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Teaching Textbooks.........would you switch?


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My 10 year old dd has been doing TT for the last two years.  She did TT3, and finished TT4 at the end of last school year.  She always scored good on the lessons, and if she did miss a problem we would go over it.  I had her do some math tests in the last month just to see how she is doing.  She missed a lot of problems on the tests.  When I looked closer at the problems she missed they were simple computation errors, but it seemed she understood how to do the problems though.  Last year she used an abacus, and multiplication chart, but towards the end of the year she wasn't using the abacus as much.  She doesn't have all of her add/subt. facts memorized, and she has very little mult./div. facts memorized.  My dh wants me to switch back to MUS, because that is what her brother used when he was younger, and has always had his math facts memorized.  Im not sure if we should switch back to MUS to work on her math facts, or continue with TT5, and just work memorizing all the math facts on the side.  It seems kind of overwhelming, and I don't know where to start though.  I didn't have to worry about this with my older ds because we used MUS, and math fact memorization was built in.  We have a flash master, and that never really seemed to help her.  She also seems to struggle with deciding what operation to use when doing word problems.  She really isn't looking forward to studying only one operation at a time with MUS though.  I would plan to go through a few of the books much faster, because she already knows a lot of the material.  Would you switch if you were me?  If not.....what do you recommend I use for her to memorize her math facts?

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I have used Teaching Textbooks and I do have to "pause" at times to review math facts. I had to do this with Singapore, too, so it doesn't bother me; some curricula just don't build in as much drill as needed. I just ordered the Times Tales DVD to help my son with multiplication facts. He's struggling with those more than his older siblings did. We're sticking with TT though, because he loves the format and is doing well with it. We also use Flashmaster for facts review. I'm sure there are worksheets you can print for free (online) if you want to do timed written drills. I don't think you should switch curriculum just based on this.

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My oldest used TT for all four years of high school. My upcoming 3rd grader does TT4 and is finishing up CLE math 2. Between both she gets plenty of practice with her facts. We switched to TT in the middle of 2nd grade because I was working and I like the self-grading aspect of TT. My daughter prefers workbook style math and she asked to go back to CLE, but still wants to do the TT, so that is what we are doing. 

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We only jumped into TT in Math 5 but there does not seem to be a lot of fact practice.  We do other math fact things on the side to practice the facts.  Even when we did MUS, we needed to do additional fact practice because neither of my children learned it all in MUS either.  The only way I see to get those facts down is to practice or drill them daily.  I prefer Math Windows cards, but unfortunately, they are no longer made.  There is another card called Holey Cards.  They have a card for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division each separate.  You are supposed to time them and have them be able to get through a card in a certain amount of time.  I usually time dd to see how long it takes her and then have her try to better her time the next go through.  Anyway, we do one card a day for four days.  Continue that throughout the year and you should see improvement.  Certainly,  whatever you choose to use for drill have consistency and use it regularly.   HTH

Blessings,

Pat

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TT is a strong program.

 

Since I have BTDT, I disagree that Teaching Textbooks is a strong math program.

 

I used TT for my daughter for 7th, algebra I, algebra II, and geometry, but she was completely unprepared with I moved her to Thinkwell pre-calculus.  We had to spend a lot of time last year learning how to do algebra properly and fix geometry issues and she never missed anything when she did her TT assignments.  We honestly thought TT was a wonderful program, but now I am selling all of my TT from 4th to geometry because I won't let my younger son use the program anymore.  I switched him to Thinkwell too.  I am already seeing issues that he wasn't prepared enough for 8th grade - but with extra work he should be fine.

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We use TT & XtraMath for our girls 4 days a week....the 5th day is for math games, Khan Academy(my oldest) & Math Mammoth for my 5th grader, they work through Life of Fred as well.  I like math to take at least 1-1.5 hours a day....so if they finish their assignments before that time, then they are required to work on math facts or other math resources until it's time to move on to the next subject. 

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I briefly used TT along with CLE 300 when Rebecca was in third grade.  Before the year even started - coming off of  CLE 200 - she tested through 2/3 of TT 3.  We worked with that for a while and as she progressed through 300, we had to start skipping huge chunks of TT 4, and Rebecca kept saying, "I already KNOW this!"  We skipped so much that I just quit and sold them off.

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