Hi. I have a question: Do you pre-read/re-read all assigned reading for your middle school student? I would love to assign more reading but I don't have time to re-read or pre-read everthing. However if I don't, how will I be able to discuss it with my DS. I really don't want to make him write about everything he reads. I don't want to make him analyze it to death either. I just want him to read good books and enjoy them. Any advise is welmcom. Many books such as The Pearl, The house of Seven Gables, Lord of the Flies, etc. I have already read when I was in high school but I certainly don't remember much about them. And I am a slow reader so re-reading everything would be quite cumbersome.

We ended up signing DS up for Write for Success with Mrs. Ann Empfield; she has been amazing!! He is loving the class! He started in Intermediate and is on lesson 4 but has been absolutely devouring the classes. She has been excellent at providing feedback and super responsive! Thank you all for your suggestions!! We will definitely be using her again next year for the Advanced level class.

My DS13 is currently using Write For Success with Mrs. Empfield and we love it!! He watches recorded classes, downloads his class notes and assignments and then emails his work in; she grades and provides feedback. It is wonderful!! I would love to have something like this for Spanish. My husband and I are both fluent in Spanish and so my son hears quite a bit of it at home; however writing and grammar are of great concern. Does anyone know of a tutor/program that will provide this type of service for a reasonable fee? I have seen all of the Skype Spanish class that provide the one on one conversational Spanish but that is very expensive and not really where I want to focus since he hears Spanish on a daily basis.

http://coramdeotutorials.com/courses/the-lost-tools-of-writing-level-1/

Can anyone give me a comparison of Algebra I with Derek Owens vs. Foerster w David Chandler? My 13yo son has aspirations of being an engineer but is not super mathy per se. Last year was our first year homeschooling and just as I suspected there were huge holes in his math understanding despite making excellent grades in public school. We started with Singapore 5A and progressed fairly quickly through that and 5B. Following the advice of the consultant at Singapore Math we skipped on to Discovering Mathematics 7A but he began to struggle. There were just too many conceptual leaps for him. He is currently using MUS Pre-Alg and doing very well spending only minimal time per lesson and skipping ones that he can test out of. I was planning on letting him do MUS Alg I and Alg II as a sort of Pre-Alg in preparation for a more rigorous course next year since I have read that MUS is not rigorous enough for a STEM student. But I'm not sure which course to use...can you help??

Sorry for the double post.

Wow!! I'm 45 years old and never realized I had a Learning Disability...in fact I was an extremely good student although I had to work VERY HARD at it. It turns out I never learned to visualize like you all are describing. In fact I am very poor at visualization. That explains why I hate fiction and why I am terrible at mental math and spelling out loud. In fact when I read...it is like listening to something on the radio...not like watching a television. I wonder if I'm too old to work on this. Thoughts...

Thank you. Do you have any experience with any of these courses. I was hoping to find someone who had used one that could provide inside info. Thank you for your response.

Nobody??

Tiramisu, Thank you so much for your input. It is comforting to know that my child and I are not alone in our predicament. What did mean when you mentioned that your dd has processing issues? How can I get my child tested? Is there a protocol to address these issues? And yes, I agree...my son sometimes understands the concepts and makes huge leaps but cannot "articulate" the solution on paper. He seems to get really overwhelmed with multi-step problems when he has to write them out. He too has messy cluttered papers. We use graph paper to help with organization but it doesn't really help. Today I had him take a placement test for TT and he missed only 2 of 30 on the 7th grade test. I'll have him take the TT Pre-Algebra test tomorrow. Still not sure which rout to take with him. Saxon will not work well for him either; in fact I contend that a "Saxon-type" curriculum used in the ps is what got him so confused and never gave him the foundation that he needed. He does not shift gears well either....and yet he aced the test today...this boy baffles me.

How do Foerster and Derek Owens classes compare in rigor? My ds has a STEM focus so I want to make sure I give him a good foundation. I like the idea of DO's class and the fact that he would be the one grading and assigning homework and such. I just have heard people raving about Foerster's Algebra and how wonderful it is for STEM type kids. Is Foerster as wordy as Jacob's? Ds will not have the patience to wade through paragraphs of explanations.

I really like the IEW course but I have been terrible at implementing it myself. I don't enjoy writing so it tends to fall by the wayside. So I will be looking for an online/webinar type class for my 13 yo ds. I need a teacher that knows how to make writing fun for boys. He is currently doing a Writing Mechanics [grammar] course on Time4Writing.com but I would really like to get back to IEW for next school year. Recommendations please.

Thank you all so much!! Perhaps I am hitting the panic button too soon. My son had gotten through decimals, percents, ratios and rates as well as fractions. So when he and I went through it AGAIN this school year it was already review...and now he needs more review....I am shocked. Oh well I suppose we will review again and hope that it sticks. Thank you for your replies. I suppose we will do another round of Pre-Algebra review now and through the summer. I was planning on using Foerster's Algebra with the HomeStudy Companion videos. I have taken a part-time job and need something thorough enough for a STEM student but that does not have a ton of parent involvement. I also considered ChalkDust Math but have read that the video lessons are quite long and drawn out...I don't think my ds would do well trying to watch long lectures on his own. Any opinions are welcome.

This was our first year homeschooling. I have a 13 yo son who was in pre-AP math classes in our local public school; however I had a sneaking suspicion that despite his A's he didn't really "get it." Much to my dismay, when I tested him with a placement test for Singapore Math Primary Mathematics he tested at the 5A level. I had no problem starting there because I really want him to have a good math background as he would like to be an engineer of some sort. So we plodded through 5A and 5B and he seemed to do very well. We skipped 6A and 6B per the Singapore math consultant who said that there was much overlap between those and 7A [Discovering Mathematics]. We got 2 chapters into the book and when he was to do the chapter on Integers suddenly he could not remember how to multiply 4 digits by 3 digits. I tried to have him slow down and "logic" his way through but to no avail. Needless to say that I am exasperated since I thought we had gotten through that. It is the strangest phenomenon, it is almost like he is very good at memorizing a "process" and aces the exercises and tests but then just chunks the information when we move to another chapter. I don't understand...has anyone else had a similar experience??? I don't know what else to do; I can only assume that we have not done a good job of explaining the mathematical thinking to him. I am shifting gears and moving on to Math-U-See to see if I can get him a better explanation of the underlying concepts rather than just the algorithm. The funny thing is that he is very good at mental math and easily solves word problems without writing out all of the steps. So he does have a math mind...I just can't figure out what we are missing. Please help.

Thank you for these suggestions they sound amazing!