SoCal_Bear
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Posts posted by SoCal_Bear
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I also don't think AOPS pre-algebra readiness test on their website is very useful at all personally. Looking at their actual sample chapters is a much better gauge. This is ch. 12. This is very typical. Don't bother with ch. 1 excerpt. It is not at all what the rest of the book is like.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/aops-cdn.artofproblemsolving.com/products/prealgebra/exc3.pdf-
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I really hope you don't think RR's videos are full instructional videos. They are there to support the textbook. The primary instruction is in the textbook. That's the rub is whether or not a student is ready to read a math textbook and learn from it especially a discovery based textbook.
If you read about how most of us are using the curriculum, the students works through the chapter and the problems. The book does not instruct how to do the problem. Students are expected to intuit/discover/make leaps. Then after each problem, you are to go read through the solution carefully and understand the why. Each problem is sequenced so that students are led through a series of discoveries. There is not explicit teaching like the other other curriculum you have seen which is teach/demonstrate and then practice. At that point, you would watch the video after you work through the chapter. You work the problems in the book. Then many will work through problems in that topic on Alcumus until they reach mastery level whereever you set.
From what I recall, it is not uncommon for pre-algebra to take 18 months to complete. I had an unusual kid who moved quickly through it in 10 months, but this was an uncommon pacing.-
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If you are burned out from teaching and MUS was confusing and Abeka was challenging, I absolutely do not suggest you do AOPS, this is a fast track to burn out and frustration for you.
There are videos you can use to support SM Dimensions here at https://singaporemathlive.com/dimensions/ If you have not completed SM6 or equivalent, I would consider do that first.-
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@8filltheheart is correct. AOPS pre-algebra is a difficult text. It is long and thick. Often completely overwhelming to a young student because it is completely unlike any math textbook a young student would have ever encountered. It is visually not a fun textbook at all. It is very dense to get through. So if you like need pictorial presentation, this is not the curriculum for the vast majority of students. The exponents chapter (ch.2) is pretty challenging to get through, and it is right at the beginning of the book. Unless you have have student that tolerates a math textbook that is designed so that event the best students should not get more than 80-85% or so of the problem sets correct the first time through and that it is supposed to frustrate and puzzle you, this is not going to be a good fit.
For a rigorous curriculum with a teacher guide, I would suggest Singapore Dimensions.-
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I'm going introduce a line thought in here about because you raised the question of keeping transferring to school as an option. A few questions for you which will matter a lot how you answer this question. Are you attempting to transfer to a public school or private school? If public school, are you in California? Are you concerned about getting high school credit for his courses? Are you planning to teach yourself or outsource? Is your local districted school following an integrated math sequence (the vast majority are)? Do you want your student to transfer seamlessly back into whatever sequence in avaialble? Does it matter to you that math acceleration is increasingly discouraged in public schools?
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1 hour ago, Ritz said:
That's so helpful. Thank you. I was thinking we'd try to do an elective or two over the summer so that she had some extra time for the coursework. Sounds like that may be needed to make sure she stays balanced. Thanks again!
There were electives my son really enjoyed like his coding and chess classes which he and I opted to delay when looking at his overall schedule. He and I also have tapered down his Chinese lessons to once a week when he has active Latin classes. He did decide to withdraw from a local fall golf program because it would have taken up too much time on the weekends. Coding and chess both could have been restarted at any time because they have rolling enrollment. Coding he delayed until February to give himself all of January to reacclimate to spring term for all his classes and chess he restarted but at a much lower level of commitments dropping from 4-5 hours a week to 2. Now that he has found his footing and Science Olympiad is likely ending for the year (unlikely our team will qualify for state), he is increasing chess back up to 5+ hours weekly due to being recruited to a competitive scholastic chess team. He also requested that our family not take an annual fall vacation in October because it would have been too difficult to keep up. These were all choices that he was coming to on his own which is exactly what I wanted was for him to take ownership in thinking through choices and understanding trade offs have to be made.
