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What is your plan with Beast Academy?


Miss Tick
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I respectfully disagree. Both dds do 'hard' word problems via cwp/ip without having mult-div facts 100% solid. Dd8 is doing alg and sometimes still skip-counts. Rarely, but it does happen. Dd7 is mastering mult-div facts via tons of fractions work.

 

A math beast can learn facts on-the-job.

 

:iagree:

 

I think such assessments might be premature given that we haven't actually seen the program. ;)

 

 

 

Bright students don't necessarily learn facts faster than average students, and some bright students never manage it.

 

Totally! Facts are important but in the end problem solving skills are more crucial. My son has excellent logic and problem solving abilities (with very high IQ and achievement scores) but still uses various methods- skip counting, fingers, drawing a picture- to get to the right answer on simple computations needed for the final answer. Sometimes he even runs over to the wall and examines his chart system he made and laboriously decorated, looking for a fact. We do mental and written practice and he *mostly* has his math facts but it is certainly not all down cold. And if I made him wait for problem solving and the conceptual, abstract topics, he would be bored to tears and grow to hate math. That is what happened to me from 5th grade up after years of strong math problem solving skills. Imagine how surprised I was to end up a math major:D. Yet, I still work mental math in an odd way and use a grid box system for multi-digit multiplication I can not reckon out quickly in my head.

Edited by kijipt
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Bright students don't necessarily learn facts faster than average students, and some bright students never manage it. FWIW, I strongly suspect (yup, I'm guessing) that the online component will have modules for fact practice. This accommodates everyone without the added cost of printing drill sheets.

 

It has been some years now, but thanks to a recommendation on this board I read Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman's (hysterically funny) memoir "Surely, You're Joking Mr Feynman." In it he commented on his observations that many of the most brilliant scientists working on the A-bomb project were not all that good at basic math or "math facts." I found this strange, but interesting.

 

Bill

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that many of the most brilliant scientists working on the A-bomb project were not all that good at basic math or "math facts." I found this strange, but interesting.

 

Bill

 

You know your a mathematician if...

 

"you are either extraordinarily good at or hopelessly incompetent at arithmetic."

 

Paraphrased from the mathpath yearbook.

 

My son fits the second variety. If I had fretted about math facts as a kid it would have been his demise. As it is, my son, who is notoriously bad at rote memorization, has somehow memorized 20 digits of pi. :confused:

 

The only way I was able to get my son to learn his math facts was to let him learn algebra. The game 24 helped a little, and D and D.

 

He would have LOVED beast academy. We didn't even have the prealgebra book when he was a kid. (the dark ages)

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You know your a mathematician if...

 

"you are either extraordinarily good at or hopelessly incompetent at arithmetic."

 

Paraphrased from the mathpath yearbook.

 

My son fits the second variety. If I had fretted about math facts as a kid it would have been his demise. As it is, my son, who is notoriously bad at rote memorization, has somehow memorized 20 digits of pi. :confused:

 

The only way I was able to get my son to learn his math facts was to let him learn algebra. The game 24 helped a little, and D and D.

 

He would have LOVED beast academy. We didn't even have the prealgebra book when he was a kid. (the dark ages)

 

Reminds me of my daughter (the MathPath counselor)...

 

She was still working on arithmetic facts/speed in middle school, but she loved the abstractions and reasoning in higher math. Glad we didn't hold her back! We just kept plugging away, practicing everything from calculadders to lots of board games and card games and just plain using arithmetic in her higher math and science classes (and I think she built up speed as much through games as through any drill I gave her)

 

Now she's a happy math major. Her last math class didn't even have any numbers involved, just symbols and abstractions galore. She's a happy camper.

 

She would have loved Beast Academy. I'm so envious of y'all...I wish that I had a good reason to order BA, too.:D

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