summerreading Posted April 20, 2015 Share Posted April 20, 2015 Mondays and math make me want to give up homeschooling. Not trying to be dramatic, I just having a hard time dealing with the brain fog that settles in when my 12 year old does math. He still doesn't have multiplication facts memorized, still makes mistakes lining up things. We are just finishing up CLE 604 and we've been working on it since September. He's going to see a tutor once a week starting this week. Has this been a turn around for anyone? I'd really like to take myself out of the math teacher role completely. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OneStepAtATime Posted April 20, 2015 Share Posted April 20, 2015 We have not had any luck with local tutors but the kids are dyslexic and tutors here don't have any understanding of issues like that or 2e situations. However, we were in another city over a summer and sent DD to a school with a math teacher that also deals with dyslexia. She was, in no uncertain term, truly amazing. She only had her for 5 weeks but DD was extremely behind in math and had no confidence whatsoever when she started taking that class. The teacher was able to assess strengths and weaknesses very quickly and start targeting weaknesses right away. By the end of that 5 weeks, DD had made progress in some of her weak areas and had gained a lot of confidence. DD adored her and felt so comfortable with her. If we had only been able to stay with her I think DD would probably be on grade level in math by now. She just GOT DD. At the time I knew she was great but I didn't really realize how great. We were going to start homeschooling that Fall. DD had had 3 years of pretty abysmal math instruction from a very poor teacher. We had just gotten the dyslexia diagnosis. We assumed, erroneously, that a summer with a math specialist then work at home with me would fix the issues. We were wrong. We are making progress, but I deeply regret that DD could not remain with that math teacher. Not one tutor I have tried to hire before or since has been able to help. In fact, in many cases, they have caused tremendous emotional harm. All that to say, it really depends on the tutor and the child. Good luck. I know this is challenging. Best wishes. (On a side note, how is comprehension of the concepts? Is the primary thing bogging him down the inability to rote memorize facts?) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
summerreading Posted April 20, 2015 Author Share Posted April 20, 2015 I hope you can find someone as good as that tutor. Are you on facebook? There's probably a HS group for your state you can ask on, I do find good resources this way. The rote memorizing is definitely an issue. I just started asking him to do apps, games, drills now every day to get moving on this. Concepts, I don't know. He seems to want to do things his own way instead of sticking to a base 10 system. Like what is 8% of 20 - instead of either converting to a decimal and multiplying, or thinking 8% of 10 is 8 so it's 16, he somehow figured out what's 8% of 25 and counted back. Meanwhile I have no idea what he's doing b/c I always have to tell him to show his work. He doesn't want to b/c he's got his own weird way. I guess it's more a memory issue. He sees the problem and there's just this big delay on how to set it up and what step comes next. It's taking us an hour to do one lesson that I have chopped to take out anything he has really mastered. He's great with 3D shapes and geometry concepts. He will cut out shapes on his own to figure out symmetry and then after the lesson keep folding and cutting for fun. I don;t know what kind of strength that is but I guess I should look for a supplement that plays up to that. I don't want to switch from CLE; I do like it a lot. We have not had any luck with local tutors but the kids are dyslexic and tutors here don't have any understanding of issues like that or 2e situations. However, we were in another city over a summer and sent DD to a school with a math teacher that also deals with dyslexia. She was, in no uncertain term, truly amazing. She only had her for 5 weeks but DD was extremely behind in math and had no confidence whatsoever when she started taking that class. The teacher was able to assess strengths and weaknesses very quickly and start targeting weaknesses right away. By the end of that 5 weeks, DD had made progress in some of her weak areas and had gained a lot of confidence. DD adored her and felt so comfortable with her. If we had only been able to stay with her I think DD would probably be on grade level in math by now. She just GOT DD. At the time I knew she was great but I didn't really realize how great. We were going to start homeschooling that Fall. DD had had 3 years of pretty abysmal math instruction from a very poor teacher. We had just gotten the dyslexia diagnosis. We assumed, erroneously, that a summer with a math specialist then work at home with me would fix the issues. We were wrong. We are making progress, but I deeply regret that DD could not remain with that math teacher. Not one tutor I have tried to hire before or since has been able to help. In fact, in many cases, they have caused tremendous emotional harm. All that to say, it really depends on the tutor and the child. Good luck. I know this is challenging. Best wishes. (On a side note, how is comprehension of the concepts? Is the primary thing bogging him down the inability to rote memorize facts?) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OneStepAtATime Posted April 21, 2015 Share Posted April 21, 2015 DS is similar. He does some strange process that makes sense to him. DH is the same, though, and a highly successful engineer. Thanks for the best wishes. We actually found a potentially good tutor in another city that we may be at for the summer. Hope you have a great tutoring experience. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SilverMoon Posted April 21, 2015 Share Posted April 21, 2015 A math tutor made a WORLD of difference in homeschooling my oldest (10th grade), and it honestly improved our relationship. We have a more unique situation where DS does math with a retired STEM professor nearly daily. If his tutor doesn't assign work for the days they're not together I just put DS on Alcumus for an hour. Either tutor or the computer tells him when problems are wrong and explains how to get it right, and I don't have to be the bad guy. :tongue_smilie: This has worked/is working fabulously. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SilverMoon Posted April 22, 2015 Share Posted April 22, 2015 I'm not familiar with CLE. If he's ready for prealgebra there are good online class options that would give him a live teacher. myhomeschoolmathclass.com, Derek Owens, Landry, and such. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EmilyGF Posted April 22, 2015 Share Posted April 22, 2015 The rote memorizing is definitely an issue. I just started asking him to do apps, games, drills now every day to get moving on this. Concepts, I don't know. He seems to want to do things his own way instead of sticking to a base 10 system. Like what is 8% of 20 - instead of either converting to a decimal and multiplying, or thinking 8% of 10 is 8 so it's 16, he somehow figured out what's 8% of 25 and counted back. Meanwhile I have no idea what he's doing b/c I always have to tell him to show his work. He doesn't want to b/c he's got his own weird way. That is great - if he can do the work in his own way (albeit inefficient), I think it means he actually understands it. The standard algorithms are more efficient, but I think this is a better problem than someone who uses the algorithm but doesn't know what it means. Emily 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ElizabethB Posted April 22, 2015 Share Posted April 22, 2015 :grouphug: Graph paper to help line up work. Daily, fill out this matrix then use it for that day's math. Either he will eventually learn them or he will get really good at making the table and be able to make and use the table on his own. http://donpotter.net/PDF/multiplication-matrix.pdf Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OneStepAtATime Posted April 22, 2015 Share Posted April 22, 2015 :grouphug: Graph paper to help line up work. Daily, fill out this matrix then use it for that day's math. Either he will eventually learn them or he will get really good at making the table and be able to make and use the table on his own. http://donpotter.net/PDF/multiplication-matrix.pdf We do this. The kids make a multiplication table. At first it took quite a bit of time. Eventually they were able to remember the pattern so it is much easier to create now and they can use it during math lessons. FWIW, I have a friend who is a nurse. She always had trouble with math facts. She said she passed tests because she worked really, really hard to get great at skip counting. As soon as a test started she would write out the tables by skip counting on whatever she had available then use that as her reference while doing the actual math. It freed up her working memory to actually understand and process the math problem. She did very well on tests and has done very well as a nurse. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
summerreading Posted April 23, 2015 Author Share Posted April 23, 2015 :grouphug: Graph paper to help line up work. Daily, fill out this matrix then use it for that day's math. Either he will eventually learn them or he will get really good at making the table and be able to make and use the table on his own. http://donpotter.net/PDF/multiplication-matrix.pdf Thank you! This looks very helpful. I also just discovered Lattice Multiplication on Khan Academy after seeing his tutor doing it. I think these things will help a lot. I guess Mom is just old school :) 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OneStepAtATime Posted April 23, 2015 Share Posted April 23, 2015 Oh, Lattice was a HUGE help here. DD could not do long multiplication. It didn't make sense to her, it confused her terribly and she hated every minute of it. Once a teacher showed her Lattice it was like night and day. She understands place value better, she can do looooong multiplication without much effort, etc. It was a total game changer here. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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