book-- Chronicle of a Death Foretold. It is actually a novella and it makes for easy reading--probably 4 hours? and it will definitely hold the reader's interest because it is 1) very simple to read 2) a mystery 3) a romance and 4) "black" humor (not race, but style) all rolled into one.
There is a reason I suggest this book: among all the Latin American lit books I was assigned to read (it was my minor in college), this one stood out as a stylistic marvel. If you, too, read it (doesn't tale long, believe me) you will be able to understand the clever technique in which this book was written. [Little known fact: he also won the Nobel Prize for this book]
Do you have a daughter? If you have a daughter I would suggest Julia Alvarez In the Time of the Butterflies: it's a wonderful book (read Amazon for reviews).
The other book that is fantasitc is Home is the Sailor by Jorge Amado (of Dona Flor fame). I consider Home is the Sailor to be much better than Dona Flor. Amazon gives Home is the Sailor nothing but 5 stars.
LA lit can be fabulous, like eating fudge, a veritable indulgence. Or it can be terrible, just terrible....
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>> student
if it were "student's" possessive singular it should be rewritten to include the word "the" as in "the student's"
and "students''" with an apostrophe at the end is possessive plural...
PS sent you a private message...
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Thanks--I will call KY on Tuesday. You jogged my memory about something...and through one link to the next I discovered that Plato is also being used for College Algebra (and higher) in some of the community colleges here in our state. To me, Plato is far, far superior to a once-a-week class and an oversized textbook. So anytime in the future that she needs to take a college math class I am going to first consider an online course that utilizes Plato.
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Thank you both SO much. I am looking at both of these programs--pretending I am the student--and I like what I see.
Next step is to sit down with daughter and have her go through them a bit.
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Hi, all. I've posted here before and received some good pointers but our situation has changed and now I need fresh input for my daughter, age 17.5.
Back in December 2009 she became ill in public school and had to leave. She had just completed her first semester of Algebra 2, on a computer program called PLATO, and she got a B. Also, she had just taken her SATs and scored a 500 in Math (English was 700s). Through January she couldn't do much work, but I did have her continue to do exercises out of workbooks, here and there, for 10 minutes a day. In February she came down with mono and she was so, so tired...again, I had her working 15 or 20 minutes a day, and she could grasp what she was doing at the time, but there was no retention, she would just sleep afterwards
Somewhere in March? I bought Teaching Textbooks Algebra 2, thinking she could refresh from the beginning and quickly advance to where she left off. It worked for about 2 weeks and then D became frustrated because she "knew" a lot of this stuff--although some of it she didn't. Also, it was so wordy! We went away (Spring Break) and when we came back she had typhoid poisoning, and she was ill again. She tried ALEKS on computer and hated the format, said she couldn't concentrate on the way it was written.
After that she said "to heck with it" and just decided to start taking CLEP exams to get college credit through testing. So she began studying for College Mathematics CLEP (pretty easy) using a Peterson's review guide and InstaCert. She was doing great and was ready to test in early July, but then she began 3 other college courses online and had to set math aside. But she will return to it, refresh, and take that CLEP test in September.
NOW the problem is that D has decided she wants to go into the hard sciences and she is going to need a clear concept of math. Not just the memorizing of patterns and formulas--which is how she and the majority of non-math majors can get by---but a deeper understanding of math as a tool, not a chore.
Her learning style is such that she does poorly with: lots of color photos and graphics (typical public school textbooks), too many off-topic commentaries( Life of Fred and Standard Deviants), monotone voices, female voices, and long dreary explanations--she is NOT someone who reads a recipe through completely before preparing a meal! She does not like to be given three paragraphs of instruction before being presented with a problem. She prefers to see the problem, and have one sentence take her through each step of solving the problem. Impatient!
She DOES DO WELL with computer programs that explain each step and the WHY of the step; precise explanations with no scholarly jargon; CDs and DVDs with a pleasant male speaker who talks about a specific process for a short (3-7 minutes) time yet explains why he is doing every single step ("remember, we always use a blah blah blah whenever we blah blah blah because the blah blah blah property tells us that x is 1, although we don't see the number 1"). She doesn't mind workbooks and she prefers to know that there is a step-by-step solution (which is why I though TT would be so good for her).
