Anyone skip Saxon 5/4??

[edeemarie]

My ds8 is just finishing up McRuffy 3rd grade color math and I am making plans for next year. I assumed this was when we would move into Saxon so I bought Saxon 5/4. While looking through the book I realized he already knows a good portion of the material. So I looked at the placement test and the only thing we hasn't covered is percentages. I'm not sure if I should just stay with McRuffy 4th grade now (that is the highest level that have at the time) or try Saxon 6/5. It just seems too extreme to have an eight year old in 6/5, but has anyone else ever done this? Is the book written toward older children and will it require a lot of help from me if we try that? Any suggestions or direction would be much appreciated! Thanks!

 

Erin

[Meriwether]

Dd8 will be finishing 6/5 this spring. Take the placement test if you aren't sure.

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[edeemarie]

Dd8 will be finishing 6/5 this spring. Take the placement test if you aren't sure.

Thanks so much! It's good to know that an eight year old is capable if we decide on Saxon 6/5!

[edeemarie]

Our dd8 finished McRuffy 3 about a month ago. We've decided to have her work her way through Saxon 5/4. We figured that at 8, a little extra review wouldn't hurt her. ;)

It's great to know another McRuffy user! Can I ask if you looked into McRuffy 4, and why you decided on Saxon? I know for us I didn't care for Saxon K-3, which led me to choose McRuffy, so I just naturally assumed when we got to Saxon 5/4 we would switch (and since McRuffy doesn't go past 4th grade we knew it has to happen eventually). Just curious as to why you switched. Thanks!

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[edeemarie]

We tried to like Saxon for k-3, but it's just not for us. I did look at continuing on with McRuffy for 4th grade, but switched over to Saxon 5/4 for one main reason-

 

We were going to have to switch in another year anyway, so we decided it would probably be best to start her at the beginning of the Saxon series. That way we wouldn't have to worry about gaps and placement test the next year.

 

We liked McRuffy, but found that it really lacked review. I like how Saxon includes daily math facts review and mental math. Dd likes having her own math notebook and copying down the problems. Apparently, that's how you do math "when you're almost a teenager". :tongue_smilie:

 

We did have her take the placement test, and she also almost placed into 6/5. Our reasoning to keep her in 5/4 was that there are plenty of years left for her to get to the higher level maths. At only 8 and 1/2 way through 3rd grade, we just felt that another year with lots of review could only be helpful.

Thanks so much- that was very helpful! I think we will go through 5/4, even if it is mostly review. My son loves math right now and I would hate to have him be frustrated by something too challenging!

[Sebastian (a lady)]

My ds8 is just finishing up McRuffy 3rd grade color math and I am making plans for next year. I assumed this was when we would move into Saxon so I bought Saxon 5/4. While looking through the book I realized he already knows a good portion of the material. So I looked at the placement test and the only thing we hasn't covered is percentages. I'm not sure if I should just stay with McRuffy 4th grade now (that is the highest level that have at the time) or try Saxon 6/5. It just seems too extreme to have an eight year old in 6/5, but has anyone else ever done this? Is the book written toward older children and will it require a lot of help from me if we try that? Any suggestions or direction would be much appreciated! Thanks!

 

Erin

 

I put my older kids into 6/5 from Saxon 3. They were in 3rd and 4th grade when we started 6/5. It was a good fit for us.

 

A couple lessons learned.

 

Don't skip problems unless you have an extreme reason for doing so. Once you get a ways into the book, the review problems are arranged in a way that you don't see each type of problem every single lesson. So if you're skipping, you may miss the one time something is reviewed that week. Oddly enough, after a couple of weeks of doing every problem, they were faster than they had been at doing only half of the problems. (The other concern is that sometimes the review practice is where the groundwork is laid for an upcoming lesson. Not doing those problems makes the subsequent lesson harder.)

 

Don't skip the warm ups and mental math. Or the fact sheets. If I were to do it all over again, I'd probably do these over breakfast, then take a break with lit based school, then do the lesson and exercises.

 

Don't be afraid to stay on a lesson if they just don't get a concept. I remember staying on lesson 95 of one middle grade book for an entire week until they understood what they were doing with dividing fractions and why it worked. But at the end of the week, they were solid.

 

There is a reproducable form for lessons. It has check boxes at the top for the different parts of the warm up, then grided spaces for the lesson practice, then blocks for the review problems. I think it was somewhere in the student pages. In hindsight, I should have gone to the copy shop and had a stack of these made up. When we used them, it helped my kids be much more methodical and organized.

 

We went through Saxon 6/5, 7/6, 8/7 and Algebra 1/2 before shifting to AoPS Algebra. I'm pretty happy with that progression (though I might have shifted to AoPS Pre-Algebra instead of 1/2 if it had been available). They are doing good work in Algebra as 7th and 8th graders. They were in the upper quarter of students for the AMC 8 exam and the 7th grader got a silver certificate on the test.

 

Saxon isn't for every student, but I liked how it worked for mine. Don't be shamed out of using whatever the right level is for your kid. You wouldn't base shoe size on grade or age. Don't base math level on how well the number on the cover corresponds to age or grade either. It isn't a service to be putting a book that is too easy (or too hard) in front of a child.

[edeemarie]

I put my older kids into 6/5 from Saxon 3. They were in 3rd and 4th grade when we started 6/5. It was a good fit for us.

 

A couple lessons learned.

 

Don't skip problems unless you have an extreme reason for doing so. Once you get a ways into the book, the review problems are arranged in a way that you don't see each type of problem every single lesson. So if you're skipping, you may miss the one time something is reviewed that week. Oddly enough, after a couple of weeks of doing every problem, they were faster than they had been at doing only half of the problems. (The other concern is that sometimes the review practice is where the groundwork is laid for an upcoming lesson. Not doing those problems makes the subsequent lesson harder.)

 

Don't skip the warm ups and mental math. Or the fact sheets. If I were to do it all over again, I'd probably do these over breakfast, then take a break with lit based school, then do the lesson and exercises.

 

Don't be afraid to stay on a lesson if they just don't get a concept. I remember staying on lesson 95 of one middle grade book for an entire week until they understood what they were doing with dividing fractions and why it worked. But at the end of the week, they were solid.

 

There is a reproducable form for lessons. It has check boxes at the top for the different parts of the warm up, then grided spaces for the lesson practice, then blocks for the review problems. I think it was somewhere in the student pages. In hindsight, I should have gone to the copy shop and had a stack of these made up. When we used them, it helped my kids be much more methodical and organized.

 

We went through Saxon 6/5, 7/6, 8/7 and Algebra 1/2 before shifting to AoPS Algebra. I'm pretty happy with that progression (though I might have shifted to AoPS Pre-Algebra instead of 1/2 if it had been available). They are doing good work in Algebra as 7th and 8th graders. They were in the upper quarter of students for the AMC 8 exam and the 7th grader got a silver certificate on the test.

 

Saxon isn't for every student, but I liked how it worked for mine. Don't be shamed out of using whatever the right level is for your kid. You wouldn't base shoe size on grade or age. Don't base math level on how well the number on the cover corresponds to age or grade either. It isn't a service to be putting a book that is too easy (or too hard) in front of a child.

Thank you for sharing your experience! I think what I really need to do is sit down with both the Saxon 5/4 and 6/5 books and see what the differences are in them and try to make a decision based on the actual books. Thank you for the tips too. Being new to Saxon it is good to know how other people have used the books:)