Tracy Posted June 4, 2014 Share Posted June 4, 2014 We have been used CSMP for 4 years, and in so many ways it is the perfect program for dd9. I have her placed one year ahead of where she would be in school. This past year I was surprised at how well she understood concepts like probability and geometry. But at the same time, she really struggles with problems that require multi-step answers. She can do the individual steps in a problem just fine, but she fails to see how to put those different steps together on the more complex problems. (For example, she would be able to come up with a single average, but if she were asked to find the difference between two averages, she would need help seeing that she needs to compute two separate averages and then subtract.) She also does not know all of her multiplication tables yet. They are coming along, but slowly. So I am wondering if there is anything that I need to do differently. I have considered slowing her down and doing the next 2 years over 3 years. Or maybe I need to supplement with something else? I would definitely have to slow down to fit in a supplement. Or perhaps that is something that will just come in time, and we should just keep trucking along. I would love to hear thoughts from the Hive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OneStepAtATime Posted June 4, 2014 Share Posted June 4, 2014 She may not be developmentally ready for the leaps she is being required to make. But I don't have specific suggestions. Hopefully someone else with more experience will...good luck. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wapiti Posted June 4, 2014 Share Posted June 4, 2014 It sounds like there may be more than one thing going on. There's problem solving and there are steps within that. And, then there's the multiplication table. If her strengths tend to be non-sequential, I'd walk through problems with her, first trying to get her to see the big picture as she translates the words into the picture in her mind. (That can be a challenge, I know.) Then ask her, what should we do next? types of questions. Then drop hints, etc. (Wait, what's a difference? What are we finding the difference between? What are the averages? So what do we need to find first?) On the multiplication table, I'd keep plugging away on the side. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Critterfixer Posted June 4, 2014 Share Posted June 4, 2014 Some of it has seemed to be age related for my boys. They are capable of two and three step word problems now that they could not have begun to work through when they were nine. I had one who had his multiplication tables memorized by nine and one who just now has them pretty well down. Some drill will likely be helpful for that. One thing I did with the boys to help them when they were beginning to do the word problems with several steps was outlining and demonstrating the process via whiteboard, drawing diagrams, pictures, etc. That seemed to really help. I did this one thing with averages where I drew a bunch of my bee-hives and taught mean, median and mode with them. Not only was it fun, and made sense but I was able to show them why one might use averages, and when averages were really not a good reflection of what was happening with the group. There just wasn't anything that beat pictures when it came to that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tracy Posted June 4, 2014 Author Share Posted June 4, 2014 If her strengths tend to be non-sequential, I'd walk through problems with her, first trying to get her to see the big picture as she translates the words into the picture in her mind. (That can be a challenge, I know.) Then ask her, what should we do next? types of questions. Then drop hints, etc. (Wait, what's a difference? What are we finding the difference between? What are the averages? So what do we need to find first?) Yes, I do a lot of this. Lots of leading questions, getting more specific if she continues to have trouble. But once we have done one such problem, she often does not see how she can use the same strategy for the next problem. I will tell her it is the same type of problem, but she doesn't seem to see the relationship. So we go through all the questions again, and I ask her what she did first on the last problem. Part of my problem, though, is that she loves to learn new things (as opposed to practicing the old). I was dreading probability this past year, because I thought it would be really hard for her, but she totally ate it up. She needs the more advanced stuff to keep math interesting. Otherwise it is pure drudgery for her. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wapiti Posted June 4, 2014 Share Posted June 4, 2014 Fwiw, I don't think you need to hold her back from learning new things due to the problem sol. ving. It can take years, sometimes, I think. In other words, it sounds all right to me, especially considering the age. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hunter Posted June 5, 2014 Share Posted June 5, 2014 The biggest problem I developed from my brain damage is difficulty multitasking, seeing the big picture, and doing multi-stepped things. What made it better? I believe mostly time, but also walking, knitting and other rhythmic activities that use both sides of the body. I'm working through Saxon Algebra 1 and getting stuck on the same problems my gifted 10 year old got stuck on back in the 1990s. I didn't understand then, and am grieved that I pushed his young brain through those problems, and mostly my attitude towards his struggles with them. I didn't understand how a series of easy things was so hard. I'm thinking now, that I should have placed him lower for the drill-and-kill, and spent one or two days a week pre-teaching new concepts to keep things interesting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tracy Posted June 5, 2014 Author Share Posted June 5, 2014 The biggest problem I developed from my brain damage is difficulty multitasking, seeing the big picture, and doing multi-stepped things. What made it better? I believe mostly time, but also walking, knitting and other rhythmic activities that use both sides of the body. I'm working through Saxon Algebra 1 and getting stuck on the same problems my gifted 10 year old got stuck on back in the 1990s. I didn't understand then, and am grieved that I pushed his young brain through those problems, and mostly my attitude towards his struggles with them. I didn't understand how a series of easy things was so hard. I'm thinking now, that I should have placed him lower for the drill-and-kill, and spent one or two days a week pre-teaching new concepts to keep things interesting. Thank you for this. It is a good reminder for me to take care not to get frustrated over this. Her mind is so very different. It is hard to not to think, "How can she not get this when she just got that (seemingly) harder problem yesterday?" I am very blessed that she is so easy-going and forgiving, but I must not take advantage of that. I do think that this program does a nice job of combining drill with pre-teaching new concepts. This last year, I felt that we moved very fast, though, and we didn't do as much drill. Part of it is because at this point, it is expected that she knows her multiplication facts, and part of it is that she has so little tolerance for it. She is not defiant about it. She just seems exhausted by it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.