HIgh School Remedial Math?

[10Newtons]

My dsylexic girlie is REALLY struggling. We have used TT up to now, but she is just not "getting" algebra. State law says 4 years of Math?? I am wondering if I can get her through Algebra, let alone higher!!

 

Suggestions???

[EKS]

Are you teaching her? If not, I'd recommend that you present the material to her. I like the Lial books for this. I'd start with the Basic College Mathematics book and work your way through them. Here is something I wrote in another thread about how I used Lial's Intermediate Algebra with my dyslexic son (all of the Lial books have the same format).

 

I agree with the poster that said that Lial's BCM might be a good place to start. However, I suggest that you *not* just hand her the book and tell her to go for it. Since it is likely that she already knows a good deal of what's in the book, I'd be selective about where you spend you time.

 

This is how I used the Lial Algebra II book (which has the same format as BCM) when I was in a similar situation with my son. The book gives example problems in the text. There will be a problem that is solved in the body of the text and then a few practice problems in the margins that are similar. I would write down the first practice problem on a small whiteboard and tell my son to solve it. If he could solve it with no problems whatsoever, we would move on to the next problem type and do the same thing. If he had a minor difficulty solving it, I would give him another problem of the same type, and if he could solve it, we would move on. If he couldn't solve it at all, *I* would show him how to solve it, based on the instruction in the book, and then give him a few more of the same type from the margin. Then we would move on to the next type of problem.

 

As for assigning problem sets, the Lial books have *a lot* of problems. And the problems are generally keyed by section number. This is great because if your child needs to practice something, you have the resources to do it and you won't need to supplement with problems from someplace else. But it can also feel overwhelming to the student. As we went through the book, anyplace where my son was able to do the practice problem with zero difficulty (meaning fluently with no hesitation and no mistakes, even ones he corrected himself), I wouldn't assign any problems (or at most, I'd give him one, usually the last one in the set which was generally more difficult). If he had a little bit of difficulty, I'd give a few. If he actually needed me to explain how to do the problem, I'd give him all of the odds for that section. Then there were frequently problems that integrated the concepts, and I would give him the odds of those also. They were usually at the end of the problem set.

 

Then I would have him do the practice test at the end of each chapter and then, since I bought the test book, I'd give him a test from that which I graded. You can also give the review problems and give the practice test in the book as the test.

 

The year we did this was by far the best year of math we ever had. I think our success was due to a combination of focusing on what needed attention and having my son an active participant in the lessons. It wasn't me presenting a bunch of stuff and then leaving, telling him to do a problem set on my way out, and it wasn't a computer program or a video lecturer doing the same thing. When I did show him what to do, it was in the context of a problem that he had already tried to do, so he was invested in the solution, and then he knew he had to perform immediately on the next problem. If he didn't understand something, I could usually catch it right away, not when I graded the problem set at some later point, after he had done 20 problems wrong.

 

I did have to work ahead of him in the book. So the weekend before, I would look through the lessons for that week and if there was something I didn't remember how to do, or if the book was presenting it in a way that I didn't understand, I would work that out before sitting down to do a lesson. With BCM, this will likely be less of a problem.

[10Newtons]

N/M! FOund it! :)

Edited April 5, 2012 by 10Newtons