On 10 yo's and Algebra

[Storm Bay]

Hi all,

My 9 yo is interested in getting to Algebra, and I seem to recall that some kids went to Algebra after SM 5A. Is this correct, or was that Pre-Algebra? She'll be 10 in the spring. She got excited about the prospect while watching the sample DVD's I got for Chalk Dust and VideoText for my eldest.

 

I'm having her do the old Saxon placement tests I got when we first started homeschooling and we were going to use Saxon because it was in the first edition of WTM (and my eldest did 3 levels of it, but my second only part of Saxon 1) to see if she'd fit their criteria, but I won't get Saxon.

 

If you've done this, how has it worked for you? Should I have her continue with SM 5B if she does this? We already have the workbook for her, lol. I wasn't really planning to cross this bridge yet, and she still has to learn negative numbers. That could be handled. There's no way she's ready for Gelfand's and all those long problems. We already own TT (too easy for my eldest and we did not get the DVDs) and a used edition of Lial's, but she'll need a teacher and our Lial's doesn't come with one. Could she do the Chalk Dust or VideoText? Someone mentioned Uncle Dan's Algebra the other day, but it doesn't look very comprehensive. Any other choices? I'd prefer not to teach the Algebra myself, even though she doesnt fight with my methods the way my eldest does.

 

This is for anyone, but if you're here, Mrs. Ives, please chime in if you have the time.

[Stirsmommy]

My dd started alg I when she was almost 11.. We used TT as it is a conversational style that works for her. I believe they have a placement test as well.

Melissa

[Debra in CO]

Okay, a year ago I was pretty much in your shoes. My then 9 year old son had finished 5A, and was beginning 5B. He wanted to start Algebra. I was resisting. He finished up 5B about the time he turned 10 (May 1). I had him start 6A. He was about halfway through when I attended our state homeschool convention. I heard Tom Clark speak (VideoText) on the first day, and went to sit through a thing at the VT booth the second day. I decided to bring my son on Saturday, and he sat through the presentation at VT as well, and he just begged to be able to start that.

 

So - we've been alternating VT lessons and Singapore. I did take a couple days to make sure he got the concept of negative numbers, and I talked through some other things with him too - things like 3(5) is the same as 3*5 is the same as 3x5. I'm thinking there were a couple other concepts we covered before we jumped into VT.

 

How have things gone? Great. He is enjoying VT, and I'm keeping it going fairly slow by making him finish off Singapore as well. I think the pace has been terrific. We started VT in August (and started 6B at the same time). We take off November & December. Right now, he is a couple weeks shy of finishing Module A and 6B. My "goal" was to take about five months per module, though that is certainly subject to change as we go.

 

I plan to have him work through Module B and probably Module C, and then work in NEM1.

 

Debra

Mom to five, ages 1-10

[Pam "SFSOM" in TN]

Hi all,

My 9 yo is interested in getting to Algebra, and I seem to recall that some kids went to Algebra after SM 5A. Is this correct, or was that Pre-Algebra? She'll be 10 in the spring. She got excited about the prospect while watching the sample DVD's I got for Chalk Dust and VideoText for my eldest.

 

I'm having her do the old Saxon placement tests I got when we first started homeschooling and we were going to use Saxon because it was in the first edition of WTM (and my eldest did 3 levels of it, but my second only part of Saxon 1) to see if she'd fit their criteria, but I won't get Saxon.

 

If you've done this, how has it worked for you? Should I have her continue with SM 5B if she does this? We already have the workbook for her, lol. I wasn't really planning to cross this bridge yet, and she still has to learn negative numbers. That could be handled. There's no way she's ready for Gelfand's and all those long problems. We already own TT (too easy for my eldest and we did not get the DVDs) and a used edition of Lial's, but she'll need a teacher and our Lial's doesn't come with one. Could she do the Chalk Dust or VideoText? Someone mentioned Uncle Dan's Algebra the other day, but it doesn't look very comprehensive. Any other choices? I'd prefer not to teach the Algebra myself, even though she doesnt fight with my methods the way my eldest does.

 

This is for anyone, but if you're here, Mrs. Ives, please chime in if you have the time.

 

I'll tell ya, I'd simply move on through SM and add in Challenging Word Problems. It moves them systematically into algebraic thinking without introducing them to the abstraction of symbols. It will solidify their problem-solving like nothing else that I've seen (or rather, let's be honest, that I'm capable of teaching), and she won't be tempted to learn the formulas to "plug and chug" the answers without solid and deep understanding of the principles involved.

 

By the time dd was in 6A, she was beating her brother (then in precalc) to the answers in CWP by drawing them out while he did them with traditional algebra. And he's no slouch mathematically (800 SAT math, accelerated college math sequence, etc). He was very impressed and wishes he had her background.

[EKS]

My son had finished 5B as well as MUS Zeta by the end of 4th grade. We did the first half of Jacobs algebra in 5th grade (10 yo exactly at the beginning). Things fell apart when we moved into the second half at the beginning of this year. He had a fit about showing his work, and besides that he seemed to be forgetting arithmetic too.

 

So we did Saxon 8/7 for three months, then he did Module A of VideoText (enough for me to realize that he needed to be in algebra, but algebra that was not VideoText). So we went back to Jacobs. We are starting over. He is flying through the lessons, working independently (this is huge for him).

 

I don't know why things are so different 4 months later. Something clicked.

