Using Chalkdust....

[Laurie in CA]

I used this years ago with my oldest son. It is very rigorous and I wasn't even considering it for my nonmath daughter. Well, I read many threads here and decided I wanted to use it again. So here we are with the whole enchilada. I was reading over the "Read Me First" and the "Quick Start Guide" and am getting fired up and ready to go. The instructions actually reminded me that the dvd IS the instruction (not the text) and we should actually watch it twice. We are going to do that. I know it will cement the concepts for dd. He also suggests only doing 25 problems per section from the text AND only doing math for one hour at a time. My daughter will be jumping for joy if I actually let her do math for only one hour and do only 25 problems! Each section will take 2-3 days. This seems so doable for us and I just wanted to share the Chalkdust methodology according to the instructions. It also said Mr. Mosely is the instructor and mom is "the supervisor of the learning process". The instructor (Mr. Mosely) connects his teaching style with the learning style of the student. I really like that. All of these instructions are also on the web site. Hope this helps some of you with questions on Chalkdust.

[Annie G]

We used Chalkdust last year for Algebra 2 and are using Trig this year. What I REALLY need help with is figuring out which problems to assign. I mean, they have like 150 problems per lesson so HOW do I whittle that down? Do people primarily assign the word problems or mostly the other ones with a few word problems thrown in? I struggled with that all of last year and now I'm facing it again. I currenly assign about 30 problems per lesson.

An example of my dilemma: Say a section has 10 problems in it, which of course start out easy and move to more difficult ones towards the end. If I am choosing one or two problems, do I choose easier ones, the hardest...what? This is for my math hating dd who intends to major in something like journalism or languages or something.

[Laurie in CA]

Annie, the good news here is you don't have to do 150 or even half of that for each section. The instructions state that for all courses except Geometry you will work 25-30 problems total per section. If a section has 100 problems, divide that by 25 and then work about every 4th problem. He then explains that textbook authors include an extensive variety of problems at the end of each section to meet the needs of many different teachers and teaching methods and that very few, if any teachers assign all of the problems. Many teachers use the "extra problems" on their tests. So publishers sometimes deliberately provide about twice as many problems as needed. I am quoting or paraphrasing this from the "Homework Reference Guide". So I say, let's not overwhelm our poor kids. We have permission from Uncle Buck.

[Laurie in CA]

The instructions also state that problems under Integrated Review may be omitted and Problem Solving problems may be limited to 5 to 6. Sounds like doing 30 is about right for you. All the things I just wrote are on this link.

http://www.chalkdust.com/readme.html

[Annie G]

We did know to skip the integrated review in the algebra 2 book but there were still over 120 problems per lesson to whittle down into a manageable 30 or so. Do you all seriously just pick every 4th problem or something??? I have been going through and considering which types of problems she needs to prove she can handle and picking the word problems that either had the most common applications in real life or that would be overall interesting.

Trig doesn't have the integrated review but it seems to have even MORE problems per lesson than last year's Algebra 2. I just thought it was a more thoughtful process than assigning every 4th problem...I have wasted a lot of time.

Does everyone else just assign random problems?

[Missouri Mama]

My son is doing Chalkdust PreCalculus. Ditto to what's already been shared. I would like to add that I have my son do make-up problems for those he has difficulty with. He selects a similar problem from the ones he skipped. I do not do this if he has missed a problem due to a minor error that he easily discerns when checking his work.