kandty Posted May 22, 2012 Share Posted May 22, 2012 I am still not sure what to do for Ds age 11, will be grade 6 for math next school year. I wanted to get some new ideas. I hope someone has an idea I haven't thought about! :001_smile: He has struggled with math and we have yet to find a math program that fits this kid. MUS, Math Mammoth, and Horizon were all big fails for us. We are running about a grade level behind in math. My only goals right now is to have him ready for Algebra by 9th grade and for him to understand basic math skills. I would LOVE to have a conceptual program for him. He is similar to me and that I can't memorize steps to do something unless I understand why I am doing it. This is why we tried MUS, but he didn't like watching the DVD and he didn't understand their explanations. Math Mammoth drove us both crazy because it was so incremental. Right now I have Mathematical Reasoning 5th grade (from Critical Thinking Company). I was also going to get the Kitchen Table Math books to help with explaining the concepts that he will learn in the workbook. He likes this workbook because he is visual and the pages have lots of pictures and color. I would be 100% sold on this if it was conceptual. But, the program ends there and I don't know what we will do the next year. :tongue_smilie: Anyone have any better ideas? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wapiti Posted May 22, 2012 Share Posted May 22, 2012 (edited) I am still not sure what to do for Ds age 11, will be grade 6 for math next school year. I wanted to get some new ideas. I hope someone has an idea I haven't thought about! :001_smile: He has struggled with math and we have yet to find a math program that fits this kid. MUS, Math Mammoth, and Horizon were all big fails for us. We are running about a grade level behind in math. My only goals right now is to have him ready for Algebra by 9th grade and for him to understand basic math skills. I would LOVE to have a conceptual program for him. He is similar to me and that I can't memorize steps to do something unless I understand why I am doing it. This is why we tried MUS, but he didn't like watching the DVD and he didn't understand their explanations. Math Mammoth drove us both crazy because it was so incremental. Right now I have Mathematical Reasoning 5th grade (from Critical Thinking Company). I was also going to get the Kitchen Table Math books to help with explaining the concepts that he will learn in the workbook. He likes this workbook because he is visual and the pages have lots of pictures and color. I would be 100% sold on this if it was conceptual. But, the program ends there and I don't know what we will do the next year. :tongue_smilie: Anyone have any better ideas? You want conceptual but MM was too incremental? Generally, in that situation, I vote for SM. Where to start would be the question. He might need to back up a bit, possibly even to parts of SM 4 and then SM 5 (around that level, some major 5th grade topics are started in 4 rather than 5; perhaps some SM users will pipe in on this). SM 6 may overlap with prealgebra a bit, and thus result in a smooth transition to prealgebra (or, if things have gone exceedingly well, some people skip SM 6 in favor of starting prealgebra, though that's not typically a course of action I'd suggest for a struggling student). It should be possible to back up and then move forward, working over the summers, and land in prealgebra in 8th grade. My only question would be whether there may be a shaky understanding of more fundamental concepts underlying his struggles, though if he works hard, and you work closely with him such that you can identify any such fundamental concepts with a shaky understanding so that you can go back even further, certainly there would seem to be sufficient time to overcome that. There are placement tests. I'd look very closely at whatever he misses, because I might treat word problems as a separate category from regular arithmetic. Edited May 22, 2012 by wapiti Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kandty Posted May 22, 2012 Author Share Posted May 22, 2012 I've heard SM can be hard to teach for a non-mathy mom. Is this true? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MIch elle Posted May 22, 2012 Share Posted May 22, 2012 Teaching Textbooks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kandty Posted May 22, 2012 Author Share Posted May 22, 2012 :bigear: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrs.m Posted May 22, 2012 Share Posted May 22, 2012 Look into Khan Academy. It can be a helpful to review those basics over the summer. And it's FREE! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wapiti Posted May 22, 2012 Share Posted May 22, 2012 I've heard SM can be hard to teach for a non-mathy mom. Is this true? This has been debated a bit, but there are non-mathy moms who use SM successfully. Try these threads: http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=312915 http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=247050 http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showpost.php?p=909611&postcount=8 http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=237839 What about the incremental nature of MM was the problem - moved too slowly through the conceptual explanations before getting to the algorithm? The conceptual explanations seemed unfamiliar and strange to you? or too many problems? You could use MM but work around the increments (don't assign all the problems, cover several increments at once, etc.), but if you want conceptual, persist through those lessons even if they seem weird to you. Alternatively, if you are capable of teaching MM, then you'd be capable of teaching SM now that you already have MM. You could use the explanations from MM to teach SM whenever you need extra help explaining a particular concept, which presumably would not be every day. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boscopup Posted May 22, 2012 Share Posted May 22, 2012 You want conceptual but MM was too incremental? Generally, in that situation, I vote for SM. :iagree: We switched from MM to SM because we didn't need the incremental approach. It was a good switch. I also agree that if you're able to teach MM, you'll probably be fine with SM too. The HIG explains what you need to teach, walks you through the problems, etc. It also has overview information for you to read before starting a chapter. For example, when doing factors/multiples, it talked about how to tell if a number was a multiple of 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, etc. It not only told you the cool trick, but also explained why... and most of those numbers weren't being taught to the child. I knew the trick for determining if a number was a multiple of 9, but I didn't know why it worked. Singapore explained it, and I was like, "Aha!" :D It walks you through pulling out one of each digit, so 500 would be 5x100=5+(5x99), 40 would be 4x10=4+(4x9). So if you're looking at 540, you know it's a multiple of 9 because 99 and 9 are multiples of 9, so you're left with 5+4, which is 9, and that's a multiple of 9. Singapore explains it better than I just did. :lol: So yes, Standards Edition Singapore with HIG. Give one semester a try and see how it goes. Maybe try it over the summer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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