help for son with math

[choirfarm]

My son is doing Chalkdust Elementary and Intermediate Algebra. We are taking it very slowly and hoping just to get halfway through so he can have Alg. I credit. We just took a test on chapter 3. He made an 80 on it. It was really tough. He made a 77 on his chapter 1 test and a 93 on chapter 2. He's made B's on his midchapter quizzes. It takes him a really long time to do the problems. Chapter 3 on inequalities was really tough. He ended up sitting beside me and doing the problems over the last several sections. I noticed several things. When he reads the problems aloud to me, he will switch digits...read 34 for 43 or he will read a minus for a plus or plus for a multiplication. I'll say, read that again and he will read it correctly. I'm guessing he read 1/3 of the problems out loud incorrectly. The word problems are just hard and he normally misses some of those, but every test and on several of his problems he will multiply instead of adding or add when he should have muliplied. There are just SO many steps. So... I'm not sure how to help him.

 

I will give you this background. His eye doctor noticed that his eyes were not tracking together quite right in elementary school and we watched it and even though he wasn't having problems reading ( like he read the 7th Harry Potter ina day!) he did some vision therapy in 5th grade since he could still see the tracking. His test score went WAY up that year. He normally scored 70th to 80th percentile ont he standardized testing and went up to 99th or middle 90's for everything but math. His test scores haven't been quite that stellar since, but last year as a 7th grader he did score 520 on the SAT critical reading section and 450 on the math. He only did vision therapy for 6 months or so as he said it wasn't a severe case, but it had just never corrected. It wasn't nearly as intense as my daughters was. I'm wondering if I should take him back?

 

So... I'm not sure how to help him. I'm not sure that it is a matter of being careless... I'm thinking he just has trouble getting EVERYTHING at the right time if that makes sense. The eye doctor could never understand how he was reading so well, but this kid has a book in his hand 24/7. He loves literature and history reading and is doing TOG rhetoric without major problems. But math just seems hard...

 

Christine

Edited October 22, 2010 by choirfarm

[Susan C.]

Both of my kids had a terrible time with Chalkdust. Ds missed half of the problems every day. He got good grades on the tests, but had terrible retention. He also omitted a lot of negatives in his answers. I was told it was typical of a boy that age. I changed programs (to BJU). Much better. And he did end up an English major :)

 

So, it might be the program instead of his eyes. And since he likes reading more than math, he may be a liberal arts guy.

[choirfarm]

He is my liberal arts guy. And he used to score in the 40 percentile in math in ps and when he was first home. He HATED math until I had him do TT 7 in the 6th grade. He loved it. His test scores went up. The plan was to do TT PreAlgebra in 7th grade, but I found a complete set of Chalkdust PreAlgebra for 75 dollars at the used sale. He LOVEs Dana MOseley. I own TT AlgI and II that my oldest used, but he asked to stay wioh Chalkdust. He said that he might make lower grades, but he'll learn more. I'm just concerned that he read so many problems wrong out loud.

 

Christine