The nuts and bolts of compacting curriculum

[forty-two]

I always thought it would be easy-peasy to just follow my child, whatever her level, but I'm actually really struggling with it.  I did fine when she was struggling with learning to read and we went slower than the book's pace, and I did fine when her pace and the book's pace coincided, and I did ok modifying things when she had her first leap and started outstripping the book, but that second leap of hers did me in, and I haven't felt on top of things since, in any subject.  Stuff for the "typical child" goes like this: I place her, first day is hard, second day is just right, and third day starts at easy and ends at mindnumbingly easy - and that's in subjects that are "hard" for her.  Yet she doesn't actually *know* the skills I haven't taught, so I'm hesitant to skip her ahead, but she masters things so dang *quick*, and hates doing easy things, that I've found it impossible - for me, anyway - to modify things *enough*.  And so I drop stuff when it hits too easy and wing it for a while, but that's so haphazard and gets us nowhere that I look for structure, pick up a curriculum, place her, and within a week it's too easy and we drop it - again - and go back to winging it. Lather, rinse, repeat.

 

IDK, compacting curriculum is easy in theory but is really, really hard for me in practice.  The just-right level where we get "a-ha" moments changes by the day, and I feel like I need more than just winging it, yet absolutely nothing works as written, or even with minor modifications.  I'm getting better at recognizing "this is too easy" behavior - and acting on it - and I'm letting dd judge the amount and difficulty of practice she needs, and encouraging her to change midstream if she realizes it's now too easy or too hard.  On Thursday this was partly successful (she chose to start with IP, and then chose to drop back to the wb) and partly unsuccessful because it turned out the hard part was learning SM's particular format for showing intermediate steps, because the steps they wanted shown were so obvious to her that she overthought it like crazy and couldn't figure it out.  And I didn't realize that until we'd spent 20 increasingly frustrating minutes on it.  Basically, the majority of math that day was learning a particular method of bookkeeping that they phase out anyway :banghead.  Which is the opposite of what I want to be doing. 

 

And it happens too much of the time - she struggles, and I slow down, drop back, review - when it turned out I needed to move forward, instead.  I feel like I'm groping in the dark, wildly guessing about where to go next, and while I've found a few glimmers of a path, mostly it's a bunch of false starts. 

 

What I *have* found, that I'm clinging to as the *only* things that make any sense in figuring out what she needs:

*"a-ha moments" are my best judge of "just right", both because too hard and too easy look the same sometimes, and because those moment are what learning is *about*.  And I really worry about screwing her up by making school too boring for too long (in the mindnumbingly easy sense, not in the "lack of hoopla" sense).  So, if we aren't getting a-ha's, I need to examine why.

 

*I'm making a big effort to include her in determining if something is too easy or too hard, and I'm doubling down on emphasizing that school and learning are supposed to *make sense*.  She'll start wildly guessing sometimes after too long of not getting something (usually when she's not getting something because the answer is just too obvious to be right), to make the problem go away, and that's pushes all my John Holt inspired buttons.  Idk, it is just so vital to me that she not give up on school things making sense - that way leads to much badness - and given that all my fumbling around and going too slow has given lots of opportunities for "school answers" to seem ridiculous, I'm trying to make that explicit far more than I'm accidentally showing her that school learning asks for stupidly obvious things.

 

Ugh, I never thought I'd have this problem - I really thought following the child would be as easy in academic things as it was when they were babies and toddlers and such (or even behavior issues now).  But it's not, because while I can tell when things are wrong, I suck-diddly-uck at figuring out what's exactly wrong and what to do about it.  And I'm not used to not getting things - I'm usually really good at finding just the right info right away to solve things, or at least get me started on finding a solution.  But I'm fumbling in the dark here, and I've been doing it for the past year.

[EndOfOrdinary]

I have been there. It will be okay. I promise you won't break your child. Transition years are hard.

