Thanks for all your thoughts. This seems like a great idea. What worries me is that the instructor's guide seems to suggest very different pacing depending on the section: 1 day for some, 3 or 4 or sometimes even more for others. It makes me wonder whether I might have my kid skim too quickly through sections that I didn't realize were especially important or meaty. I wish the instructor's guide did something like I hear Lial's does, with suggested pacing and assignments for different levels of student. I know it's only a place to start and every student is different, but... I guess this is exactly what Kolbe offers, but I feel like I'd have more confidence in it if it was suggested by the Foerster book itself, especially when I see how different Kolbe's suggestions are from MWB's from another syllabus. Sigh. Well, I'm sure we'll slog through fine and she'll end up learning lots of good math! Thanks again.

I can check and see. Did you do odds, or did you choose problems (aside from word problems) more carefully than that?

.....and (continuing Vanurseprac's line of questioning) about how long should we expect each section to take? Of course the answer is different for each student, but when section 3.2 might take one day and 3.3 might take 3 days, it's hard to know what goal to have (daily or weekly or whatever) if you have the goal of finishing the book (or whatever part of the book you're doing--we'll probably save trig for precalc) in a schoolyear. If we knew in advance to plan in three days for section 3.3, then it would just be part of the plan and we'd know she was still on track to finish when she wants to. If she just works x hours/day, it wouldn't be until near the end of the school year that she'd know how she was doing in terms of finishing when she wants to. She'd rather know in advance so she can push through and put in the time right along. If that makes any sense.

I'm so surprised not to have heard from any Kolbe Foerster 2 users, since I see Kolbe discussed often on these boards, usually in a positive light. Is there anything I should know that I don't about Kolbe?! I hope it's not too obnoxious for me to bump my own thread once to see if I can dig up any useful feedback...

I have been planning out Foerster Alg 2 using a few resources that some of you all pointed me to recently. However, a copy of Kolbe's lesson plans just came into my hands. It looks so easy....someone else has already done the work of planning it out, pacing it, and choosing homework problems! I am wondering if anyone out there has used this schedule (either the regular or the honors plan), and if so, what you thought of it. Were enough problems assigned to solidify the concepts? Did you feel they included enough of Foerster's famously useful word problems? Was your kid able to move on successfully? I know these answers will vary a lot with each different student, but I would still love to hear any bddt thoughts that anyone has.

Oh my goodness, I can't believe I forgot to link the site! You figured me out, Lucky mama, and thanks for finishing my post for me! :001_smile: It's nice to know someone else out there liked the look of these, too. We're going to try out four of them. They look like significantly higher quality than most labs (and "labs") that I see, either online or in published lab manuals. Lab components have always been my bugaboo with science.

I was looking for labs for my 10th-grader for biology this coming year, and found this web site that I thought others might appreciate. Some of the labs are just glorified worksheets, and some are simple demonstrations. I am looking for labs that actually ask the student to experiment--to frame a question, design an experiment, and record results to analyze. I was surprised how many of these either already ask for this kind of work or could be easily adapted to do so. Most or all of the materials seem to be pretty easily obtainable. Just in case this is helpful to someone else, too...

Yeah, Rose, I think you're right. I like that as a starting point. That gives me a nice place to start!

The request for Conceptual Physics plans got such useful responses, I thought I'd try, too! Does anyone have lesson plans they'd be willing to share for C&C? We will not be covering the whole book (she does not plan to take AP or SAT2 in bio), and I'm trying to figure out which chapters to prioritize.

Read all of your helpful followup replies and then forgot to acknowlege them! Thanks, Ellie, for kicking me out of the box :001_smile: and thanks everyone else, too. All of your thoughts make sense--just let her do seven credits, or balance this semseter with another class next semester, or whatever. I think this thread has helped me loosen up a bit and realize there are several perfectly legitimate ways to go about this. I'm feeling much better, and appreciate you all talking sense to me about this!

Just fyi, 4B is two chapters of math-in-the-real-world kinds of stuff, and then just a bunch of chapters of review. We have 4A and 4B, and even so I'm only planning on having her do 4A and. keeping 4b just in case she wants more review before standardized testing. So if you agree, then you're only a teacher's guide away from having everything you need! At worst, could you pay a math tutor to answer questions? You will have all the answers in the back of the book, so your only issue will be with the questions your kid gets wrong and can't figure out alone.

Thanks so much, everyone! This is really helpful. It feels like such a confusing subject, and you all have a lot of good thoughts. Well, maybe I'm thinking too "inside the box," here, and I'd love to be further enlightened....my thinking is that if she were doing everything at home, she'd be doing six credits, as she has for the past number of years: math, english, history, science, and two electives (in her case, a foreign language and music). So I was thinking that we should stick to that idea generally, especially as colleges she'll likely apply to will want to see four years of most of these things. So if she takes English at the cc, and if we count it as 1 full credit being accomplished in one semester, then to even out the work load more or less, she would take one of her other subjects and NOT do it first semester, and do it all (thus, double-speed) second semester, or else take it at the cc second semester. Does that make sense? If it doesn't, please do tell me!! I'm new at this and want to hear all about it. Fwiw, she'll be in 10th grade.

I've seen it said here that even Foerster himself recommends doing trig as part of precalc. Then again, it looks like trig is part of Alg. 2 often enough. If you did Foerster's Alg .2, did you do the final three chapters--trig--in the same year?

