X Post - Discouraged and in need of math advice...

[TheAutumnOak]

I just gave my son the Saxon Middle Grades Placement test...It did not go well at all...He only got 5 right out of the first 20 problems and 6 right out of the second 20 problems...Most of the problems he just left blank, not even knowing where to start...

 

He is in 5th grade right now and is actually an older 5th grader, as he turned 11 in September...I am not sure what to do at this point...I am feeling like he will never get to the high school level being this behind at this point...

 

I am on the verge of tears and really am not sure what to do...My friend suggested doing BJU Math with the DVD starting at 3rd grade level...What do you think?...Do you agree, or can you offer a different plan of action?...He hasn't had much math before now and is having a hard time picking it up...We were doing a Waldorf curriculum before last year, and I see that is was not strong in math at all...

 

I would appreciate any advice...

[....]

Hi, your signature says that you're already using math mammoth. I wouldn't switch to Saxon or BJU. I would spend an hour each morning on math, keep working through math mammoth and I would probably have a math lab on Fridays. He could do math journaling for lab or topics from Kitchen Table Math or maybe some Muderous Maths (something like that). Don't give up. Kids learn very quickly at that age. If he's doing MM 3B, he's not that far behind. He can catch up!

 

Just my opinion!

[Ellie]

Well, I don't know if I'd go all the way back to third grade with him.

 

This article might ease your mind.

 

Something you could consider is working on basic math facts--yes, flash cards and all that--and just start him in Math 54. All that is necessary for that is knowledge of addition and subtraction facts, and multiplication facts through the 5's.

 

If you haven't perceived any learning difficulties in general before now, then I'm thinking he should be able to catch up pretty quickly.

[Critterfixer]

If he has not had much of a math focus before now and needs to be further ahead meet him where he is now and work to get to where you need to be.

Take a good look at the problems he missed on the placement test. That should give you an idea of the skills he needs to work on. Sounds like breaking down a problem would be a good place to start.

[Osmosis Mom]

My suggestion is to start him in Saxon 54. There is. Lot of review and it moves very slowly and steadily. Quite frankly Saxon is way underrated and if I could do things differently, then I would have stayed with Saxon all the way for my oldest two. My four students are now all doing Saxon.

[Twilight Woods]

I posted this response on your other thread too:

 

I did a math intensive summer with my now 5th grader. After having her do a few placement tests to see if she was consistent in what she knew and what she didn't know I did the following:

 

I used a combo of Miquon/SM/Mathwhizz and Dreambox with her. I essentially started back at the 3rd grade level with her. We were able to go through some parts fast, skip some parts all together and slow down on the gaps. We drilled math facts till they were solid.

 

She did not like me very much this past summer :)

 

She is now where she needs to be [with the exception of reducing fractions]. I think what helped her the most was solidifying her math facts and with each success she attained she grew more confident in herself as well.

 

This summer we will be starting MM 6a with an incentive chart.

HTH.

[Chrysalis Academy]

Well, it might be presumptuous of me to reply, seeing we're only in our 8th week of hsing :D, but I could really relate to your issues, so I thought I'd post what we did . . . I pulled DD from ps after 1 qtr of 4th grade. I did the MM and Singapore placements with her, and she couldn't test out of 3rd grade level. The problem wasn't in computation - she could add, subtract, multiply and divide fine - but she couldn't handle the word problems, or *any* of the practical math stuff, like measurements, money, elapsed time, estimating, etc. She also had basically zero ability to do mental math. It was really discouraging, because I didn't want to start her in "3rd grade math" and make her feel like she was dumb/behind/etc. (a developing math anxiety was part of why I decided to hs her in the first place, last thing I wanted to do was add to that).

 

So, I did start her with MM 4A, but I have made *extensive* use of the worksheet makers and the free worksheets, in a very targeted way. We do some mental math every day, and she's really improving. We also do MIRL problems (from the MM website), and other word problems I found online. We work 45-60 min per day, as long as she can focus, sometimes all at once and sometimes broken into 2 sessions. It's solid, hard work, with me sitting beside her the whole time, or she gets discouraged and gives up. If she has trouble at all with the 4A lesson, I will go and print out a related worksheet (or 2, or 5) from 2nd or 3rd grade level, and work through that with her first, once she has that down we go back to the 4A lesson. That is really helping with the mental math and the conceptual understanding.

