Do you use pre-testing to find what your kids can skip?

[Little House]

I am thinking of using pre-testing in math to see what sections my dd can skip. If you use pre-testing, how does this work in your home? Do you worry about skipping too much? Do you worry about not providing enough practice? Where do you get the test to use? Do you make it up or use a placement test or something else? Do you do this in a formal or informal way? (In the past I've just skipped stuff that I knew she knew without actually giving a test, I would consider that informal.) Just curious to see how others do this.

[Storm Bay]

I did this one year with my eldest. She'd done SM 6, most of it, but wanted to go back to Saxon (I like SM, dislike Saxon, but she was the reverse). We did the tests and she only had to do lessons with problems where she got the answers wrong. In this case, I didn't worry about not enough practise because she has a mind like a steel trap for arithmetic. Practise became more of an issue when she started Algebra, but even then she doesn't need as much practise as many students do.

 

With my other two, whenever they get to an easy part of Singapore Math, I simply have them go through it faster and/or add CWP to go with it so that they get more of a challenge.

[Desert Rat]

I used the placement tests on Singapore Math's website to place my ds. We had been using fun workbooks published by DK and needed a more structured math program. I was able to place him well but boy, do I wish I had started out with Singapore!

[joannqn]

We use Math-U-See. I don't allow my daughter to skip because she "hates" math and tends to make careless errors. I did about half of Gamma and Delta with my son and decided it was silly to continue because I knew that he knew all of the material well. I gave him the final exams which he passed with 97% despite only officially doing the first half of the curriculum. For the coming levels (Epsilon and Zeta), I'm having him work the test book and will be using the workbook for my daughter. If we find anything he needs more practice with, I'll just copy problems from the workbook onto the white board. I don't like to skip altogether though.

[angela in ohio]

I am thinking of using pre-testing in math to see what sections my dd can skip. If you use pre-testing, how does this work in your home? Do you worry about skipping too much? Do you worry about not providing enough practice? Where do you get the test to use? Do you make it up or use a placement test or something else? Do you do this in a formal or informal way? (In the past I've just skipped stuff that I knew she knew without actually giving a test, I would consider that informal.) Just curious to see how others do this.

 

I use the Diagnostic-Prescriptive method, which is basically what you describe. I consider the material, assess my dc's understanding of it, and then instruct based on that. I don't use a formal test regularly, although we do both grade-level and out-of-level testing each year, and I consider those scores in my assessment.

 

I can generally tell if dc have had enough practice by how automatic they are at the skill. If they cannot complete my assessment quickly and easily, they need more practice, even if they technically know the skill. (Many people skip material if a dc slightly knows it, but then find that they missed out years later when dc haven't mastered the foundational skills necessary for higher level work.)

[JenneinCA]

I am for my little one in math. I found the scope and sequence for the program I like and found out which parts he knows and which ones he doesn't. We are going to skip things he can do and work on the things he can't. So he will be doing math from K to 2nd grade all at once. He has issues with days of the week, telling time and money (K topics) but can do simple addition and place value (1st/2nd grade topics). So we go at his pace and ability.

 

Hooray for homeschooling.

[AnitaMcC]

This is mainly in math, but also we may skip some in vocabulary, grammar, certain subjects like health. No reason to spend so much time on material they already know well... I rather have them learn new material.

 

They have to get 95% or better on the pre-test (which is usually the end of chapter test in text books) but also, for any missed (even if it is one question) they have to go to that section and look over what they did wrong. If they get 85- 94%, they just go ever the sections they had any wrong answers. If they get less than a 85% then they have to do the whole chapter.

[skaterbabs]

I started Dot in the first lesson of the first lighunit of the 100 level in CLE math even though I knew she knew almost everything in it. I wasn't concerned with the repetition because the format was completely new to her, and she was learning what is expected of her in the program. That said, once we got past a certain point, we skipped a LOT of the addition & subtraction facts because even in LU 102 they only go through sums and differences to five. She's known her addition and subtraction facts to ten for over a year. I see no reason to drill and kill when she knows the material. We also chose to NOT do the timed drills at all. I doubt we will do them until we get to math facts she's not absolutely certain of.

[babysparkler]

I do a lot of "skipping" when I know the material has already been mastered.

 

My ds was so bored of Saxon 7/6 this past year that in March I ended up giving him the unit tests instead of doing lessons and sure enough - he aced them all, one after another. He loves taking tests, so I gave them to him daily until the book was finished (it took a week or two). I did find two concepts that he didn't know based on the tests, so we did a couple of lessons on those after we retired the book. The spiral curriculum thing backfired on us since he generally digs deeper than the book typically goes, which means that he then knows the next concepts before they are even taught... making the end of the year dreadfully boring. We will be switching curriculums next year, needless to say!

[MissKNG]

We are going to start RightStart Math Level A in September for PreK/K so I don't think skipping will be an option due to the way they teach math.

 

Right now, I'm using the Beginning Mathematical Reasoning for 3 and 4 year olds workbook. I don't skip lessons but when the same lesson drags on for 3 or 4 pages, my dd (38 months) gets bored so I'll skip the last page of the lesson. Like we just did the intro section to patterns and after 3 pages of patterns, she was too bored to even want to do the last pattern page because she "got it" on the 1st page.

[KAR120C]

We have homeschooled from the start, and from very young, and with the same math curriculum nearly all the way through. So it wasn't really a matter of having to find out where to start as much as when... So we never really did that in our core work.

 

On the other hand, though... we are always cycling through skills -- calculation, spelling, grammar... anything that requires practice and can get rusty without regular review. Each time we run through the same material again, I do let him "test out", because really it is just a matter of picking out the couple bits he needs practice on. For a long time that was math facts -- about once a year (usually summer) we'd hit the multiplication tables again and make sure he still had them down, or review the handful that had slipped out of his head... ;) This year we're cycling through all the pre-algebra and algebra 1 stuff... fractions, decimals, percents, and basic manipulation of equations with variables, and so far he has only had to review a couple pages' worth. Spelling is similar -- I pre-test him on each word list (in Megawords) and we only do the sections he doesn't already have mastered. But we'll come back around and do it again when we're through the whole series.

 

In general I do think pre-testing is good for focusing on what needs to be done, but for a core curriculum I think I'd rather do one placement test to see where to pick up and then adjust the work more informally. If there are too many easy sections then I would reconsider, but if it's just one or two I'd keep them in, figuring that there was a logic to their sequence in the book that will come together if we follow it more-or-less as written.