I am dreading her going into College Algebra (or Intermediate Algebra at our local CC) because she will absolutely fail in a classroom setting that meets for 3 hours once a week, with a disorganized female instructor and an 800+ page textbook full of politically correct verbiage and photos...
Any suggestions? I was going to buy the DIVE CDs and the Harold Jacobs Algebra books but then I thought, there may be something even better, and many heads--yours--are better than my swirling one.
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... for advice about what to do with my daughter because every time I ask ... I get "send her to CC" ... "send her to CC". ... with her ADHD and other issues she wouldn't do well there yet at all, but even if I try to point that out I still get the same responses. She is accelerated in some areas, but not at all in most areas.
My h/s daughter (17) has ADD issues among other things. She is quite bright but cannot sit still for very long. What she is now doing is taking ONLINE classes from the Comm College (actually she uses Clovis Comm Coll in New Mexico, it's $125 for up to 6 credit hours (2 classes). She can take frequent breaks and she does her work on her netbook (baby laptop) so she is very portable and frequently changes where she sits. 90% of her work is multiple choice quizzes and exams, and the instructors give online Power Point notes, so it is not as time-consuming as in the old days when we had to write by hand. ALL open book tests/exams!
It has built her self-confidence immensely. And if you need a slower pace, Brigham Young offers online college courses that are SELF-PACED for the slower student.
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Hope my post helps.
First, my daughter, 17.5, is very gifted (genius), yet she had a mediocre GPA in public school, although she had great SAT scores in English (700s) but average in Math (500). We were forced to pull her out of pub school Dec 2009 due to illness (eating disorder) and once home-schooled and re-fed, she asked if she could continue at home "for a while". That "a while" became "permanently" and now, six months later and after much experimenting (4 months--December through March--were a complete wash of trying different methods while re-feeding her) she settled into a good, solid routine in April that SHE chose on her own.
This is what has worked for her::
1) CLEP exams using a variety of review media. Within 2 months she has "CLEPPED" 2 college courses: Intro to Soc and Engl Comp.
2) Enrolled in online community college courses, and she is currently taking Spanish 1, Philosophy Ethics. She just completed Environmental Science, which would have been an extremely easy A if it were not for the bad professor (I think he has a drinking problem). I have looked over some of the work she is doing/has done and it is harder than the honors high-school work she was doing at public school, but it is not grueling, certainly not upper-division thesis work!!! although she studies more than she has to and she does a heap of writing for Philosophy.
3) As you may have noticed I haven't mentioned anything about Math, and we are working on that. D was 9/10ths complete with Algebra 2 at public school but now home she has decided she wanted to CLEP 2 easi-ish Math courses and get that out of the way by Christmas, so she has happily tossed Algebra 2 aside and has gone into College Mathematics self-study instead. [she will have to return to Alg 2/Pre-Calc and she knows it, but right now, she just can't].
Now, all the above sounds impressive that my daughter will have her first-year Freshman requirements out of the way Christmas 2010, the middle of her HS senior year, but if you read between the lines you can see that it is NOT a thoroughly rigorous education for someone with her innate abilities. No AP courses, nothing beyond Algebra 2, and I am utilizing her college Environmental Science as her 3rd year HS Science class--no chemistry or physics...Yet she's happy with what she is doing and she is building up her confidence and achieving more than anticipated, considering her psychological issues (this past winter was a really rough period!).
As a comparison, my D's best friend, a pretty smart girl herself, took a bunch of AP classes in the last two years of high school (in the first 2 years she was in an IB program) and she barely scraped by in her AP classes. Mostly Cs. She got NO AP college credit because she didn't pass the exams. So now here she is, graduated high school with a mediocre GPA, no college credit, average (520/530) SAT scores, burned out from all that hard work in high school, and placed on a "conditional" acceptance to a mainstream state U.
