Seeking Opinions on DD's Math Progrssion for Middle School

[Reefgazer]

DD is in 7th grade, heading into 8th grade next year.  We school from late-August to mid-June, with

liberal breaks for vacations and holidays.  She is currently working on Saxon 8/7 this year, and while we are doing that, we are leisurely working through AoPS pre-Algebra and some Singapore Challenge books to supplement.  She is scoring in the 90s on all Saxon work and seems to be handling the AoPS and Singapore work well (but it's hard for me to evaluate that exactly because there are no tests with our supplemental work).  We will finish the Saxon 8/7 book by early April and I am deciding on one of the following options for the remainder of the year and need the Hive's opinion on these 3 options:

 

1.  Pop her into Saxon Algebra I immediately and get her a head start on next year.  The idea here is to gradually finish up each Saxon course a bit ahead of the end of the school year and free up time in her senior year of high school for an additional math course past calculus.  Downside is that she has 2 months of summer to become rusty with the algebra, and this leaves us less time for supplementing.

 

2.  Just work more extensively on AoPS and Singapore exercises for the remainder of the year in order to look at pre-algebra topics on a deeper level.  Downside is that if we take this path, she'll have no time her senior year of high school for any math past calculus.  I don't see her wanting to double-up on math completely in any given high school year, as she is not a math lover and likely won't be a math major in college, so this option seems appealing to me.

 

3.  A combination of 1 and 2.

 

My gut feeling is to go with #2 to develop a deeper understanding of math and preserve the early lessons of Saxon algebra for review after the summer.  But Mr. Reefgazer likes to see "advancement" and is in favor of option #1, although he'll go along with whatever I come up with.

 

 

[wapiti]

Looking at the two options, I don't see what difference two months is going to make either way.  Why not do both, along with a light math schedule over the summer (say, 3 days per week)?  It's not as though starting algebra for a month or two at the end of the school year is going to get you very far, but if you work year-round with a light summer schedule for the next two summers or so, it shouldn't be too hard to bump up that extra year of math.  On the other hand, I question the importance of a math course beyond calc BC in high school, unless that's just how it happens to work out for 4 years of math or unless your student is shooting for a top-tier STEM program (and of course it's always nice for a math-talented student to have that option if interests change in high school!).

 

As for knowing how your dd is doing with the supplements in the absence of tests, if you stay involved, you will know, perhaps better than you think you do, about where her problem-solving skills are developing well and what areas are more difficult for her.  I don't think test percentages would add much.

 

If you absolutely must work out a trade-off, I would agree with you on #2, that adding problem-solving is more important than accelerating past calc BC in high school, but I don't think such a trade-off is actually necessary.

 

Eta, put another way, if she *really* needed math past calc BC in high school (if, say, she was shooting for the likes of MIT), she would also find substantial benefit in additional depth/problem-solving practice, though there are multiple ways to skin that cat.

[kiwik]

I may be wrong but if she goes straight from one book to the other she can skip the reveiw chapters. But then she may need to do them next year. I would do maths over summer.

[kiana]

I'd rather do math lightly over the summer -- half a lesson a day or something like that.

[Arcadia]

I'll do both since you have seven months to the next school year. I'll do math review through summer instead of stopping for two months.