My daughter is considering taking English 1 at our local community college. The main reason is that we want to start having some outside validation--she works very hard at home and learns a lot, but right now my word is all we have to go on...not very convincing to an admissions office, I know! All her other courses would be at home this semester. We're not yet sure whether she'd take a second class next semester. From what I read on these boards, this one-semester class would count for a year of English for her. Is this true? And if it is, how do you handle that in terms of work load? Say she does not take a cc class next semester. Do you save another home-based class that you do not start until second semester, and then do it double-speed? And while I'm piling on the questions...does anyone have any opinions on what kind of class is best to take for this purpose (outside validation)? Is English as good as any? Thanks for any perspective anyone can offer. This would be our first foray into cc classes, and I'm feeling a little confused and unsure about the whole thing!

Sorry to come back to this so late....I got sick the day after posting. Thank you to everyone!! It is so helpful to hear what worked for different families. I feel like I have a lot of good options now. My daughter is looking forward to getting back to Foerster after her year off for geometry.

It's often suggested on this forum to do all the word problems in Foerster's Alg 1. We did and are glad of it, but I know a different text can be a different situation. For those of you who used Foerster Alg 2, did your kid work all the word problems, or not?

I have the instructor's guide with its general suggestions, but I'd love to avoid reinventing the wheel. It's so nice to see what worked well enough for someone else!

Yes, Matryoshka, that's it. Thanks!! And thanks for the review.

There's one I've seen discussed plenty on these forums. I just spent over an hour scouring my notes, and can't find the name. You just pay by the week (or month?), and you are assigned one specific tutor to work with. The tutor will help the child on assignments you have chosen, or will provide more structure and ideas if you prefer. There's no large commitment, and no classes. The web site offers a generous sample of how it works, showing a series of email correspondence between a tutor and a student on an essay the student is writing--I think maybe it has to do with dogs, but I'm not certain. Everything is done on email; there is no synchronous skype-type component. Does anyone know what I'm talking about?

At about that stage I read Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers, by Gordon Neufeld. It was incredible for me, and gave me both permission and tools for doing what my heart was telling me to do: let them grow up, yes, but keep mattering in their lives more than I saw some parents around me doing. That book became part of the very fiber of my being the way few books have. Your instinct to hold tight and stay relevant as you also support their appropriate growing independence is right on, I think, and this book validates that.

Oh! Well, that's easy! Thanks a lot, Miss Mousie and perkybunch.

Well, it's nice to know I have company! Thank you so much Sebastian, Momto2Ns, and Penguin, for specific ideas. Hmm. Maybe you are talking me down from my terror of pulling together my own labs. I am going to look at the resources you all mention. They sound wonderful! Maybe they can help me. Sebastian, by the way, I made Winogradsky columns with my kids and a group of their friends a few years ago. They were really fun to make, and we did get some interesting changes, but not the amazing color zones that we had seen pictures of. It was still cool, and you're making me think perhaps we should try again. Thanks a lot, everyone!

I kind of buried this question in a poorly written post a few days ago, so I thought I'd try again because I know lots of people here use Concepts and Connections: how do you get the answers to the review questions? Are they in the instructor's manual? The cd-rom of instructor resources? I'd be grateful if someone could point me to the right resource. Thanks!

I see on Amazon that there is a book "instructor guide" and a CD-ROM of "instructor resources." I do have an educator account on Oasis with Pearson, but I'm a little confused when I look there, too--they don't seem to be clearly showing what resources go with the student text, and what is in each. The biggest things I am hoping for is answers to textbook questions, and tests (with answers). Does anyone know what resource has these? Many thanks for any light anyone can shed on this! [Edited to improve/clarify both title and post.]

1. I don't want to do Labpaq--they were incredibly rude to me a few years ago when I tried to get more info. They wanted me to buy, sight-unseen, and would tell me NOTHING about what I might be getting beyond the list of labs. Wouldn't even provide a list of what was included in the kit, or even a screenshot of one page of the manual...something about "intellectual property rights," which is ridiculous because there are all sorts of curriculum providers who offer generous samples so you can make an informed decision. 2. Quality Science Labs--seem like the nicest people in the world and answer my questions quickly, kindly, fully, and in very helpful detail, but their physics kit was, well, kind of thin, and the manual was semi-literate, and we found too many outright mistakes that cost us a lot of time. We ditched it after a few labs. I'm not inclined to try their biology. 3. I get weak in the knees when I consider finding good labs online and buying the parts. Tried this once years ago for middle school bio and earth sci. Huge work, big expense, and most labs didn't work well anyway. 4. Bruce Thompson's Illustrated Guides seem great, but we tried the Chem two years ago. It looked amazing when we perused the manual, but when we bought the kit and tried to use it, it was incredibly frustrating--confusing instructions, grossly misleading approximate lab duration times, etc. I have spent the last hour or so researching these forums and found a review of his Bio kit that had exactly the same complaints. 5. This is just us, but it really must be a secular provider. We don't want scriputure quotes or "worldview" aspects. We've been down that road before and it just won't work for us. I mean that with no disrespect to those for whom this does work well. It's just quirky us. Where does all of this leave me? So far, I feel like the answer to that is, "In a pickle!" We are looking for a nice, standard high school level--not AP, but also not just fun whiz-bang kitchen biology. Can anyone offer any hope? Is there a kit out there for us, or can someone talk me off the ledge about finding good labs and putting together the pieces myself? ETA: We're probably using Campbell and Reece's Concepts and Connections as a text, but I don't need the labs to correlate with the text in any precise way.