 

One of the largest things that helped my son is when we switched over to 15 minutes a day in everything. Every subject was only 15 minutes and if he wanted to do more, he could. Fifteen minutes of boring as all get out copy work wasn't going to kill him, and the practice was necessary. Fifteen minutes of grammar was never enough;he would always do multiple days. Math and science were a little harder and mainly I just chopped the lesson into chunks: one day explain and do a few cursory problems completely together, next day he has to do one section, third (or sometimes fourth) he would finish.

 

This helped me find what he loved, what he was horrible at and avoided, and what he honestly needed practice in before he could start really loving it. Interestingly, the 15 minutes was his idea. I had been resisting because I felt like there was no way could do only 1.5 hours of school a day to be successful. When I looked at what was happening with me tugging at him, we were actually doing much less. So we switched and things immediately got better. We would up doing at least 2.5 hours because he would enjoy things and knew he could quit anytime. It was far more John Holt.

 

How old is this student? Transition years can be really hard.

[forty-two]

It's my oldest, the 7.5yo.  Thanks for the encouragement :grouphug:.  Love the idea of just 15min mandatory, and continuing further if dd wants.  I have a nasty habit of doing too much and then burning either me or dd or both of us out :doh.

 

Now that I've gotten some of my angsting out ;), some ideas have occurred to me.  I know the general sentiment was against the method in the "early radical acceleration" thread, but I thought that sounded really helpful, actually.  My problem in math is that she knows some unknown amount beyond where we are, but not everything, and I need a method to move ahead faster (because she needs it badly) without ending up with a ton o' holes.  And since doing it casually is still too slow (I've some hang-ups with wanting to do all the things, or some defined subset of all the things), getting some concrete data on what she does and doesn't know - and then filling in the holes before moving on - sounds really awesome, tbh.  I was thinking that maybe I could use the sinagpore placements tests as the pre-test, and use the book's reviews for the post-test.  IDK, it's not that I'm wanting to zoom ahead, sacrifice depth for speed, but she's spinning her wheels here, and this approach seems like it would help with the lack of data issue that is plaguing me so much.  I might try it, see if it helps some, anyway, especially since my weakness is going too slow, not too fast.

[SarahW]

forty-two, I commiserate. I'm currently trying to fill in whatever my kid doesn't know of 2nd grade math. I was picking pages out of 2nd grade math workbooks, but even with skipping pages that repeat concepts he already knows, the pages that present new concepts just move too.darn.slow. A two-page spread for multiplying twos, then other for 5's, and another for 10's, and so on? Are you kidding me?

 

I came across one of those big "curriculum" workbooks at the thrift store, and though it was for 4th grade, I realized that they always start off reviewing lower level concepts first. And bingo, the review pages are perfect.

 

So, move up and then down? Go down while going up? I don't know. I'm hoping to start BA soon and hopefully that will be a good fit. Winging it is hard.

[quark]

I always thought it would be easy-peasy to just follow my child, whatever her level, but I'm actually really struggling with it.  I did fine when she was struggling with learning to read and we went slower than the book's pace, and I did fine when her pace and the book's pace coincided, and I did ok modifying things when she had her first leap and started outstripping the book, but that second leap of hers did me in, and I haven't felt on top of things since, in any subject.  Stuff for the "typical child" goes like this: I place her, first day is hard, second day is just right, and third day starts at easy and ends at mindnumbingly easy - and that's in subjects that are "hard" for her.  Yet she doesn't actually *know* the skills I haven't taught, so I'm hesitant to skip her ahead, but she masters things so dang *quick*, and hates doing easy things, that I've found it impossible - for me, anyway - to modify things *enough*.  And so I drop stuff when it hits too easy and wing it for a while, but that's so haphazard and gets us nowhere that I look for structure, pick up a curriculum, place her, and within a week it's too easy and we drop it - again - and go back to winging it. Lather, rinse, repeat.

 

Learning is messy. Really messy. See, we know deep inside that not every child is going to follow a path prescribed for everyone, yet, when facing it right in front of us, it still stumps us doesn't it? Kiddo's leaps always did me in too. I couldn't figure them out. But there's hope on the horizon. Is this for the 7.5yo? It gets a little easier to predict at about 8-8.5yo. Like a pp said, hang in there. It's a transition year for you too, esp. if it's your eldest.

