TT Geometry...talk to me-both good and bad-please!

[Jen in DE]

I am trying to decide about TT geometry. We have never done TT. DD struggles with math. If I am not sitting with her, making SURE she is doing everything, she tends to "zone out". She will get through math as quickly as possible and does not retain much between lessons. I am worried that TT is too hands off for me and that she will just complete the lessons but not really LEARN anything. Please share your experiences. I am not looking for EASY math here. My goal is that she understands what she needs to know so that she can do the SAT's and any math she might do in the future. She thinks that she might want to go into a science field, so we have to keep math vigorous enough. We used SRA Explorations and Applications for grades 3-6 combined with MUS, which was a great fit. Saxon reduced her to tears daily. MUS didn't work for pre-algebra at all. It seemed really different from the lower grades. Algebra has been a nightmare. We started with Life of Fred. She just read the answers for Life of Fred even though I covered them up. She's sneaky.:glare: Next we tried the Dolciani text, but hit a wall in Chapter 5. We are working through MUS Algebra. We'll finish it, but it's not a good fit. Not enough practice problems. If we supplement, she complains. Sigh. Teaching Textbooks has always been intriguing/terrifying to me. Thanks in advance for any opinions!

[momtotkbb]

We liked TT Geometry but I was involved in the daily work. DD hated listening to the lecture CD and would zone out on it - in the beginning I would make her sit back through it with me. What we finally ended up doing - since I was not comfortable teaching Geometry and HATED it when I was a student --was I watched the CD's for the week before her and worked the practice problems to make sure I understood what I was doing. For me it was amazing --either bec of my older, mature brain now working or bec of the way it was presented I finally got Geometry. I would then teach the lesson to dd on the white board and have her do the practice problems on the whiteboard for me. Then she'd work the problems in her book and I'd check her work with her. YES I made it way more work than TT is designed to be --but it worked for both of us and I finally understand Geometry. In the end --dd says Geometry was far more interesting and she liked it much better than Alg (we used BJU for it).

 

I thought it didn't have the amount of proofs I remembered having to do in high school ---others I heard from thought it had too many. I was a little concerned that it didn't have constructions so I added in some after the fact.

 

The nice thing is that the Geometry isn't one that is answered on the computer - so if she works the problems in the book and you check her answers you'll know if she's understanding and doing the work. You could hide the answer guide and the solution CD's if you thought she'd cheat. Any problem that my dd missed I made her sit and watch the solution CD for that problem. Oh, another plus I found was that the authors of the program will grade proofs for you if your dc answers a different way than they present in the answer guide and you as the parent aren't sure how they solved it is correct.

[Susan C.]

We only did TT Precalculus. We had never done that format, and we didn't like it. It was too much to learn a harder concept, then do all of the review of other harder concepts. We prefer mastery approach with periodic reviews.