Myrtle
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Posts posted by Myrtle
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We are just finishing up Singapore's My Pals Are Here Science , 3rd grade. It really pushed dd to think and it was easy to implement. It does not follow WTM rec's.
I did Singapore 5th and 6th with my oldest and just got 3rd in the mail, however, Singaporemath website doesn't even list a test book for the third grade like it does for the other grades Do you know if they even offer it at 3rd grade level?
One of the reasons I like Singapore science is because the tests are so well designed. While it doesn't follow WTM recommendations of choosing one area per year, the Singapore Science lessons are short enough that we had plenty of time during the school year to do a lot of outside reading in science.
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My daughter would be considered a very young first grader or an older kindergartner depending on how I chose to enroll her. I choose to call her a first grader.
While she started off "behind" and slow since she's a very young first grader, I have no doubt she'll start making up lost ground since a rigorous curriculum and private tutoring lends itself to advancement over groups of kids in classrooms.
I do not select materials for her based on her grade, but rather based on her skills, needs, and knowledge. In other words, I work at her pace and I don't purposely plan to pace out a workbook until the end of the year when she's capable of working faster, nor do I plan on hurrying her through one either so with the goal of harmonizing her work with exactly the grade level printed on the material as well as with the public school academic year.
If I were to have her tested for my own purposes, I'd probably want to see how she's performing compared to other first graders rather than to other kindergartners.
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all the way up to Lesson 70, but are back at about lesson 50 reviewing)
Sometimes he makes the sound like he is going to sound out the word and then just realizes what it is and puts it together.
I hope I am sounding like an idiot. I would just like to better understand how children progress when learning to read. :)
My three experiences:
Despite intensive phonics my oldest would sound out the first letter of unknown words and then guess the rest, often times incorrectly. It didn't bother him at all that the sentence made no sense that way.
My second son has a very good memory for words; once he sounds out a word he doesn't need to do it again. However, he has separate language issues and doesn't understand what he's reading.
My daughter sounds like she might be most like your son. She stops at each word she doesn't recognize and works on sounding it out until it occurs to her what the word is and then she blurts it out and moves on. She seems to pay attention to the meaning of sentences and will go back and reread a phrase if it didn't make sense to her.
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Cee Cee,
I sent you a list of links and one of them was wrong. Here is the correct link to Art of Problem Solving.
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whose child was on a 9th grade level in utero
Tell me about it!! LOL
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Pam,
I am using Singapore with my daughter and it has almost no drill at all. I ended up taking a 2nd grade Saxon book ripping out all the drill sheets and had her go through two or three of them per day. in the very beginning I had her fill in only a single line of math facts, I'd cover up the answer and have her tell me orally what the answers were over and over again for the same line, the same five math facts, over and over again until she could do it quickly and remember. If five was too many I'd point to the same three back and forth randomly picking one to ask. When she mastered that line, I'd cover it up and have her do the second line and we'd repeat the whole process again.
As she got better at her math facts I discontinued the line by line practice and added in Flashmaster which is an electronic flashcard device in which you have the option of entering which math facts you want to appear. So anyway, I'd look at the math facts on the upcoming sheet, put them in the Flashmaster have her practice them before doing the sheet, do the sheet, practice again on flashmaster, repeat for the next sheet.
I do not know what the official Saxon definition of "mastery is" since I don't have the teachers manual. Perhaps they tell you that if your child can not answer some number of addition facts within some number of seconds that the child has not mastered them. (Having taught arithemetic twice before I'm satisfied that she knows this well enough to not have issues with double digit addition when we get there) I am wondering if maybe your daughter simply needs more practice and wanted to let you know how intense and frequently that the practice had to be for it to "stick" with mine.
The moral of the story was not only was Singapore not enough, the Singapore supplements were not enough, the manipulatives were not enough, but Saxon drill alone on top of all that was not enough either and we had to double up on the problems and add in Flashmaster. I don't think there is anything wrong with my daughter,no LD or anything like that, I just think some kids need more intense practice than others.
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1-6 Singapore
Frank Allen's Algebra (out of print)
Moise and Down's Geometry (out of print)
Frank Allen's Algebra II (out of print)
Gelfand's Trig (in print)
Cletus Oakley and Allendoerfer's Principles of Mathematics (rigorous calc and group theory)--How can you resist a math book with such distinguished sounding names? Actually, they are both mathematicians)
However, if I didn't have someone with a degree in math telling me what to use an how to use it I'd probably just stick to Singapore all the way through and supplement with Art of Problem Solving.