 

Compacting was never easy here. It did not follow a predictable pattern and I can't even spell out how exactly we did it. It didn't involve a lot of pre or post-testing. Close observation, discussion, having him teach things back to me gave me the best clues. Sometimes we compacted a year's worth in a week! Sometimes a week's worth took two years of something else done concurrently for the light bulb moment to hit (he really understood ratios only when he was learning high school geometry). I learned about asynchronous development but didn't realize it in full till much later. When we IQ tested him, his processing speed score helped me solve the mystery but before that, I was just grappling in the dark. His learning was so haphazard and so all over the place. At any one time he could be a 2nd grader-kindergartner-5thgrader-8thgrader rolled into one 7yo package. It was weird and worrying. And convinced me to stop thinking in grade levels.

 

What I *have* found, that I'm clinging to as the *only* things that make any sense in figuring out what she needs:

*"a-ha moments" are my best judge of "just right", both because too hard and too easy look the same sometimes, and because those moment are what learning is *about*.  And I really worry about screwing her up by making school too boring for too long (in the mindnumbingly easy sense, not in the "lack of hoopla" sense).  So, if we aren't getting a-ha's, I need to examine why.

 

Again I agree with the pp about shorter lessons. It is really important to give them downtime to think. I've mentioned before that we did math in different strands. 10-20 minutes in the morning, late morning and afternoon for example with 2 out of 3 being instructional or practice-based, then the third (sometimes fourth) being above level or interest-based. Kids can rise to the challenge when they are ready. Just trust them.

 

We used different resources for each strand or a repetition of one resource when he needed more practice. Short lessons are good unless the kids want more. Think of anything extra as a bonus. The variety was really good for him. The aha moments, lovely though they were, didn't help with placement decisions. When he had an aha, it meant another leap but a leap to where? I spent a lot of money the first few years (thank goodness for used curriculum groups!) trying to figure it out. Don't worry about lack of ahas either. Unless you suspect a learning disability. Sometimes, it just takes time. There are always highs and lows and plateaus.

 

Ugh, I never thought I'd have this problem - I really thought following the child would be as easy in academic things as it was when they were babies and toddlers and such (or even behavior issues now).  But it's not, because while I can tell when things are wrong, I suck-diddly-uck at figuring out what's exactly wrong and what to do about it.  And I'm not used to not getting things - I'm usually really good at finding just the right info right away to solve things, or at least get me started on finding a solution.  But I'm fumbling in the dark here, and I've been doing it for the past year.

You have to keep an open mind. And be gentle with yourself too. This is a learning period for you. You are going to be making mistakes but you are also going to be learning from them. If your child is going to be pulling you along, you need to give yourself and her time to figure out her ideal pace.

 

HTH!

 

ETA: we were posting at the same time. I didn't mean to discourage pre- and post-testing if these are truly needed. You know your child best!

[EndOfOrdinary]

I am one of the outliers who believe in testing. For me it is important in two ways. Firstly, tests are not going away. It might be some major presentation when my son has a job or he might decide to go to some great college, or even as simple as a drivers license. Tests exist in our society so he needs to learn how to handle them. Secondly, I need to know what he knows. Not what he thinks he understands from a text, but what he knows. If tested the way you were talking about (to find her holes and her place) tests are awesome. They can let you know what is going in in a much more concrete way.

 

I dislike testing as a form of achievement or somehow as the end all be all. I dislike the kid even knowing much about his test score. A test cannot show you how mature her understanding is, or if she can extrapolate, or how much she is enthusiastic. That is learning. At this point, you could give a crap about learning! :) You just need to figure out where to start and where to back fill so that she can learn.

 

As far as I can tell, this is different than the radical acceleration tread. You are trying to find where to start. Once that has been located, you don't need to test anywhere near as much. Set the foundation and she can really go. Our tests are just documentation now, and they are done when he appears to have mastery.

