AEC
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Posts posted by AEC
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We've done the following, for the past few years...
I sit down w/ each kid every few months and we lay out a rough schedule...want to finish Bio by July1st - here's what you'll need to have done each week, etc.
Weekly (on Sunday nights) I make a 1-page list / child. Some items on it are 'to be done sometime this week'. Most are broken and and listed under a specific day.
Our rising 9th grader is responsible enough to get each day's, and the week's, items without any reminders or nagging. As he's getting older, I move more items from the 'scheduled per day' to the 'sometime this week' bucket and am more flexible with him pushing the odd item from one day to the next - because we both know he'll get it all done by the end of the week.
I still schedule them per-day only because I know if everything was in the 'sometime this week' bucket he'll feel like he has to get it all done by Tuesday, then freak out that it's too much work. <_< We'll work on that. I'm just starting to get him involved in the process of making his 'school list'. We'll see how it goes.
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Gosh, it's hard to remember how much time she spent - I'd say six to eight hours a week. She felt that she was well prepared for the AP test.
like - total? For the whole class - 6/8 hours per week for 9 months or so? That seems pretty awesome to get a 5 in a lab science AP course. Way to go DD! I wonder if that's typical - I would have assumed rather more.
That gives me hope that maybe it won't be too ridiculous for DS when he gets there. He's doing a first-pass through Bio (M&L) and I'd guess he's spending 2/3rds of that per week.
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wow - super cool, IMO, from a humanities/history prospective. I wonder about it from a math prospective, though. Keep in mind the Euclid had no notion of 0, negative numbers or algebra. Euclid is the basis of geometry, but there's been 2300 years of work done since then and some of it is important. There's also the question of naming conventions that may affect future work (e.g. a quick look through Euclid bk I includes the definition of the endpoints of a line being points. Modern geometry defines a line as infinite in both directions and a line-segment as having endpoints).
I think the PP's suggestion is a good one - have DD take the end-of-chapter tests...anything she passes you're good to skip. Anything she doesn't has something either discovered in the interceding 2300 years or not understood and you should review in the modern text.
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I've been a professional SW eng for ~20 years, taught several people (adults and kids) - I suggest NOT going with codeacademy.
We tried it here (for python) and I was quite disappointed. Codeacademy focuses very much on syntax - and provides almost no instruction or feedback on how to architect a program, make it testable, make it readable by anyone else, etc. Realistically, how could it - but that's by far the more difficult portion of programming. This is like using a grammar book to teach essay writing.
I'm unconvinced it's a good approach, even for just 'trying it out'. IME, it creates more frustration than necessary and promotes bad habits. I think it's also likely to end up with a student who's finished the 'course' but then still can't really program anything.
I'm generally a fan of book-learning - but for most people I think you need the feedback of an actual person to learn to program.
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One choice, clearly, is to say it's Bio now and get it over with. It really does need to happen at some point.
An alternative, if you want to stick with what he's currently interested in, might be materials science. A quick Google search came up with a number of hits for HS level material science programs. It's likely to be mostly chemistry, some physics...but more the properties of materials, how they're affected by heat, wear, chemical interation, etc. It's an essential part of mech eng, but is clearly a science and not an engineering study.
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DD did it @ age 11 in 4 months (18 weeks, I think it was). She did 1-1.5hrs a day, very occasionally a bit more, 5-6 days a week. She basically did a chapter a week. She's not persistent enough to just sit and stare at a problem type she's never seen till she figures it out, so for those chapters where the sequence of problems isn't enough to lead you to the right approach I'd 'teach' it. I suspect that helped with timeline - I know there are kids who will in fact just wrestle with a problem for days....I do not have one of those.
FWIW - she did the alcumus for each section almost immediately after the section. She skipped the Challenge problems for each chapter, then went back through them starting with Ch1 once she'd finished the book. I think it was pretty good review, actually.
ETA: we 'taught' the grey-box questions at the start of several chapters, like a classroom would - I'm totally in agreement that the problems/exercises should be left to the student. I think it comes down to wether you have a kid who's into the discovery presentation or not.
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DD12 is almost 2/3rds of the way through AoPS Alg (Chp 13 - quadratic Eqn's II). She still says she 'loves math', but I suspect she's starting to hear a little voice in the back of her head saying something like 'well, I CAN factor nasty quadratic equations - but why is that a thing that anyone ever wanted to do?'