 

Anyway, if you are able to find a good program that works well for your daughter, and you think that she is mature enough to deal with showing her work, and she is enthusiastic about it, it would probably work. For my son, in hindsight I see he could have used an extra year to mature and also get more practice with arithmetic. I guess that's what prealgebra is for.

[freethinkermom]

My son just turned 11 this week and is about 1/3 of the way through Kinetic Algebra 1. We did SM through 5A, then he studied math on his own for a couple of months watching the Standard Devients Pre-Algebra videos on Cosmeo.com.

[Myrtle]

As Andre Toom recommended to someone, you don't want your G&T 10 year old in a program designed for dull 14 year olds, you want him in a program designed for bright 10 year olds. By simply accelerating your child through the same ole same old, you arrive at the same destination as anyone else, engineering calculus. Your child will not have benefitted from this education in any way that is different from simply going through it at the normal pace. By the time that your bright child is 20 and my average child is 20 they both will have ended up with exactly the same math education and classes.

 

What I mean by "dull" 14 year olds is that any math program designed for students who need black and white dots to "see" negative integers is not catering to the same intellect or math background as one that develops the concept of the negatives based on their formal definition (that of the additive inverse) that you would see in a rigorous program.

 

Arguably acclerating a child might even in fact result in him not getting as much out of the program as if he had waited another couple of years and were able to handle a more rigorous algebra program such as Foerster's or Doliciani. There are ten and twelve year olds that really can handle that level of abstraction and don't need watered down, visual analogies to "explain" algebra (and these illustrations are not explanations in any mathematical sense of the word).

 

One option for a child that has finished a normal arithmetic program on the early side is to work in arithmetic programs designed for bright 10 year old students by supplementing with something like Art of Problem Solving (which teaches that level of abstraction that is needed for rigorous math), Singapore Challenging Word Problems, Math Olympiad problems, or

Russian arithmetic, or Mathematical Circles designed for bright middle school and junior high students.

 

I am very glad that we waited what amounted to about six months or a year after my son finished his arithmetic program to work on these other things. He is in a program that is teaching him how to prove theorems in algebra. Some of the theorems that he has proved are that the additive and multiplicative inverses are unique as well as other simple proofs such as the null set is subset of every set, that negative one is not a positive number (and although that sounds lame he did it with Beckenbach's ordering axioms) he can use field axioms to prove why multiplying two negatives is a positive, etc. As a result of using these axioms in proofs he can quickly recite the field axioms and as of a few weeks ago the defintion of a group, and with the ordering axioms he knows the definition of an ordered field. He is also able to handle Gelfand's problems as well. Had I stayed in Jacob's, which I seriously considered, I would now be in a position of having to chose yet another watered down geometry program since he'd be no better equipped to handle either abstraction or rigor. I have also begun to notice that he is able to understand mathematical prose in a way that he couldn't before and can read expository text with less assistance. In other words, he doesn't need it explained in hueristic terms by a third party since he's being explicitly taught formal mathematical justification and the correct vocabulary in order to understand it on his own.

 

Not being able to solve all of Gelfand's problems is not necessarily a sign of failure or immaturity on the part of the student. If you follow how the Russian mathematicians teach algebra to kids they give the kids some extremely hard problems that they don't expect anyone with less than a genius IQ to solve. We were told by Andre Toom that it wasn't reasonable to expect anyone under the age of 12 to do these problems, that a bright 12 year old could work on them, but that it was certainly reasonable to expect the average 14 year old to do them. Even so, unlike an American math program, these problems are not all easy and the author doesn't even expect that the average student will get them all. In similar programs, the author of Mathematical Circles, says that in his experience working with G&T middle school students the entire class as a whole can only solve less than 20% of those kinds of problems.

 

It is through the attempt to solve the problem that the growth occurs, but this presumes that the child is really dedicating himself to trying to figure it out, or in other words, is motivated on his own and not by a parent.

[Nissi]

Here's what worked for us: Once ds. completed Singapore 5A/5B we moved on to Lial's Basic College Math followed by Foerster's Algebra 1 which he has completed at age 12. Of late he has gotten involved in Math Counts which he really enjoys. Math Olympiad is great for younger children.

HTH!

Nissi

[Krista in LA]

I got the Keys to Algebra books for her. She would do her Singapore 6 math 3x/week and the Keys to books 2x. They were simple and introduced the negative numbers right off the bat. She loved that she was doing Algebra. The other nice thing is that they are inexpensive. She has since moved on to Jacobs' and is doing well in it.

[Storm Bay]

Thanks for all these replies. We did more of the placement testing, and I've decided that she should spend a good six months solidifying fractions (she had them down cold, took a break, and that was her downfall, even though her marks passed to move up. No point if it's one plain area of weakness, especially fractions.)

 

I'm leaning toward's Myrtle's reasoning on this at the moment and am going to focus on word problems until the money starts coming in again in the warmer months and I can buy more books. Dd has no difficulty visualizing math, but as soon as she got to a different way of wording word problems(Saxon's on the test) as compared with SM, she slowed right down. I'm also excited because knowing my kids don't have to get these tough problems all right now is part of the learning will help my 12 yo who was so frustrated with Gelfand's more difficult problems when she was 11. I don't think the traditional Algebra programs have helped her thinking skills as much as I'd like, although she has certainly learned something. It was just so fun to see my 9 yo get excited about Algebra. She was also excited about the VideoText Geometry, but she's not nearly ready to do proofs!

 

I was a gifted child and there was no challenge to the Algebra in high school. There was no good math program for kids like me, and many of us were totally turned off math before we got to the fun stuff.