In reply to this:
He is happy just to scrape by with a "C". On the plus side, he doesn't totally hate learning and has asked to switch to year round schooling without any breaks because he is happy with the routine he has created.I would like to give an example of my nephew who had great 34 ACT scores in high school and took ONLY honors classes. He is an extremely bright young man who won a full scholarship to a private, 2nd tier university. Well, he bombed out. He just did not want to go to college, he didn't want to be an academic, but his parents insisted. So the next year, at his parents' insistence, he went to his state school on full scholarship and at the end of that year, he bombed out. He THEN went into the school that he had wanted to attend all along: jet mechanic school! Trade school! And he thrived there, he made it to class every morning by 7 am, he won another scholarship (this time $2000 worth of tools)....and after 9 grueling months he completed the course this past May and was recruited immediately, at age 21. Here it is July, 2 months later, and my nephew is making $60,000 (with overtime) and doing what he absolutely loves. Will he go back to school and complete his 4 year degree? Probably, online, at some time in the future and paid for by his employer. But right now he is doing what interests him, challenges him, and keeps him motivated.
I know I've kind of rambled, but I hope I have helped. BTW, totally off-topic, but there is a HUGE shortage of jet mechanics. So if you know anyone who is mechanically/technically inclined and can past a drug test, it might be a good option!
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My dd just finished all 3 phases of Algebra 1, she has struggled with Math all her life but she rarely needed my help in this. She watches the dvds and I just check her work after. Algebra 1 has only 145 lessons, but some of the lessons aren't really lessons but tests. I am happy very to have used this program as this is the only thing that worked with her. We tried Teaching Textbook, Classmate Algebra. I have to add though that this does not go as in depth as Chalkdust Algebra 1... Math Relief Algebra 1 barely touched word problems , only age and number sequence problems . There are no time, rate distance , mixture etc.. . I think these topics will be taken up in its Algebra 2 program which has 80+ lessons.
Interesting! My D age 17.5 tried Teaching Textbook for a month, she likes everything being explained, but the explanations also slowed things down, so when she got something she wanted to move on right away (though she could have slid the bar forward on the DVD). And the textbook itself was not conducive to her learning, she would just read the first couple of sentences then go right to the DVD, she didn't like wading through the text. She wanted to see problems being done, one after the other....and she will pick it up as she watches.
She really needs someone to stand up at a board, show how to do the problem, explain why they are doing what they are doing, etc. How does Math Relief compare to others in this regard? I saw Chalkdust but too $$$.
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A couple of questions: first, is she interested in math, or in a career that will rely on or utilize math? If she isn't, what pressing reason does she have for mastery over something she may never use again? A very bright child may focus on areas of interest while finding no purpose for others: it's not so much laziness as intensity and precision of intellectual focus.
Second, how much practice has she had with scientific notation and the other things you mentioned, recently?
The big problem I have is this: her saying to me "I already know this stuff! Why do I have to learn it again?" When, in fact, she doesn't know it all! And she won't tell me what she does and doesn't know, because, according to her, she knows it all!
She did want to be a marine biologist but the math is just too big a deterrent. For that matter, anything that doesn't come easily or naturally is too much for her and she is easily bored (or turned off). Now she wants to be a gringa telenovela star but she argues with me over her Spanish, if I make her go one second over 45 minutes, she resists.
About scientific notation and the other concepts: she THOUGHT she had learned them correctly. She THOUGHT she had learned how to divide fractions. She THOUGHT she knew how to do square roots. But either she had learned the wrong method or she never learned at all.
So, 50% of me says ah, why bother to bend over backwards for her, just fill in the gaps s best I can. Yet the other 50% of me says that this is a blessing in disguise, a chance for her to build a solid--not difficult, but solid--foundation and do it right.
Singapore Math questions--
in High School and Self-Education Board
Posted
My daughter has finished the first part of Algebra 2, going up to Matrices in an online program called Plato. However the last time D did any algebra was in Dec 09, she became very ill for months and months...she needs to get back into it. Personally, I would back up to Pre-Algebra or even earlier, when algabraeic language starts in the word problems. What level is that?
Can I PM you for more info on the sequence? I've gone to the site but I am befuddled about exactly what I need and what I don't.
4) Okay, when I say reference book, I guess I am saying, what do you refer to when you don't understand a concept? Just the workbook itself?
My D has 3 months to get her math scores up for the last SAT in Octoberr!!!! I am thinking to start with an elementary Singapore math workbook as a warm-up and build momentum until-what level????