Can we talk Discovering/Dimensions Singapore Math schedules AGAIN? Does anyone else have trouble keeping pace?

[g1234]

Is there anyone else out there who is using DM more or less at grade level and trying to keep pace, doing one level per year?  Is your kid able to keep up?  Do they do all the problems in the textbook?  Do they do the reviews?  Do they also add in workbook problems?

 

My daughter loves DM and has always been really good at math.  However, moving to DMCC 7 (pretty much the same as the old DM 1), we were surprised that though she understands the lessons and gets the problems right most of the time, she just was not able to complete about a chapter every two weeks, as would be required to finish the level in a school year.  Late in the year we played with some workbook problems, and she loved those even more--the harder, the better!  She has asked for more of those next year.  I want to oblige because she learned a tremendous amount from those really hard workbook problems, but that sets her back even more.

 

We're not overly hung up about levels, but it seems silly for a kid who has always been a bit advanced in math drop below grade level and end up, in 10th grade, still doing 8th or 9th grade math.  Even though I know this is a challenging and deep curriculum.

 

Can you see how confused I am?  Does anyone have any guidance to offer?

[lewelma]

We are finding that we are slowing waaaaay down.  This will definitely not be a 1 year course for my younger, but I do feel that the workbook is worth the extra time.  I think it is like AoPS, just a harder program than standard.  So either it will take you more months to do, or you will need to schedule more time to get it done every day.  I just think that is the way of it if you are going to use the workbook. 

 

 

 

We're not overly hung up about levels, but it seems silly for a kid who has always been a bit advanced in math drop below grade level and end up, in 10th grade, still doing 8th or 9th grade math.

Don't know the age of your kid, but if she was a bit advanced, use that time (and perhaps a bit in the summer or on weekends) to really go up a level in thinking using SM7, then plan to keep to schedule with SM8. Just an idea. 

 

Good Luck!

 

Ruth in NZ

[chiguirre]

We work on math all year long so it's less of a problem. I do think that if it's really dragging, you could eliminate some of the problems. Instead of doing all 6 parts of a procedural practice problem, just do 3. If those are correct, call it good. I pick out one easy and the two hardest examples when there are multipart problems that are simply procedure practice. The workbook's first two sections are analogous to the first two sections in the textbook. If your dd has shown procedural mastery, I don't think you need to do all of them. The third and fourth sections in the wb are the meatier, more interesting problems and I'd focus on those.

 

If you want to be ready for calculus in 12th grade, you need to finish DM and most of Additional Maths. I think this is doable by keeping a steady pace, working year round and picking enough procedural practice problems to master the techniques. There are more problems in the tb and wb than a mathy student will need to attain and demonstrate mastery. There might be some topics that are harder and need more practice, but there will also be some easier topics that you can streamline.

[hepatica]

My dd completed three levels 7A, 7B and 8A in two years. So, we, too, were on slower schedule, and we were not even using the workbook. She is dyslexic, so  that might have been part of the problem for her. She really needed to carefully write out her solutions so that we could find the mistakes when something was wrong. I also found that the problems were sometimes deceptively challenging, so it was difficult for me to know how much work she could complete each day.

 

Whenever she had difficulty with a section, I would assign problems from another math text (usually Dolciani algebra or Foresters) and we invariably found that those problem sets were more straightforward than the ones in DM. It was useful to nail down a concept, but also highlighted the greater difficulty of the DM text. 

[MamaSprout]

I'm looking at this as well. DM is meaty. Even with some PreA under our belt, I really only plan on doing 7a this year, so we can dig into it and leave a little time for some other math topics. I also plan to do basic practice on the whiteboard. We do math almost year round, but I'd be afraid it would be a slog to push through. We didn't do Standards 6, so I feel like we bought a year.

 

HTH

[Ali in OR]

When we were trying to do all of the textbook and then all of the workbook, we were taking too long to finish in a year. For my not-so-mathy kid, I decided to drop the last section of the work book problems (enrichment? can't remember what they were called). My dd needed the basic practice and further practice sections to really solidify the concepts from the textbook. But sometimes they had way more problems than needed. I frequently assigned half the problems (left column, or parts a,c,e,g of each problem) in the basic and further practice sections. With dd entering public school for 9th grade, I felt the need to stick to a schedule that would get us through all of the algebra 1 topics. In 7th and 8th grade she completed all of 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B, and also some important algebra topics in 3A (exponents, quadratics, inequalities). In your situation with a child who is enjoying the challenging problems, I might try to do math year round and see if that's enough to complete a level in a year.

[MamaSprout]

If we are doing all of the harder sections in the TB + Alcumus, are we missing anything by skipping the workbook?

[Ali in OR]

If we are doing all of the harder sections in the TB + Alcumus, are we missing anything by skipping the workbook?

 

 

I'm not familiar with Alcumus, so I can't answer that part of the question. The workbook chapters go with the textbook chapters and are divided into 4 parts: basic practice, further practice, challenging problems (application or word problems--harder than what's in the textbook), and enrichment problems (also harder problems, sometimes more theoretical). For my kid, I don't think she would have achieved mastery without the basic practice and further practice. When doing problems from the textbook, her accuracy wasn't great. We would then go over them together with more explanation from me. Then after we finished the chapter, she had a chance to approach similar problems again, and now her accuracy was a lot better. The challenging problems pushed her further than the textbook problems. For how I wanted to teach the course, the workbook was essential. She would have a weaker background without it.

[g1234]

Thank you all for your advice and experiences.  It is good to know, at very least, that it's not just us who find DM slow going.  I do find it interesting that nearly everyone I hear of using DM is using it with younger kids.  In retrospect, I wish we'd done that.  She came out of PM at the beginning of 5th grade.  I worried that her accuracy and basic skills weren't quite there (even though she was knocking our socks off with some incredible feats of abstract mathematical thinking at the level of algebra and beyond), so we spent a year shoring up with Saxon.  I don't think it did much for her, and since then I've read that kids like her often need to just continue moving on and the easier stuff solidifies along the way.  I think I saw that happening last year with DM7.  So perhaps we lost a year there.  But no guilt, right?  We did the best we could.  (Giving pep-talk to self...)

 

I'm not quite sure what this means for us, as we do not school year-round and I don't think it would really work for us to do that.  We do have a little play in the larger schedule, since she's going into 7th next year and finished 3/4 of DM 7 last year.  However, that was without any workbook until near the end, and she really wants workbook next year and I want it for her.  I think we may need to talk about adding more daily time.  She may not be averse to the idea at all.

 

I'm also thinking I might ask for BDDT advice over on the high school boards.  Maybe I'll find some people over there who have used DM through the higher levels.  My friend, for instance, has taken all of her kids through NEM.  She swears that the higher levels go faster, and that the first year is slowest.  I wonder if anything like that happens with DM.  Hmm.  I'll see what I can find.

 

Thanks again!

[NittanyJen]

I am so glad to be reading this.  I knew in advance this level would move more slowly than PM did-- he blazed through those at a little faster than 2 per year, and I am thinking we will not finish 7B this year, but since he is young for this level of math, I keep telling myself to back off, let him take his time and learn it.  But it is really nice to hear that this is pretty typical of the other young kids at this level!  I think it is more demanding, but this level has made me love Singapore Math even more than ever.  

 

As well as he is doing in Fred, I kind of wish I had made the leap into Singapore with my older one when we started as well; SM just does some really unique things.  Ah well, they're both thriving.  I just need to learn to relax and be satisfied!  I can't teach them both everything six times just so I can try everything out LOL