Anyone have experience with UCSMP Geometry in ps (Chicago math)?

[Perry]

My dd (12) returned to ps for 7th grade after 5 years of hs. She's a good student and excels at math. We did Foerster's Algebra 1 last year and she did fine, so we put her in Geometry for 7th grade.

 

She is getting an A/A- on everything, and her teacher says she's one of the best students in her class. But she's miserable. She hates it and says she's struggling and doesn't really understand what's going on. They apparently don't teach; the kids read a new section each day and then do the first set of questions on their own. The next day, the teacher "goes over" any questions the kids have, then they do the second set of questions from that section, plus the first set of questions from the next section. So there is never a formal presentation of the material. It sounds very haphazard and disjointed, and I would have hated that type of math class.

 

She wants to dual enroll and take math at home again. I'm concerned that the problem is her age, that she just isn't ready for geometry, and a new curriculum won't really help the situation.

 

I'm trying to figure out if other kids have the same issues with this curriculum as I'm going to discuss the situation with the teacher at some point.

[MBM]

She is getting an A/A- on everything, and her teacher says she's one of the best students in her class. But she's miserable. She hates it and says she's struggling and doesn't really understand what's going on. They apparently don't teach; the kids read a new section each day and then do the first set of questions on their own. The next day, the teacher "goes over" any questions the kids have, then they do the second set of questions from that section, plus the first set of questions from the next section. So there is never a formal presentation of the material. It sounds very haphazard and disjointed, and I would have hated that type of math class.

 

She wants to dual enroll and take math at home again. I'm concerned that the problem is her age, that she just isn't ready for geometry, and a new curriculum won't really help the situation.

 

I'm trying to figure out if other kids have the same issues with this curriculum as I'm going to discuss the situation with the teacher at some point.

 

Ugh. From what you describe, it sounds to me like she's struggling because the teacher is not teaching. In our high school math classes the students do not self-teach. Teachers don't spoon-feed them, either. The class is spent discussing the upcoming material; homework is done later.

 

Could she handle doing a geometry curriculum at home concurrently with the school's?

 

Our high school uses this book, fwiw:

 

Geometry for Enjoyment and Challenge

0-866-09-965-4

 

Good luck.

[Sara R]

Chicago math made Everyday math in elementary school. It's a reform math program, where everything is taught in a ultra-fast spiral and not to mastery, and group projects are encouraged. Kitchen Table Math, a blog about reform math curricula and how to help your child learn math in spite of it, discusses Everyday Math a lot.

 

I can't find online info about their high school geometry program. But knowing the maker of the curriculum, my first inclination would be to blame the curriculum rather than the student. It's possible that she's not mature enough for geometry, but that hasn't been proven at this point.

[Perry]

Chicago math made Everyday math in elementary school. It's a reform math program, where everything is taught in a ultra-fast spiral and not to mastery, and group projects are encouraged. Kitchen Table Math, a blog about reform math curricula and how to help your child learn math in spite of it, discusses Everyday Math a lot.

 

I can't find online info about their high school geometry program. But knowing the maker of the curriculum, my first inclination would be to blame the curriculum rather than the student. It's possible that she's not mature enough for geometry, but that hasn't been proven at this point.

Yes, I'm very familiar with EM, Trailblazers, TERC, etc. It's what got me started homeschooling in the first place. I LOATHE those reform curricula. Unfortunately, there isn't much out there on the high school texts. They don't seem quite as bad as the elementary curricula, but there is way too much self teaching involved. I went to a parent meeting about T-math for accelerated 6th graders, and we were told that the district believed very strongly that the students learned better if the kids taught themselves. Five minutes later they were trying to dissuade the parents from having their kids take T-math, because "most of them don't do very well. Although if your kids do okay, you'll see their scores go through the roof."

 

Okay. Through the roof? These kids only qualified if their ITBS math scores were over the 95%ile, so they couldn't go up much higher. And if most of the kids (who were already the high achievers) aren't doing well, maybe it's because they aren't being TAUGHT!

 

 

Okay, off my soapbox.

[HeatherInWI]

No, but the school where I taught used the UCSMP's Transitional Math product in the higher math classes in 7th and 8th grades. As far as I was concerned, it was a mess, as the books tended to ask questions requiring particular information/skills before actually teaching it. Good students were struggling and feeling like math failures, and conscientious parents were having to spend a fair amount of time tutoring their children.

 

I had a free copy of the whole Algebra program to use with my dc, but opted to go with something else. I haven't seen the Geometry program, but I wouldn't doubt that it could have similar problems.