[forty-two]

SarahW, after our spelling program (R&S grade 2) crashed and burned, I ended up impulse-buying Spelling Through Morphographs (used at 75% off the list price, which manages to both feel like a real bargain while still being spendy in real dollars) on the same principle. I'm sort of hoping remedial for upper grades will move at a good clip with harder words and so will fit her better, although I know that people have found the opposite (still too easy and also above interest level). We'll see, anyway (I know the odds are that StM is a mistake, but one I should be able to sell for the same price I paid for it).

 

Quark, I feel a bit like my middle right now, "I'm not a patient person!" :tongue_smilie:. Thanks for the encouragement :). It's good to remember there's no magic bullet - that it's always going to be hard work no matter how experienced I get at it (like parenting ;)). But that like parenting, accumulated experience is a big, big help, too. I remember the difference in how I felt when I brought dd7.5 home as a newborn ("they are trusting me with this child?!") and when I brought ds2.5 home.

[forty-two]

If you are like me, you have no damn clue what you are doing.  So it's understandable.  LOL

 

Thought you might appreciate a pep talk.

 

:laugh:

 

Ok, but seriously, I don't think anyone is that fragile.  You have the luxury to try stuff and shift gears anytime you want.  Your kid would not be getting that in school.  In school you get what they serve you and that is it.  Nobody cares if that is too easy or too difficult or the correct speed. 

 

I agree with quark that learning is messy.  (Because people are messy.)

 

:lol:  Yep, I went from knowing all the things (before I started) to knowing none of the things.  I tell myself that it's really progress, because it means that I am closer to wisdom than I was ;).

[forty-two]

Plus you already know the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything.

 

:lol:

[forty-two]

EndofOrdinary, that's it exactly - I'm looking for a *starting* place.  Or, more accurately, I'm looking for ways of making choosing a starting place more of an informed choice than a WAG ;).

[quark]

Plus you already know the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything.

:laugh: I like you!

[boscopup]

I found Math Mammoth easier to accelerate than Singapore (and cheaper too!). When I pulled DS1 out of school mid-first grade, I knew he was ready for 3rd grade math, but needed to fill in holes that he hadn't been taught yet because he'd been doing Saxon 1 in school.

 

Each day, I looked at the topic in MM (starting in grade 1). If I thought he knew it really well, I'd give him a few problems to test it out. If he did those easily, we'd move to the next topic. OR, if I thought he knew the entire chapter, I'd give him the chapter test. If he passed it with flying colors, we'd move to the next chapter. We bypassed an entire semester's worth of math that way one time - skipping all of 2B because it was mostly addition/subtraction with regrouping of 3-digit numbers, and he had already extrapolated that from working with 2-digit numbers. I didn't switch him over to Singapore until I had gotten him to "where he really was" and we were able to move more linearly through Singapore (and I assigned all workbook problems in Singapore, since there aren't that many - we didn't do all the IP/CWP stuff though... just stuck more with the challenging problems).

 

That said, I think there is also value in learning to do boring things and using boring things to become automatic. So I do some of both in my homeschool now. :) In fact, oldest now does a CLE Math 500 lesson every day. This is easy peasy for him, and many here would call it "busy work". But you know what? He's not forgetting the basics. He's becoming incredibly automatic with them. And because of that, he is thriving in AoPS Prealgebra. That CLE lesson only takes him 10-15 minutes, and then he spends 30-45 minutes on AoPS later in the day. Forty-five minutes to an hour total of math for 4th grade is not unreasonable. Likewise, my 7 year old does CLE Math 200 in the morning and Beast Academy 3B in the afternoon. This is working very well for him, and he needs more repetition than my oldest did at this age anyway. I've told him that if it's easy, he can do it quickly. ;) If he can't do it quickly, it's not automatic yet, so he needs the practice.

 

Compacting = teaching the material, but just assigning fewer practice problems. In MM, I always made assignments after I saw how well my son did with the first few problems. Sometimes I'd assign only 3-5 problems, sometimes I'd assign half the problems, and sometimes I'd assign ALL the problems (multi-digit multiplication was one of those - he just needed the practice to really get it). The chapter tests were sooooo helpful to me in figuring out what we could safely skip over. We did grades 1-4A and part of 4B of MM in a calendar year using this method. I preferred having those chapter tests instead of Singapore's end of book test. If you're going to use this method with Singapore, you might use the end of chapter review as your "test", as that will cover more that was in the chapter.

