Dolciani in 6th Grade (instead of MM6)? (X-post)

[Haiku]

No takers in the Logic Stage forum, so i'll try here.

 

My dd has been doing MM, and we have both been happy with it, aside from occasional comments by my dd that Maria's directions in the problems sets are sometimes not very clear.

 

I had ordered Dolciani to look at for a 7th grade pre-algebra book, after MM6. It arrived today, and looking through it, I have to say I love it. (Dd was happy because one of the chapters had a picture of a hummingbird as an opener.)

 

It definitely looks like something she could accomplish in 6th grade and like it covers everything that MM6 covers, plus more. It does look, however, like MM6 goes deeper in depth in some of the topics, probably because MM is still teaching the concept and Dolciani assumes it has already been taught and is just spending 2 or so pages reviewing (these are things like fractions and decimals that MM5 has taught but MM6 will, presumably, expand upon).

 

Overall, it looks like doing MM6 and Dolciani the next year essentially would be doing the same thing twice.

 

It seems like it would be wiser to do Dolciani in 6th, or 6th into 7th, and then have more time (more than one year) to work on algebra.

 

Has anyone done this? Can anyone give me any more insight into how MM6 and Dolciani compare?

 

Thanks!

 

Tara

[Haiku]

Anyone?

[TarynB]

Mostly bumping for you. We might do Dolciani Pre-Alg next year too, as a follow-up to MM5 (which has gone really well), adding in MM6 lessons where Dolciani doesn't go as deep. Since you have Dolciani PA in your hands, have you already compared the Table of Contents to that of MM6? That might help you if you haven't already. MM6A TOC MM6B TOC Keep us posted on what you decide!

[DarlaS]

I'm not familiar with Dolciani, but I did decide to put my dd into prealgebra (Lial's Basic College Mathematics) rather than do MM6.

 

That said, since she will be 13 this summer, as of right now I plan on doing Lial's Prealgebra with her yet before going ahead with Algebra 1. I am doing this ONLY because I figure on using Lial's for algebra also. It should be a nice transition for her. She has some attention span issues. I want her really good and ready for algebra (so she doesn't make me crazy. :tongue_smilie:).

 

 

If I were to put her into Teaching Textbooks, I'd go ahead with Algebra 1 instead. It's a good bit gentler.

[stripe]

I would ask Jane in NC. I think she's the Dolciani expert.

[Halcyon]

We are using Dolciani as a followup to MM5 right now, and it is going well. We started in November, as we switched from AOPS which was not a fit at this point, so i think we'll finish up in November or October of this year. My son likes it, and it is solid. No real difficulty in terms of skipping MM 6.

[Momling]

We were a similar place last year, but we decided to finish sixth grade math (in our case - SM6) before going on to pre-algebra.

 

I chose to have my dd do 6th grade math for a few reasons:

- It was working. Why change what wasn't flawed?

- It would be too hard to go backwards. My daughter would feel so defeated if she needed to go back and do some review. Better not to skip ahead if it's going to cause us to retrace our steps later.

- Extra practice has been good. Brains sometimes go mushy around puberty and she needs review. I want her arithmetic skills really, really strong before tackling algebra.

 

So we finished SM6a over the summer and 6b by October and we've been trucking along in pre-algebra since then. I've decided to keep doing some elementary math topics as she continues on in algebra next year. She's great at algebra, but I don't want her to forget how to solve those arithmetic or geometry type problems.

[Sebastian (a lady)]

Which Dolciani book are you looking at? There is a pre algebra text. But there is also Mathematics Structure and Sense course 1 and course 2. We are using the later.

I like it a lot.

It is good for this kid to move from spiral to a book that dwells longer on the topic.

Fwiw Dolciani books assume that odd and even problems are two matched sets of problems. Where some programs are written assuming the student works every problem, Dolciani assumes odd only or even only unless extra work is needed.

[momofjep]

Can't speak to moving to Dolciani after MM5, but we are using Dolciani PreAlgebra and supplementing with the MM worksheets for 7th/8th grade. It will probably take a full year or maybe longer and then we'll move into Algebra.

 

 

Fwiw Dolciani books assume that odd and even problems are two matched sets of problems. Where some programs are written assuming the student works every problem, Dolciani assumes odd only or even only unless extra work is needed.

 

This is good to know since we've only been doing the odd.

[Sebastian (a lady)]

Can't speak to moving to Dolciani after MM5, but we are using Dolciani PreAlgebra and supplementing with the MM worksheets for 7th/8th grade. It will probably take a full year or maybe longer and then we'll move into Algebra.

 

 

 

 

This is good to know since we've only been doing the odd.

 

I did find a copy of the teacher edition of the Dolciani Mathematics Course 1 book. One thing I liked was the long table in the front that outlined a minimum, average and maximum course. One track tended to do more of the level A problems, the average was pretty evenly spaced, and the maximum skipped some of the level A problems to concentrate on the later, harder problems. So there are also alternatives to doing just the odd or even exercises.