I've never really been a fan of non-calculus physics, but I'm wondering if a little bit of it might help quiet that voice and motivate/cement the new algebra?
-can anyone suggest a curriculum/book? I don't care if it's complete course...just a treatment of something concrete, mechanics or something, would do.
-ideally, it uses quadratic equations, but not much more. If we need to wait till she hits Ch 16 (functions) we can - but sooner is probably better.
thoughts?
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I think those are fair points. We did JA to buy time, actually, with the intention of then doing AoPS preAlg.
DD finished SM5B and I wasn't sure she was quite ready. JA took her ~4 weeks, so it didn't buy much time - but it might have softened the introduction.
I don't think there's anything wrong with finishing it out if you've started it - but don't jump from there to Algebra.
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DD did JA between SM5B and AoPS. She enjoyed the silly problems about weasels, but overall it wasn't very useful.
She felt like there were too many problems and they weren't hard enough. Also, the span and depth of material covered is nothing like what's in the AoPS PreAlg. I think it'd be tough to go from JA to AoPS alg.
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Thus far, IntroAlg has been a breeze - rather easier than PreAlg was, honestly.
We're getting bit stuck on Chp 10 - factoring quadratics. I guess I'm not totally shocked...but I also didn't anticipate it or I might have planned for more time.
What else have people had issues with, so I know what to schedule for? complex numbers? Logs? Sequence and Series?
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just wondering...how many interesting math constant/number-sequence days can we find?
"e day" on 2/7. Two years form now it'll be really great (2/7/18)
I'm disappointed we missed "cardinality of boolean equivalence classes day", on 1/4/14.
"ABC-conjecture day" on 3/13/16, and again on 5/11/16 and 7/9/16? (co-prime numbers where a+b=c)
I can't find a way to make Fibonacci sequence day work out. :(
It doesn't look like the 'database formerly known as the sloane numerical sequences database' has the ability to search for sequences ending in 16. :(
special math days seem like a fun way to introduce some interesting/non-trivial math. Anyone have other suggestions - especially for math that's off the beaten path?
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I think I've read everything in the pinned threads and I kind of understand all this...but maybe not quite. Can someone clarify?
DualEnrollment - this is just a regular (probably CC) college class, taken during HighSchool, and it's OK to use it as 'credit' for both HighSchool graduation & towards college (assuming whatever college you eventually go to accepts it for transfer)?
So - any class taken at a CC could be a DE class (assuming it's something that counts towards high school req's).
If you took enough DE classes - could you get an AA? If you did, can you still transfer those as credits towards Uni, or have you 'used them up' on the AA so you're back to doing GE's at the 4-year college? Is this a useful thing to do?
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I was actually informed today that there are some states that accepts computer science to fulfill a foreign language requirement. Most accept it as a math or science.
I am TOTALLY shocked to hear that. They are not, as another posted mentioned, in any way similar. <shrug>
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1) Language (this may include computer science)-
Totally in favor of doing programming in HS - but IMO it's a REAL stretch to call it language and use it as a substitute for English composition or lit. Programming languages are just not natural languages.
Especially if you get beyond 'just programming' and learn about information theory or similar I think it's totally reasonable to call it a science credit, but I expect you'll get a lot of pushback about 'language'.
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Wow EOO, that is pretty deep stuff.
AEC, I read your original post, but was still thinking about how to respond. Hope you find what you are looking for. Never easy, is it? :grouphug:
I did find EOO's response helpful. I really appreciate it.
I took the post down because when I went back and re-read it my first thought was that 'lazy' is such a loaded and derogatory word to use to describe someone I adore and in many ways admire. It seemed inappropriately judgmental and came from a place of frustration on my part. I think I'm struggling to decide how much of that frustration is 'just me' (not meeting my expectations) vs providing reasonable parental guidance to help her achieve what she says she wants.
I started to write, just now, that I think I'd be easier to handle a kid who was really working hard, and struggling, than one who's just mailing it in and succeeding - but not to their 'potential'. But maybe that's the issue. Maybe she is really working hard, and struggling - to be focused and organized and pay attention to details and make the 'right now' decisions that are most consistent with what she really values longer-term. Maybe I need to find a better way to help her with that than pestering and harassment.