[SeaConquest]

This is such a helpful thread. I've been feeling like we need to do some compacting in MM2 and I haven't had the confidence or experience to know how. So thank you!

[sunnyday]

lewelma wrote this in another thread:
 

Start new chapter in SM. Sit with him for 15 minutes and teach the new concept in the entire chapter for 5 minutes, and then have him do 1 or 2 from each section in the chapter with me either orally or with me a scribe. Finish entire workbook chapter in 15 minutes (with heaps of blanks for problems we skipped).  Or 30 minutes or 45 minutes or however long it took.  If he got one wrong, he did 2 more of that style.  If he got one right in each section quickly and without having to think, we just moved to the next type of question.  This approach allowed him to speed through the easier material with me making sure that he knew it.  The key was that he did not have to write.

 

This is basically what we've been doing for the "compaction" portion of our math time. I would personally not be completely comfortable with a test-and-advance model. Things my son can do on a test don't necessarily correlate with things he has a full conceptual command of. And I feel like part of the benefit of working at home is that I can feel him out for what he doesn't and doesn't know, speed up or slow down in a very nuanced way. Another part of the benefit is that we can give problem-solving challenge in areas that are conceptually easy, or back up to lower-order thinking (or take writing out of the picture by offering to scribe) to build fluency in areas that are still tripping the student up, in a dance that maximizes the use of cognitive energy: http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10687.aspx

[AmandaVT]

I found Math Mammoth easier to accelerate than Singapore (and cheaper too!). When I pulled DS1 out of school mid-first grade, I knew he was ready for 3rd grade math, but needed to fill in holes that he hadn't been taught yet because he'd been doing Saxon 1 in school.

 

Each day, I looked at the topic in MM (starting in grade 1). If I thought he knew it really well, I'd give him a few problems to test it out. If he did those easily, we'd move to the next topic. OR, if I thought he knew the entire chapter, I'd give him the chapter test. If he passed it with flying colors, we'd move to the next chapter. We bypassed an entire semester's worth of math that way one time - skipping all of 2B because it was mostly addition/subtraction with regrouping of 3-digit numbers, and he had already extrapolated that from working with 2-digit numbers. I didn't switch him over to Singapore until I had gotten him to "where he really was" and we were able to move more linearly through Singapore (and I assigned all workbook problems in Singapore, since there aren't that many - we didn't do all the IP/CWP stuff though... just stuck more with the challenging problems).

 

That said, I think there is also value in learning to do boring things and using boring things to become automatic. So I do some of both in my homeschool now. :) In fact, oldest now does a CLE Math 500 lesson every day. This is easy peasy for him, and many here would call it "busy work". But you know what? He's not forgetting the basics. He's becoming incredibly automatic with them. And because of that, he is thriving in AoPS Prealgebra. That CLE lesson only takes him 10-15 minutes, and then he spends 30-45 minutes on AoPS later in the day. Forty-five minutes to an hour total of math for 4th grade is not unreasonable. Likewise, my 7 year old does CLE Math 200 in the morning and Beast Academy 3B in the afternoon. This is working very well for him, and he needs more repetition than my oldest did at this age anyway. I've told him that if it's easy, he can do it quickly. ;) If he can't do it quickly, it's not automatic yet, so he needs the practice.

 

Compacting = teaching the material, but just assigning fewer practice problems. In MM, I always made assignments after I saw how well my son did with the first few problems. Sometimes I'd assign only 3-5 problems, sometimes I'd assign half the problems, and sometimes I'd assign ALL the problems (multi-digit multiplication was one of those - he just needed the practice to really get it). The chapter tests were sooooo helpful to me in figuring out what we could safely skip over. We did grades 1-4A and part of 4B of MM in a calendar year using this method. I preferred having those chapter tests instead of Singapore's end of book test. If you're going to use this method with Singapore, you might use the end of chapter review as your "test", as that will cover more that was in the chapter.

