Weird Math Arg!

[toddandleah]

Hey all,

 

Ds (11)  is struggling (as usual) with math.  We've made the jump this year from Bob Jones to Saxon, because an online school we're considering next year uses Saxon, and I wanted to transition.  It worked out BJU Math 5 was a disaster last year.  We've been working through 7/6, 30 lessons in.  It started out all right (expected since these first 30 lessons are review).  But for the last ten lessons or so something is happening and I'm not sure what to do.  Without fail he misses most of the problems - from the lesson set to the mixed practice - across the board he's lucky to get even half right.  It doesn't matter if I only give him a handful of problems then let him take a break - he will miss nearly all of them.  But here's the kicker - when he goes back to work them a second time (without consulting the solutions manual to see how it's worked, without me necessarily explaining how to do it) - by simply going back and reworking the problems, looking back at the chapter or re-watching the lesson (DIVE), he gets them right.  He sees where he went wrong.  I've been keeping track of the type of problems he consistently missed and then we went back and re-worked the chapters.  The trouble is that the poor boy despises math - and after completing the worksheet the first time his first question is "Is it really bad?" - which it usually is.  He doesn't see the value of going back and figuring out the mistakes - he just gets smacked with the failure and the agony of having to rework the problems - even though he is getting it right the second time around. The irony is that he scores 80-90% on the tests. 

 

Any insights?  Should we press on?  Tweak things a bit? 

thanks

Leah

[thowell]

First let me offer a word of encouragement. I went through something similar with Dd13. It does seem to get better as they mature. I learned that when she was trying to figure out how to solve a problem I had to let her do it the wrong way first, if that is the way she thought to do it, then have her go back a do it again the correct way. For some reason this seemed to solidify the correct method in her mind. If I just showed her the correct way, without her doing it wrong first, she had very little if any retention.

 

You know some of us just have to learn by our own mistakes maybe these kids are the same way???

[TianXiaXueXiao]

Do you sit with him to do the lesson practice together? My dd was having a similar problem until I realized that we needed to read the introduction and complete the lesson practice problems together. I reinforce the lesson with khan academy videos and practice and this has really helped. Sometimes they just need extra hand holding to gain confidence.

[Cosmos]

When my son went through a period of working carelessly, I did the following: I would give a carefully selected set of exercises. If he did them all correctly, he was done. But for every problem he did wrong, he had to redo that one plus do one extra problem of the same type for practice. It gave him strong incentive to work carefully the first time and check his work for logic and computational errors before turning it in.

 

ETA: I should say, though, that my ds has always enjoyed math. With a student who hates math, this method might reinforce negative feelings about the subject.

[toddandleah]

Do you sit with him to do the lesson practice together? My dd was having a similar problem until I realized that we needed to read the introduction and complete the lesson practice problems together. I reinforce the lesson with khan academy videos and practice and this has really helped. Sometimes they just need extra hand holding to gain confidence.

 

This is the first year I am not doing the lessons with him, that is, I do the warm-up with him, but that's it.  We have the DIVE CDs and he does them entirely on his own.  I have only stepped in when I knew he wasn't understanding the concept.  It is only recently that he has been showing issues with the lesson itself.  Most of the missteps have happened in the review/mixed practice section.  We have used Khan Academy exclusively last year as BJU was a total failure.  This is also the first year that I don't sit with him while he completes the lesson - in the past that was about the only way he would do it.  But I have three other children who have needed more attention.  We're planning on enrolling him in online classes next year, and math is one of the courses we are considering.  I have looked on this year with DIVE as a way to transition him into being in a more class-like situation, having to follow a lecture, and having to take more responsibility.  I do talk him through the solution when he just can't figure it out, by modeling or asking questions to help him think through the logic.  But that doesn't happen as much.  He is usually able to figure out where he went wrong himself.  There's just a couple problems every now and again that he can't solve.  This is also the first year I've forced him to go back and figure most of it out himself. 

I know, it's a lot of changes to have at once, but in spite of his frustrations he is learning to persevere.