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Jessica,
I have Amazon boxes with the tops cut off of them that I'm using to store science. (High tech, high cost!) I have enough shelf space in a kitchen pantry to keep two shelves worth of school supplies, paper, etc. out in the open, no boxes.
I have moved several times since I had kids and I always make it a point to completely deep clean the house, organize everything for the movers, and hover around them when they pack important things so that I can tell them how to mark the box. Actually, if you are using movers you could just mark the box yourself.
Even though it temporarily looks awkward I move all the school items into one room, clear out all the bathrooms and collect those items into one bathroom, collect all the toys out of the kids' rooms and put them in one room before the movers come. This really helped me so much to know what was in a box once at the new house and the rooms never quite correspond the way you want them to anyway. I was always able to get completely unpacked and stowed away within a week max.
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Cynthia,
I'd love to know more about Singapore's O level Chemistry.
Would it prepare one for an AP Exam? The university level classes are A-level rather than O-level, aren't they? In my mind I've always equated O-level with regular high school chemistry and A-level with honors or AP. Then again, if O-level is rigorous enough then maybe it would work.
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Has anyone used this to supplement Singapore? Do you recommend it?
I use it.
I recommend it.
All the Singapore CDs have teaching modules for the topics that are on the CD although not all topics for that grade level are taught. There have been a few topics that I did NOT have to teach at all because the kid got to it first on his own by exploring the CD. With each teaching module there is a game in which the child can apply what he has just learned.
There are not enough of activities to warrant using this every single day. We get around to it every couple of weeks. If you need a substitute teacher because you are feeling ill one day, or busy, or you simply want to see another way of teaching a topic, pop in the CD.
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Here's my theory:
When you receive rep:
gray square = no points
green square = points
red square = negative points from a bad rep
Gray square does not mean neutral, nor does it mean that you got a bad rep. It just means that the person repping you had no rep power. I think it is very likely that people are giving you good reps with no points and the fact that they have no rep power is leaving a gray square leading you to believe that it's negative.
Somewhere along the way someone said that the gray square is neutral rep or that was negative and it got repeated as if it were truth.
I have recieved gray squares worth no points with positive comments and names.
The private comments are much more meaningful and useful than the points...if you want points go play Zuma ;-)
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Sequentially. We just finished the first book and are on to Advanced next week.
Mental Note: Sequentially. Not concurrently AND consecutively.
If I go back and edit my mistake and I'll put down "senility" as the reason for the edit.
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Maybe I can lure you back to metal with Buckethead's Jordan???? Plato, Cicero, RL Moore, and Buckethead.
But something you'll be happier with might be Enya's Orinoco Flow
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Did you do these consecutively or concurrently?
I am not familiar with this product at all, so forgive my ignorance on how they work. I intend to look into the chemistry programs mentioned in this thread.
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If my kid had a physically violent response to a request he'd be dealing with more than just a few extra assignments.
The mitigating "I didn't mean to do it that
hard" is the defense of every abuser out there. The majority of the people in prison say "ooops."
I'm not saying we'd rush off into expensive therapy, but I'd be doing a lot of soul searching and thinking about the bigger picture and other changes other than giving an extra assignment.
There is a child down the street from me that was expelled from school (sixth grade) for having a violent tantrum. I'm sure he didn't intend the consequences of what he did either. I'm just saying, many people in society treat this as a more serious issue than "giving the kid some extra assignments" at this age.
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Woo-Hoo!!! Now I can get that 52inch plasma hdtv 1080p television. My money is heading to China via Best Buy.
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I just got Interactive Science (the new edition) in the mail today.
I ordered the textbook and labs with it. The "practical workbook" is the lab book and specifies all the materials you will need for the activities.
The one change that I noticed between the two editions is the increase in token gesture non-science activities, "fuzzy" science, if you will. They have the kids research and opining on the ethics of the Human Genome project before the kids have even been taught what DNA is. There is an activity that for the students to conduct a survey on refrigerator preferences and present their findings via power point. Not a lot of that though.
The other difference is that the very last chapter of the new edition is sex ed. It's a very short chapter, covers the basics, and spends a few paragraphs discussing the dangers of teenage pregnancy, abortion, dangers of abortion, a brief despcription of the variety of birth control that "married couples" use, and a few sexually transmitted diseases.
