How Long is a MM daily lesson?

[BusyMom5]

I did do the little walk-thru on the site, but I can't figure out how many problems the child is supposed to do per day.  And how much review is in each lesson?  I'm looking at 2nd and 5th grades.

[maize]

Second grade, we aim for two pages a day but not every problem on a page. 5th grade 2-3 pages per day, again crossing out problems if the child doesn't need that much practice.

 

I didn't really pay attention to lesson divisions. I also didn't work straight through the book. Rather, if I were assigning three pages to a fourth grader, I might assign one page from a multiplication section, one form a fractions section, and one from a geometry section.

[Hwin]

I think my son spends about a half hour. He is doing the fifth grade program. I usually circle half of the problems. A subtopic is typically 2-3 pages, if it's longer than I split it into more than one lesson.

 

There are concepts that come easily, where I will circle half the problems and he will fly through 10 pages in a day. Other concepts are more difficult, and I will assign all of the problems but only one page.

 

There's cumulative review at the end of each chapter and that's mostly it. Each new book has review at the beginning, but her idea of review involves introducing new, more difficult concepts.

 

I overlap chapters sometimes - especially when it's a topic he finds grueling, such as long division.

 

 

[TarynB]

When my DS used Math Mammoth, I usually had him do every other problem in a lesson, and all of the word problems. I believe I read somewhere that the author purposely included so many problems so that they'd be there for extra practice only if needed, but a student who is "getting" the concept should only need to do half of them.

 

And in 5th grade, if DS worked on a math lesson longer than ~ 30 to 45 minutes, he would start to lose focus, so we would stop for the day at the 30 to 45-minute mark and just pick it up at that spot the next day. I wouldn't expect a 2nd grader to spend longer than, say, 20 minutes. I'd just watch your DC's energy and focus level and go from there, rather than requiring a certain number of problems or lessons or pages.

 

As PP stated, there isn't formal spiral review from prior chapters, other than what is naturally built on as you go, but you could use copies of previous chapter reviews/tests and just have DC do a few problems each day as a warm-up review exercise. We also used a Math Minutes workbook for quick daily review.

 

My DS needed more review than what the author included in MM but we made it work successfully using the above.

 

Anyway, that's all based on my experience happily using MM for levels 4 - 6. (DS started HS'ing in 4th grade. Level 7 wasn't out when we needed it or we'd have used it too.)

[kateingr]

Here's what the author says.  (It's buried in her FAQ.)

 

 

Regarding pacing: 

For pacing, check how many actual lesson pages there are to study (this is mentioned on the web page of the book, below the cover image), and how many days of school you have in mind. Then to get how many pages per day you would need to study, divide the number of pages by the number of days. The user guide for each grade has this information also.

Assuming you have school 5 days a week, about 40 weeks a year, the student should study between 1 and 2 pages each day. If you homeschool for less than 200 days a year, you will probably need to study 2 or more pages a day. Please allow some time also for tests and cumulative reviews.

For example:

Grade level Page count Number of days
in your school year Number of days
for tests and reviews Pages to study
per day Pages to study
per week 1st grade 249 200 10 1.3 6.7 2nd grade 281 200 15 1.5 7.6 3rd grade 321 200 15 1.7 8.7 4th grade 353 200 15 1.9 9.5 5th grade 346 200 12 1.84 9.2 6th grade 323 200 20 1.8 9.0

So as a general guideline, about 1 1/2 pages a day is sufficient for grades 1-2, about 1 3/4 pages for grade 3, and fourth, fifth, and sixth graders should aim to do about 2 pages a day. However, you need to pace it depending on how the lessons go. Sometimes your student might be able to do several pages in a day, and sometimes the student cannot do but one page. Also, in some topics you might be able to go through the pages quicker, for example in the chapters about clock, because the clock pictures are so large that one page does not have many problems.

 

Regarding review:

The program includes mixed review lessons (one near the end of each chapter) and additional (separate) cumulative review lessons that you can use when needed. Both of these cover a mix of topics that have already been studied.

You can also use the worksheet maker to generate additional worksheets for practice. This worksheet generator requires an Internet access. If you don't have Internet at home, you can use it in an Internet cafe, public library, or at a friend's house, and save the worksheets on a flash drive to print later.

Also, all the major concepts, such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, decimals, and fractions get reviewed in a sense because they are used all the time. For example, a child will keep using the multiplication tables when studying division and multi-digit multiplication. The student will use various addition and subtraction strategies in word problems about money and measuring and when studying place value. Division facts are used in long division.

I never make all the word problems to match the lesson exactly. By this I mean that a word problem found in a multiplication lesson might require both multiplication and addition to solve. Similarly, word problems in the other chapters (such as money, measuring, division, or fractions) will include the usage of multiplication. The word problems in the curriculum constantly use important concepts that have already been learned.

 

 

[My3girls]

We have done/are doing MM2,3, and 6. In MM2 & 3, the girls did/are doing 2-3 pages per day, and it generally takes them 30 minutes or less. DD13 did MM6 last year. She, also, did 2-3 pages per day which usually took 45 min give or take 5-10. Hope that helps.

[Momto4inSoCal]

We do 3 pages a day and it takes 30-45 min. If I see they get it I will let them skip some but I always start off asigning the entire amount of problems and then if I see they are answering all of them correctly I let them skip some problems.

[Mom-ninja.]

How long does a daily lesson take? It depends on the child. It can take hours if the child draws pictures all over the page  :glare:

[h2bh]

I agree with the 30-45 minute estimate. Some days my kids can get more pages done in that amount of time. 2nd grade will be very efficient with your child's time. I think 20-30 min was about what my 2nd graders would work for and we stopped wherever we were.

[Wabi Sabi]

It really depends on the child. My 1st grader is finishing up MM2A right now. She can generally complete a full lesson in 15-20 minutes. Math comes very easily to her. Math is not so natural for my 10 year old who is in 4B. It has always taken him more time, even when he was lower grades. He works in between 45-60 minutes per day on it and can usually manage to complete 3-4 lessons in one week. 

[Shellydon]

for 5th and 6th, 3 pages took at least an hour

[zoobie]

We generally do one section per day. If they're focusing, it takes (random guesstimate) 45 minutes. I've used levels 3-5, just starting with 6.

 

It's not a spiral curriculum per se, so the reviews aren't included within each section. There are cumulative reviews that you can print out (I throw them in randomly on Fridays), or you can do something like Math Minutes.

[reign]

My girls do between one and three pages a day. I think thirty minutes is a good guess at average length. Though I have a kid who usually flies through and one who works slower. My oldest has done almost all the problems. Middle girl has been able to skip problems and catches on much quicker.

[IsabelC]

Depends on the kid, the chapter you're working on (some are quite dense while others are mostly diagrams and/or worked examples), and how many problems you do (could be anything from 1/4 of them to all of them). My kids are currently doing 2B, 3B and 5B, and they do anything from 1 page to 5 pages per day, most often 2 or 3 pages. I just let each book take as long as it takes, but if you want to complete a book in half an academic year (or other specific time period) the easiest way would be to do as Maria Miller suggests and simply divide the number of pages by the number of 'school days' you are planning to have, leaving a little bit of margin for reviews, breaks and tests if you choose to do those.