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To @8filltheheart's point, Connie did develop an true honors course that is in between what her STEM dd took and my son is taking which is now renamed Adv. Honors. So, you could drop down from the Advanced Honors to the honors course without going to the regular chemistry course. My sense is the honors course is on par with other honors level high school chem courses that are available in terms of workload. I won't say that they are the same because Connie is really an excellent teacher. The Advanced Honors chem is really pre-AP level. Previous students have commented that AP chem post Connie's course was not as challenging.
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My sister and my good friend had one family member (teen) sick with Covid. They isolated that family member and took precautions with masks, etc. Everyone else avoided getting it. This was a month ago.
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We use AOPS but we don't use it via the online text based courses. Not my son's cup of tea. He likes live with interactive with video. Anyways, we opted for WTMA AOPS classes. They don't move as fast. I'm ok with it not being as deep because we do other math over the summer plus he is part of the local math circle which does a lot of competition math. He will do AOPS Pre-Calc this fall. I don't need math to be so compressed and take up as much time because his others that have a heavy work load. Science takes up a lot more time than math because of his involvement with Science Olympiad. Plus we need time for Latin and Chinese.
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On 1/20/2022 at 10:57 PM, Condessa said:
= I definitely think it is advisable to learn at a younger age before so much hangs in the balance.
This is so true. I didn't have to work until college and that came too late in the sense that I didn't value the point of hard work. I did enough to do well enough versus learning to love learning to achieve mastery or to persevere to reach goals. That's what I am trying to impart to my son because I wasted a lot of my college experience. I do a lot of learning now because I desire to educate and improve myself but I didn't then. I just did the next thing to check the next box.
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17 minutes ago, Ritz said:
Just saw your post and I’m hoping you can help me think through our fall course choice. Can I ask how much time your son is investing and his age? Our daughter is finishing Honors Bio and wants to take chem as a freshman next year. She loves Bio this year and is looking at a STEM field, but I’m a little nervous about balancing the Advanced Honors Chem with a few other Honors classes/AP. I also saw the Clover Valley Chem (not advanced) that the same teacher offers. Just can’t decide on best fit.
He spends 10-12 hours a week minimum. Her workload estimate is accurate. So he works on Chem usually Mon-Sat because we will do labs on Saturday and he seems to always wait until the weekend to take his exam. Connie will allow you to drop from Adv Chem to regular chem if the workload is too much. You will definitely know by the second unit (units are usually in 2 week increments) if the class will be too much. That second unit is what I would call the fish or cut bait point. If you can manage it and break through the challenge of it, you will make it through the course. I won't lie and say there weren't points of frustration, but it was very well worth it for my son. He will be a very different student on the other side of this. It was hard, but well worth the journey for us.
I purposely took a break from history this year because of this class to lighten his load. You can see in my siggy what he is studying.-
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This is an incredibly old thread. I would say Singpore Math or Rightstart Math could be options that are conceptual math curricula that you can look at. Beast is not for all students. I dislike how it is currently talked about in homeschooling circles. It's a niche math curriculum. I actually used both SM and BA with my son.
Anyways, I will say if you are headed toward AOPS PA, it helps to know that the curriculum is designed so that you should not be about to solve more than 80% of the problems the first time through. Even the strongest of students. This is on purpose. Once my son understood this, he was a lot more ok that it is designed to force you to learn to rework and think through problems that you did not solve and develop problem solving stamina and the ability to try mutiple strategies and to learn from what didn't work. It is also supposed to frustrate you and force you to learn to work through that frustration. -
It takes about 1 1/2 hours for me...since I have the students ranging from 6th to 10th grade working in pairs. They are not always as efficient so I think you can definitely do it. That being said I do assign all the exercises for them to work on for each investigation to do in between our class meetings. My son says it doesn't take him more than an hour. He is an efficient worker though.