I think I will use it because visually it's organized better than the old edition. I'm going to have to spend a lot of time figuring out what I'll need for the chemistry practicals.
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There are different components to HWT and it depends on which components you wish to buy.
I bought the wooden pieces for tracing and while my children were entertained by them and did learn from them I don't really consider them essential. Not buying those would certainly decrease your investment.
The basic handwriting booklets were very useful.
If your two chidren will be working on this at the same time two would be useful. On the other hand, it is possible if you have a small budget to buy only one and simply rewrite the words and letters as copywork.
I did find buying the blank HWT paper useful for beginners but not so useful that I needed more than package of it. It's possible to even do a "work around" with the paper if you can make and print your own.
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Oh very funny.
Someone repped me for dissing reps.
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The way the rep points work is that some people have more rep power than others. People with a higher rep give higher rep. (and if you want to see who has the most rep go to the members list, click on rep, and it will reorganized the members according to who has the most rep, admins on top)
It's not clear to me that someone with a higher rep is really the person with the best advice on any particular topic. They get their rep from "the masses," what we need are philosopher kings giving rep...per topic, not just in general. (Someone with high rep doesn't necessarily have good advice about coffee makers or even Greek textbooks.) In real life public schools get high rep from families of the students, all the public schools are above average.
Another analogy is student evaluations. Students don't recognize the best and most knowledgeable professors, they rep the "nice" ones.
Other sites say that admin can set everyone's rep power to zero. If that were to happen the "rep" message really amounts to a private thumbs up/down.
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Janice,
My husband and I have spent a lot of time discussing this very issue.
I think we've decided that the chances of our kids getting a scholarship is not great enough to sacrifice the philosophy and real math. What if we sacrifice what the education we really want for the hopes of a scholarship and the scholarship doesn't come through? It will have been for nothing. Perhaps our youngest is the closest to having the temperament it would take to accomplish such a thing.
We'll gladly pay for their courses in community college and they can transfer to a university from there.
There is a point in time in which realilty makes classical education impossible. I think this is why it was always the domain of the upper classes--they didn't have to worry about their kids making a living and getting scholarships. They could send the kid off to study the classics and pay for the tutors or tuition and after college the kid would inherit the family land and business.
The rest of this chickens have to work for a living and worry about banausos as well as paideia.
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These names are not "math" they are pedagogical techniques or heuristic devices meant to help the child. If they are causing more confusion than help, ditch the names and try another technique without ditching the program which otherwise seems to serve your child well. One device you could try is to represent word problems pictorally and this serves as a kind of graphic organizer for the child.
Singapore 2nd grade Challenging Word Problems gives examples of this and the word problems that I have seen in Saxon never use more than one or two steps so while the numbers change, once you learned the technique you could use it for other grade levels.
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Ereksmom,
That is just unreal. Sounds like this paperwork hurdle was created after they got hit with folks gaming the system. They are trying to minimize their type I errors, but it's going to cost them some type II errors.
You are right in that they are going to let a lot of talent slip by undetected. When they hear about their "rejects" getting accepted into more prestigious universities, they'll go back and once again change their policy.
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What is a pattern name?
Singapore Math Intensive Practice-vs-Challenging Word Problems
in K-8 Curriculum Board
Posted
Challenging Word Problems is a book of word problems arranged in the following manner:
The word problems are arranged by topic. The introduction to the topic illustrates two methods of bar diagrams that can be used to illustrate the solution of the word problem. There are two sets of word problems for each topic a basic set and a challenging set. The basic set will include less steps and the challenging set will require more steps.
The Intensive Practice is also organized by topic but has fewer word problems. However, it contains exercises in which the child can apply an algorithm. This would be useful if the child did not have enough practice problems for learning long division in the textbook, for example. The Intensive Practice book also has few fun "puzzlers" such as magic squares included with each topic.
Now that I'm on my third kid in Singapore I'm finding that I rely more on the Word Problem book and less on Intensive Practice, if my child needs more practice with algorithms I can find drill sheets on line. I don't just use the word problems to simply teach reasoning, but also to teach the kid how to properly express the multiple steps involved in a single equation. The ability to write out multiple steps horizontally as a single equation is a useful skill to take with you to algebra.