Saxon 8/7 - How long do your lessons take

[CaneKev]

My twins are going nuts with Saxon 8/7. The work at this point (we have just started) is easy for them, but each lesson (completing all sections) is taking them much longer than expected. We are trying to do only evens or odds in mixed practice, but even that leaves some long division that is making them pull out their hair. For anyone that is in 8/7 how long do the lessons take your children, and what, if anything, do you cut out?

 

Thanks

[Ellie]

Just an FYI: It is STRONGLY recommended that the students do *all* of the problems in every lesson.

[Chris in VA]

Well, I had a 4th grader doing it for the end of the year (we had finished 6/5 and still had about 7 weeks left of school, so we just went on to 8/7), and only up to about Lesson 40, so take it with a grain of salt--It took her roughly an hour. I'd do the whole lesson, including the box. Sometimes we'd just do one or two of the practice problems. She would start on the problem set (the main problems, iykwim) and get to about 10 or so, then I'd tell her to finish it before dinner. So, she was splitting the lesson up a bit, and came to the second "session" fresher, so she could go a little faster than if she had to sit down and do the whole thing all at once.

[regentrude]

I know that the recommendation is to do all problems but that would have driven my very mathy children crazy. We found there to be a lot of busy work, much more than *they* needed for mastery of the material.

(Ever child is different and I am wary of experts setting rules that are supposed to apply to every child)

We only did the lesson practice and a few carefully selected problems from the mixed practice. Since DD had no trouble with algebra in 7th grade that seemed to have been quite sufficient.

It sometimes took 60-90 minutes for one lesson, sometimes they covered the material of three lessons in that time.

[SBP]

My DS is doing 8/7 with DIVE this year and it usually takes him around an hour and 15 minutes to do everything: facts practice, mental math ,DIVE lesson, lesson practice, & mixed practice. He's not allowed to skip any problems. I expect it will take him a bit longer once he's out of the review material. He's only on lesson 14 right now and hasn't hit much that's new.

 

SBP

[JudoMom]

We're still early on in 8/7, but lessons take about an hour. We're another DIVE cd, every problem family.

[LaissezFaire]

About an hour. Also DIVE and every problem here.

[Mosaicmind]

It takes ds about an hour to do every problem and dive cd. I had other dc do the every other problem or missing some of the lesson and found by the end of the year there were gaps. We also do the facts practice before each lesson.

[pooh bear]

We are only on 6/5 here, but with the Saxon Teacher cd, it takes about an hour to finish a lesson. All problems completed here.

[Twinmommy]

We have been homeschooling our 11 yr old for two months now, and are using saxon 7/6. We don't know what the dive cd is, what exactly is it and is it what does it add to the math program? Our son is very math oriented, and is burning through this book. We stopped public school last year (5th) and this entire book seems to be review, but we want to finish it in case he has missed specific concepts (for example he had no clue how to properly align multiplication answers using numbers greater than two digits!). We are going to use the next step in saxon, which is either 8/7 or an algebra book I have seen once or twice. Haven't looked that far ahead yet!!!

[Ellie]

I know that the recommendation is to do all problems but that would have driven my very mathy children crazy. We found there to be a lot of busy work, much more than *they* needed for mastery of the material.

(Ever child is different and I am wary of experts setting rules that are supposed to apply to every child)

We only did the lesson practice and a few carefully selected problems from the mixed practice. Since DD had no trouble with algebra in 7th grade that seemed to have been quite sufficient.

It sometimes took 60-90 minutes for one lesson, sometimes they covered the material of three lessons in that time.

I'm pretty sure that the author of a text can say that it is important to do every problem because there is no busy work, the review is included in every lesson, and concepts are continually developed throughout the book. :-) Your dc are unique; for the vast majority of students, skipping problems comes back to bite them.

[CaneKev]

Thanks everyone, very helpful. Kids are strong in math, so it seems that they are just bored with the early review, but it sounds like I will be encouaging them to complete all the work as we move forward into new concepts.

[SBP]

We have been homeschooling our 11 yr old for two months now, and are using saxon 7/6. We don't know what the dive cd is, what exactly is it and is it what does it add to the math program? Our son is very math oriented, and is burning through this book. We stopped public school last year (5th) and this entire book seems to be review, but we want to finish it in case he has missed specific concepts (for example he had no clue how to properly align multiplication answers using numbers greater than two digits!). We are going to use the next step in saxon, which is either 8/7 or an algebra book I have seen once or twice. Haven't looked that far ahead yet!!!

 

The DIVE CD's are CD-Rom presentations of each Saxon math lesson. The kids hear the teacher's voice going through the material and see the various sample problems worked on the screen. In my house, the DIVE CD takes the place of me teaching the daily lesson.

 

If your son continues burning through Saxon 7/6 with no difficulty, or if you're comfortable teaching math yourself and have the time to do it, you probably have no need at all for the DIVE CD's. This is the first year I've used it, and that's mostly because he'll be starting prealgebra, and I was such a poor algebra student that I don't think I have any business teaching it.

 

Saxon now sells the "Saxon Teacher" CD, which is another way to go if you're looking for a video presentation of the lesson, and beginning with Algebra 1/2, I believe, there's a series of DVD's by Art Reed that seem to be well thought of. We might go that route next year. My son says he likes the DIVE CD's but wishes he could see the teacher's face :).

 

Best,

 

SBP

Edited September 8, 2010 by SBP

[Love2Smile]

We do every problem all 30 and it takes one hour or maybe a bit more.

[Love2Smile]

:iagree:

I'm pretty sure that the author of a text can say that it is important to do every problem because there is no busy work, the review is included in every lesson, and concepts are continually developed throughout the book. :-) Your dc are unique; for the vast majority of students, skipping problems comes back to bite them.

:iagree:

[1Togo]

We're on our third student with Saxon. Our sons worked through all the books. I have always scheduled one hour for math, and it is the first subject of the day. Our children work every problem, and as they become more fluent with math, their computational skills become accurate and quick. It doesn't matter whether they are working in 87 or calculus. The lessons take about one hour. On occasion, they complete a lesson in 45 minutes and sometimes a lesson takes over an hour, but one hour is the general time frame.

 

When our student reach the junior high level, I generally schedule one hour for every subject. 5 subjects = give hours. If they finish earlier, they have more free time. If it takes longer, that's the real world.

 

Bonita

[regentrude]

I'm pretty sure that the author of a text can say that it is important to do every problem because there is no busy work, the review is included in every lesson, and concepts are continually developed throughout the book. :-) Your dc are unique; for the vast majority of students, skipping problems comes back to bite them.

 

The two highlighted things were precisely the issue - too much built in repetition, too small increments in the new material.

My kids are not that unique, I know of others for whom Saxon was not a good fit because of the same things.