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@Meriwether You could also consider Patty Paper Geometry by Serra. That's very enjoyble as well. I'm teaching to 8 kids. It's really more like facilitating. If it was one on one, it probably would be teaching, but it is very much discovery/inquiry oriented. I pretty much worked through 1 investigation per session. There are 14 investigations. I bought it on Rainbow.
https://www.michaelserra.net/weblog/patty-paper-geometry-1.html
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I'm a little hesistant to put this out here, but here I go.
If you are a Christian homeschooler and have felt like you and your family need a homeschooling community connection because you have felt alienated and isolated by your local homeschooling community, please PM me. I've seen your posts on various threads over these last two years, and my heart has been broken for you. I am reaching in Christian fellowship to my fellow homeschooling sisters (and brothers - the few on here).
More information is available via PM, I am not comfortable posting personal information on a public forum.-
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Hmmm...I've been using Nexcare Sensitive Skin...Someone gave me some Welly bandages...I guess I have a reason to use them now.
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We used it for about 4 months or so to delay starting AOPS algebra. I don't regret it as we spent time exploring interesting topics in math that aren't covered in the normal scope and sequence. He went through AOPS pre-algebra a lot faster than I had expected. At this point, he will be doing AOPS pre-calc this fall.
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San Diego Chess Club Scholastic Division is rebuilding its program and starting to hold in person tournaments. It is also going to start offering online tournaments as well that are open to anyone anywhere.
You can join their facebook group here.
Some information can be found on their website here.
To join their club on Chess Kid, please follow these instructions here. You will need to join in order to participate in any online tournaments hosted by the club and to be able to participate in the $15 discounted premium Chess Kid membership.
SDCC Scholastic is hosting their first online tournament tomorrow at 4 PM PST. This is free. It will last about 1 1/2 hours. Details on how to join the club on chess kids here. All are welcome to join regardless of where they live even outside of San Diego. Please fill out the google form with your chess kid ID! https://k12.sandiegochessclub.org/online-tournaments
Rated tournaments will be offered in the future at a very affordable price. Much less than what is currently being charged by other clubs and schools. The director believes in making chess accessible to all.
ETA: If you have trouble with getting your account connected, send your account name directly to k12sdcc@gmail (dot) com and she will get you added. There is a bug in the system for chesskids which is blocking some accounts.-
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To be honest, I am not a fan of how Saxon teaches word problems. That's me. Saxon is what I was taught in in public school.
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https://www.borenson.com/
I think this could help Hands on Equations. The white cover book of verbal problems is great. All of it is meant to be worked with the manipulatives.-
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possibly try the Trader Joe's version? My family tried those, and they are pretty decent. I haven't had Milanos in a long time. I just don't eat sugar or wheat.
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1 hour ago, Fritz said:
I'm curious to see if it includes the video of capital police officer Lt. Michael Byrd shooting (without warning) unarmed Ashli Babbit in the neck and killing her?
The documentary clearly shows what happened in that incident especially the context which matters a lot. After you watch that, you can see exactly why he took the action he did. He was about to be overrun. I can't unsee watching Ashli be shot in the shoulder knowing that she would later die. The documentary showed exactly what the DOJ investigation found:
https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/department-justice-closes-investigation-death-ashli-babbitt
Likewise I can't unsee watching the crowd tampel a women who would later die of her injuries as they rushed into the Capitol or drag a fallen police officer down the front stairwell of the Capitol steps by his helmet. I can not unhear the audio from the radio communications of officers who tried to hold the line and were outflanked and overrun. The sound of the men and women who were in mortal fear for their lives yet trying to still do their jobs is haunting.I forced myself not to turn away and to bear witness to this tragic moment in our collective history.
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I'm not making a political statement about it. It is a historical record of what happened.
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AOPS Math
in K-8 Curriculum Board
Posted
Well, now that I see you mention private school, it seems like paying for a class may be possible for you. If you really would like to consider AOPS, I would suggest you consider outsourcing this. Since you mention lively instruction, I suspect the online text based courses would not be a good fit, I would suggest you look at WTMA's AOPS pre-algebra courses.
I went to copy the # of seats available right now. These are EST schedule. Yoo is a veteran teacher with Well Trained Mind Academy.