Saxon 2, feet dragging, addition facts question

[oneangelwaiting]

I'm having a problem. We are doing Saxon 2 with DS6.  We are several weeks into the school year already, he just completed Lesson 31 yesterday.

 

We have learned the doubles, doubles plus one, and the single digits +2 facts.  He understands the other concepts that we are learning and is doing great with those, he picks it up very quickly (word problems, the shapes, patterns, clock, etc.).

 

So there are the timed fact worksheets, where they see how many they can complete in 1 minute and then once the minute is up they finish the rest. He is doing horribly. Many days he gets 4-6 done and correct.  When it is the doubles only he can usually get around 10. The teacher's manual said to shoot for 15.

 

Last week we took two days off of formal math and just practiced with flash cards, going over how to find the answer to the problems (the "tricks" if you will), working on worksheets with no timer.

 

Yesterday we did a timed doubles +1 worksheet and he completed 2 problems.  Yes, two. That is the worst he has ever done.  It's not that he does a bunch and gets them wrong, it's that he just doesn't do them and moves as slowly as molasses.  This was right after doing flashcard review and reviewing how to find the answers.  Then I asked him to finish the rest of the worksheet and I went upstairs to change the baby's diaper. I also washed my face and changed my clothes. I was up there for probably at least 10 minutes, if not more like 15.  When I got back he had literally written the number 7.  That is all that he did.  I got back and asked him what he had been doing and he said "Um, putting my pencil in this hole?" At least he was honest!  :laugh: He knows that there will be no playing until his school is done, and he also knows that if he doesn't finish up in the morning then he will be doing it in the afternoon when everyone else is playing. 

 

I can't figure out if this is an issue of him not knowing or understanding the fact concepts, not wanting to do it, or just dawdling/getting distracted. FWIW he generally moves at the speed of a glacier throughout life, math a lot of times takes him 1.5 hours or longer. Yesterday it took him 45 minutes to do the stuff in the meeting only, not to mention the lesson and everything else.

 

So what do I do? Do I take more time off of formal lessons and just review fact cards and the concepts for a while? Do I not worry about the timer thing, as long as he's getting the answers right then it is OK if it takes him forever?  My fear is that he is not understanding, and as we build on these concepts he's going to be behind.  

[kiana]

Can he do them if you quiz him orally? 

[MiMi 4under3]

I didn't time my kids at that age in Saxon 2. When we were done with everything else- meeting, lesson, side A and B - then they did the facts sheet - and the kids knew that once they were done with the sheet, they were done with math for the day. 

[oneangelwaiting]

Can he do them if you quiz him orally?

I'm not sure. I will try it.

[oneangelwaiting]

I didn't time my kids at that age in Saxon 2. When we were done with everything else- meeting, lesson, side A and B - then they did the facts sheet - and the kids knew that once they were done with the sheet, they were done with math for the day.

I forgot to say that we don't even do side B of the worksheet because everything else takes so long!

[LinRTX]

I would forget the timer. If he can do it orally he knows the facts. Sometimes at 6, the handwriting is just slow. Also he is little -- playing is more fun.

[bethben]

I don't time the facts tests. Sometimes we don't even do them if dd is having a pencil phobic day. I had a ds who couldn't keep on fast at that age either. I had to sit next to him with every subject and refocus him constantly. If I had left him to complete something on his own, school would have taken all day.

[Sobeknofret]

I rarely time the facts sheets. Sometimes if Darth Kid wants to try, I'll time him, but I hate the idea of timing math drills. I believe strongly in the drills themselves, but i've never seen any value in timing them.

[BusyMom5]

I'm doing Saxon 1, but I am not timing them either.  I just want them done correctly in a timely manner.  I would try to get him to focus and stay on task if he is playing, but otherwise I don't really want them worrying about the time.  I do the same w/ my older DD who does Saxon fact sheets, she does much better without me timing her. 

 

I'm using MUS blocks, and I found that sometimes they really help the kids to 'see' their math facts.  I will let them use them for the entire page if they want to! 

[maize]

I would not do timed, written facts tests with a six year old.

[AdventuresinHomeschooling]

I could have written this almost verbatim.  This is exactly how my son is, and we use Saxon.  His first grade teacher was no help when he was in Saxon 2, and I brought this to her attention.  I brought him home for second grade.  

 

First, I stopped timing him, or I would do a really long time.  I think Saxon time limits are ridiculous for a lot of kids.  I sometimes would try to time him on how long he would take and see if he could beat his time.  In our son, there are a couple things going on.  Yes, he easily gets distracted.  He hates math facts.  He sees a page of math and glazes over and gets discouraged before he even starts. It's like a mental block.  When they pull out the 100 fact sheets they are supposed to do in something ridiculous like 3 minutes, he is completely deflated.  So our first issue is focus.  If I stand over him and point to each fact, he will do it a lot more quickly.

 

The second thing I realized was that the doubles, doubles plus ones, etc. all made sense to him.  But when they threw the oddball facts at him, something switched in his brain as if he were a juggler and dropped them all.  So then his K teacher (when he was still in school) taught him touch points to basically count the answer quickly.  Well, now he tries to sing his chants, do touch points or look for a switch around fact on the page before he will even attempt to guess at the answer.  He has 100% accuracy and is quick with math concepts, but he sort of sailed through without memorizing his facts.  His first grade teacher would tell me his dawdling was behavioral because he knew the answers, and he would burst into tears and swear he didn't.  He thought he was bad at math.  He'd get 100's in everything he attempted.  He now does the worksheets more quickly, but math facts are his enemy.  He is now in third grade, and I am sort of going slowly through to make sure he has his math facts down.  We are playing math games and learning them by family to give him a different way to organize them vs. oddball.  I am letting him do some Life of Fred too, and we are slowly working through the second part of Saxon 3 so that we don't go too far ahead into multiplication and division.  He is actually surprising me with how quickly he is going.  He has a lot of them down, but we are reviewing one fact family each week and then picking up the pace again.  

 

I don't know that your son needs to slow down as he is fortunately not 2 years into this issue.  Find some ways to motivate him.  Maybe alternate math games with math facts so he isn't staring at boring pages of facts all the time.  IMO, Saxon is weak in math fact games, so I got some ideas from another curriculum I am doing with my other son.  Make sure he is learning the facts and not just counting fast.  Try some alternate approaches/organization if you feel he isn't because Saxon really only teaches one approach for math facts.  It's not a bad approach, but sometimes a different approach makes it stick.  It's true that he will build speed and accuracy over time, but if he is struggling with it at all, it's better to catch it early.  Sounds like he is doing fine orally and maybe it's just blank pages of math facts staring at him.  I got a Math Computation workbook from the store just to make math facts a little more colorful and fun than Saxon does just to change it up.  That may or may not be necessary.  Maybe you could do some motivation so that if he gets 5 right in a minute, he can do it orally or a math game the next day.  Those types of things.  Work on the focus issue, but he is also only 6, and that focus develops too as time goes on.

 

[AdventuresinHomeschooling]

I didn't do B sheet either.  That is for homework in school.

[Erica in OR]

I stopped timing the Saxon fact sheets after I took Jo Boaler's MOOC last year on learning math. Here's a link to an article summarizing some of her thoughts on timed math sheets.

 

I never used the B sides of the worksheets either. The first side was enough.

 

Erica in OR