Math Dilemma!!!! Math on the Level / Marilyn Burns Math / Other

[Dina in Oklahoma]

Hello ~

 

Please help me sort this out. My math challenged DD 11 used Rod and Staff this year and has made tremendous strides. However, I realize she needs a better understanding of math not just performing operations.

 

I have been eyeing a number of books for my own education but have been looking at adding a program to increase her understanding of arithmatic.

 

I have read what I can find from the hive and other sources but REALLY need some honest feedback about the programs I have found or others you can suggest.

 

Please include:

 

1) Age of students

 

2) If math comes naturally to your student or if they have to work at it

 

3) How long you used the program

 

4) What you liked / didn't like about the program

 

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!

 

Dina :001_smile:

[Mert]

:bigear:

[Guest]

I adored anything we used by Marilyn Burns. Beginning when my daughter was around second grade level, we started using Math Through Literature (I think it's called), which uses favorite kids' picture and easy chapter books to set up math problems. My daughter was a fanatic for stories, so this was a good match. We then went through all the Math Replacement Units once she was in third or fourth grade. We did Algebraic Thinking in 6th and 7th grade, and those were the last we used.

 

Nearly all the Marilyn Burns lessons begin with an activity of some sort that is NOT written: reading a picture book, building a pattern with pattern blocks, measuring angles, making various models of rectangles from cut-up squares of paper, making designs or pictures from cut-up sections of circles and then adding up the total, building towers with blocks and predicting how many blocks will be in future towers... there is a lot of variety. You discuss the activity or problem it sets up with your child, and only then do you move to any kind of written math and mathematical terminology. The emphasis at all times is on underlying comprehension of how this works and why. Often you can work out a problem one way and your child another, so you can compare how you reached a solution, talk about which is easier for your child to understand, which is more efficient.

 

You can add in something like the Key To... books for further practice, or play games from Peggy Kaye's Games For Math (tweaking them to fit whatever you're working on at the moment, such as fractions, or percents, or whatever).

 

At any rate, I'm a huge Burns fan.

[Dina in Oklahoma]

Thanks KarenAnne! I really appreciate your feedback.

[cschnee]

I too am a huge Burns fan. We worked through Lessons for Introducing Fractions and Lessons for Decimals and Percents last year and will be using Lessons for Extending Fractions and Lessons for Multiplying and Dividing Fractions this year. I have also used the Algebraic Thinking book that KarenAnne mentioned as well as one about probability. Through games and activities she teaches kids to really understand the concepts. I like the fact that she presents lots of examples of how different kids think and I use these examples in my teaching.

[Dina in Oklahoma]

Thank you Cschnee! No MOTL users???