 

 

This is how we're working through MM as well. I find using the chapter reviews very helpful as well (thank you poster on this board who suggested this tactic). If he flies through the chapter review, I'll usually skip that chapter, if he doesn't fly through, we'll work on the sections he needs. I also have him do all of the word problems because he likes them. And thank you boscopup for the heads up on MM2B - he's 2/3 through 2A at the moment and I'll make sure to give 2B a good pre-screening before wasting any printer paper!

[Runningmom80]

Great thread! Timely for me as I sit down to order another level of Singapore I thought we'd start in the summer. :)

[MotherOfBoys]

wow, thank you! I needed all this advice too. My son also has the "too easy" face that looks the same sometimes as the "too hard" face. I'm starting to see the difference this week though. I am doing the mm chapter tests as pretests and then lessons the rest of the week to fill in the blanks. I still worry about holes but I have more confidence the more the hive talks about it. I have already come a long way with making math accelerating easier for him this year but we are not done. We came from saxon to mm which was a huge help. I am considering switching to beast next year to help with depth even more. He wants the depth but he likes working orally and on the white board. I don't know how beast will work with that. Because he doesn't struggle much I don't know what will happen if beast is too tough. I already have all of mm 1-6 so I thought of just adding primary challenge math one day a week. We ordered it from the library to try out and got it yesterday but he just did a couple sections of Primary Chall. in one sitting last night. (not the Einstein ones though). So where will he be next year? No idea and I'm a planner so that is soooo hard for me. 

[AmandaVT]

wow, thank you! I needed all this advice too. My son also has the "too easy" face that looks the same sometimes as the "too hard" face. I'm starting to see the difference this week though. I am doing the mm chapter tests as pretests and then lessons the rest of the week to fill in the blanks. I still worry about holes but I have more confidence the more the hive talks about it. I have already come a long way with making math accelerating easier for him this year but we are not done. We came from saxon to mm which was a huge help. I am considering switching to beast next year to help with depth even more. He wants the depth but he likes working orally and on the white board. I don't know how beast will work with that. Because he doesn't struggle much I don't know what will happen if beast is too tough. I already have all of mm 1-6 so I thought of just adding primary challenge math one day a week. We ordered it from the library to try out and got it yesterday but he just did a couple sections of Primary Chall. in one sitting last night. (not the Einstein ones though). So where will he be next year? No idea and I'm a planner so that is soooo hard for me. 

 

DS is enjoying PCM and I'm about to order Beast Academy for him to see if he likes that too. We don't do PCM every day, but a couple of times a week. He calls it the "fun math". :-)

[lewelma]

I still worry about holes but I have more confidence the more the hive talks about it.

 

 

I wrote this a few months back to a similar concern.....

 

Gaps happen.  They feel horrible, but it helps to just expect them.  My older ds just asked me how to multiply decimals.   I kind of went :huh: and then :scared: and then :001_rolleyes: .  To put it in perspective, this is the question he was working on when he asked me:

 

"In a sequence of positive integers an inversion is a pair of positions such that the element in the position to the left is greater than the element in the position to the right. For instance the sequence 2,5,3,1,3 has five inversions – between the first and fourth positions, the second and all later positions, and between the third and fourth positions. What is the largest possible number of inversions in a sequence of positive integers whose sum is 2014?"

 

Don't worry.  Just fill the gaps.

 

Ruth in NZ

[Halcyon]

we have this issue with younger. he doesn't know his times tables yet, and HATES learning them, yet he is working his way through Real World Algebra nicely. What to do, what to do? We move ahead, we back track. We move fast, we move slow. We review, we try new things. We use end of chapter tests in MM, then review the questions he struggled with. Sometimes he confuses me because he is so asynchronous. He gets concepts easily, but has trouble with "easy" things like memorizing tables. So we sort of do two tracks--one to jump ahead and have fun with, and one to work on skills that he needs to solidify. I don't consider math to be a linear path. I assume there will be three steps forward, jump back two spots to review, leap ahead a mile, oops forgot to go over long division, jump back again to solving polynomials, etc etc. 

 

It's messy. :D