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thanks
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never mind. decided against this.
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a bit more time to think about the original request....
I do encourage anyone going into marketing (well, really, anyone doing anything) to learn to program a bit. For marketing, specifically, the previously mentioned spreadsheet and ppt is a useful skill as is anything related to public speaking.
She might also consider learning SQL (standard database language). The primary information tool for marketing anymore are Business Intelligence (BI) tools, which are database query engines. I wonder if you could find a class in one of those? (Ironically, the first time I tried to submit this post I got an SQL error - the backend engine that drives it, which is based SQL, had some kind of issue...)
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I've heard good things about Code Academy - how does it work? It looks like lots of little classses - how long do they usually take, how much do they cost, how is the content delivered? Straightforward?
I've heard some people like them - but I was really not impressed. DC both tried the python course. IMO, it was at best useless - at worst it encouraged bad habbits.
Imagine teaching someone to write fiction by handing them a list of vocabulary words and grammar rules....then saying 'go'. It was pretty much that.
There was NO discussion of anything like reasonable variable naming strategies, how/when/wether to break things into functions, readability, what to comment, testing strategies, how to think about software...nothing.
It encouraged a very hacky 'well I poked at it and the correctness-checker said it works so it must be great' attitude.
Code, like all writing, will generally be read many more times than written, follows conventions, etc. There's not really a place for that in the Code Academy structure as far as I've seen.
I'd find a class w/ a teacher.
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My son wants to go with the actual AOPS classes, I think they move a little too fast. His argument is that if he starts in May, he will be done with the Intro book in January and have plenty of time to review if necessary.
YMMV, of course, but for the motivated student it's totally do-able. DD12 is on pace to complete the IntroAlg text in 5ish months. That's roughly a section a day, 5 days a week, every week. It helps that the first 4ish chapters of the book are, by comparison to the PreAlg text, fairly straightforward.
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WTMA offers Alg 1 and Alg 2 using the Intro to Algebra book.
so...two years of high-school math, both from the Intro Alg book? The AoPS Intro Alg book is more thorough and somewhat broader than typical Alg1 classes, but I'd hesitate to call it two years of HS math. In particular, there's very light treatment of exp and log functions, nothing on matrices (as I recall) or conic sections, etc.
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DD12's handwriting is ridiculous. Truly ridiculous. I noticed today she's started holding the pencil incorrectly, too.
SO - ordering a set of pencil grips and we're going to go back an re-do cursive learning. Shockingly, she's up for it.
She's unlearning bad habbits. This may take a few times through. Anyone know if you can get the HwoT Cursive workbook in pdf form, so I can print her multiple copies of the pages (and we can just do them over and over and over till she throws it at me. :D)
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Older child is going in to 9th grade. He has little to no interest in science. He is advanced in math. He plans to major in computer science. I have biology planned for him for 9th grade. I have not picked the program yet, but am leaning toward ck12.org. Younger child really loves science and is always reading science oriented books and telling me about it. He is above average in math, but I would not say really advanced. He will be in algebra in 8th grade.
Would it be bad to do 9th grade science with both of them together?
Just FWIW for olderChild, most CompSci degrees will require college chem and a year of physics (mine did).
As someone recomended, you might look @ ML Bio. It's really math-light. We're doing it w/ an 8th grader. His enthuastic 6th grade sister decided she's also interested and has jumped on board.
Both are doing just fine (I'm using the publisher's tests, they're both scoring above 90%).
I don't see any problems w/ a 7th grader taking it.
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FWIW, my parents would have said that I wasn't headed for a STEM degree when I was in 6th grade either. And then I ended up majoring in biochemistry.
yup. I was going to be a historian till 10th grade - ended up in CompSci. you never know.
Rec for algebra AGAIN for 9th grade next fall
in High School and Self-Education Board
Posted
I'd re-do algebra. Take a year for it. Pick a solid program (PP's suggestion of Jacobs or AoPS are pretty reasonable IMO).
The concern that by doing algebra for 9th he won't get through the expected math classes in HS is somewhat legit (Alg in 9th => pre-calc in 12th), but not all entering college freshmen, even in solid engineering programs, have taken Calculus in HS.
If you want him to get that far in HS you might consider doing Geometry over a summer. I think he'll be better served by getting a solid Alg foundation and cramming geometry vs the other way around.