 

On the attitude/confidence side, we've been doing LoF elementary, as well as Marilyn Burns books, and some math games, and I've been really talking up what math is for, and trying to make connections between math and real life, and to show her how I use math in my work. Really a lot of math cheerleading, and her attitude has truly turned around.

 

So I think that the MM materials can really help get a kid up to speed fairly quickly, if you aren't afraid to go backward till you get to something they *can* do easily, and move forward from there. But that doesn't mean you have to back the whole train a few grade levels, if there are things your dc *does* get on grade level. MM is really set up well to support this multi-level work all at once, IMO.

[karensk]

Do you think he's struggling with understanding the math concepts? Or, do you think he understands the concept in most lessons and can work most of the problems correctly, but then he forgets after a week or month or so?

[Veritaserum]

What are the issues he is having with Math Mammoth? My oldest (11.5, 6th grade) needed a better foundation. Last year (5th grade) I took her back to MM1. She accelerated through it, skipping things I knew she understood. Then we did level 2. Then level 3. She hit a wall in level 4. We switched to CLE 500 this fall and she will be done with it before the end of the year. She does only the new parts of each lesson and selected problems from the review sections. She is leaps and bounds ahead of where she was a year ago. I actively teach CLE and add more conceptual depth as I feel it's needed.

 

She did MUS for three years before we switched. It wasn't clicking for her. None of my kids liked it or did well with it, but YMMV. Teaching Textbooks was a flop as well. Professor B was cool, but I decided to take her through MM from te beginning. I'm so glad I did.

[Wee Pip]

What do you think went wrong in the test? Sometimes we moms get upset by the results, but our mommy hearts know intuitively what the real problem is. Saxon's method is very wordy. I'm not sure how my straight-forward, doesn't read math-text dd would do on it:tongue_smilie: Your son could've been lost by the wordiness of it, or the specific words used. Every math has it's own lingo and approach, and some kids might not translate from one flavor to the next without some sort of grace period. Are you planning to switch to Saxon? If this is your goal, and he has a basic understanding behind addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division (simple numbers, not big ones) then 5/4 would be the place to start. He might also just need a grace period to adjust to the different set up of Saxon, compared to MM.

[Karen in CO]

5/4 Is a good place to start to fill in math holes.

[backpew5]

Let me encourage you. Even though this is only our second year homeschooling I can say I have "learned" my child when it comes to math. It only took me 18 months :). I started with Saxon 5/4 last year and halfway through she was so "done with it". The repetition was killing her but I decided to ride it out. I knew I could skip many of the problems that were reviewing previous learning but found that we were cutting too many out. I learned that my daughter needed a lesson and review of that with problems, then another review the next day and then move on. She struggles with transitioning from one thing to the next so it was messing with her focus. I didn't know what to go to so I thought MathUSee would be the answer. The problem was that I couldn't really get a grasp on the whole thing myself and struggled for 3 weeks to learn it so I could teach it. Needless to say I was frustrated with it. She had gotten to the point of saying she hated math. I felt like you did. I had considered Teaching Textbooks because it seemed that so many people were saying it was too easy. At this point I didn't care. I had to get her out of the "I hate math" mode. This program has been a lifesaver and she will tell you she loves math again. The review is ok within the problems and we are moving right along. Sometimes we do 2-3 lessons a day. Even though she is 10 1/2 and in the 5th grade I didn't want to miss any lessons and just start from the beginning. She wasn't too sure about it but it is going great.

I never realized how much I was disliking math as well. I have loved math all my life and was feeling stressed out when she was doing the same. We are half way through 5th grade and on grade level. It took me awhile to not listen to what everyone else was saying. I knew she was going to love it even though for others it wasn't a good fit.