Scheduling/Ordering lessons in AOPS Pre-Algebra

[jwoodbri]

My son, 11, is just starting AOPS Pre-Algebra and I was going to have him try out alcumus and the online videos. What order do you have your kids complete them in? Lesson in book, video, and then alcumus?

 

Also do you have them work through one section a day as long as they aren't struggling? I haven't been able to wrap my head around how to make it work yet.

 

Thanks!

 

[Julie of KY]

If not struggling, we do one section per day. I sit down with my student and work through the teaching exercises together and then have my student do the exercise on his/her own. My daughter - I'm actually sitting with her as she does the exercises as well. Generally we do the review problems over several days.

 

Videos - I often do the videos alongside the teaching sections. Sometimes we never do the videos. Other days - just videos and alcumus if mom doesn't have time to teach.

 

Alcumus - I generally run this about a chapter behind where we are in the book and use it for review. It is hard to do it concurrently with the same chapter as alcumus intermittanly throws in really hard problems the student is simply not ready for. We don't do alcumus every day.

 

There is not a right or wrong way to do this. My gifted math student never did any videos.

[jwoodbri]

That sounds like a good way to do things. I'll give that a try. My son just turned 11 and I'm worried he may end up struggling but I figure if I work with him and find a good pace he should be ok.

 

Thank you!

[dancingmama]

My daughter does at least an hour a day of the book. If she runs into a problem, or doesn't get something, she'll watch the video. Sometimes I'll work problems with her. Sometimes she explains to me how it's done. She'll play on alcumus as she feels ready/wants to, usually when she's not quite ready to move on or before a review section.

[Targhee]

We did Problems and solutions one day, videos and exercises the second day.  If there was a particularly long section or many challenge problems we would add time.

 

ETA: Alcumus was extra in PreA, as in I didn't require it.

Edited September 3, 2016 by Targhee

[hellen]

My son also did about one section per day. Occasionally he did it over two. The chapter review question were usually scheduled over two days because there were so many. The challenge problems were one or two days depending on how many there were.

 

Alcumus was general review once the book was about half done. He does it a couple of times per week for 20 minutes.

[musicianmom]

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Edited May 21, 2022 by musicianmom

[Dinsfamily]

We did Problems and solutions one day, videos and exercises the second day. If there was a particularly long section or many challenge problems we would add time.

 

ETA: Alcumus was extra in PreA, as in I didn't require it.

This is how I scheduled it but DS12 was able to get a whole section done most days. He worked hard to do that so he could have extra time for the review/challenge sections. I'd schedule 3-4 days for those combined but some of those challenge problems were doozies and it took longer than scheduled. Even so, he ended up finishing the book 2 months earlier than planned. I liked that schedule because he never felt rushed or stressed by the workload.

 

After he finished, we casually worked on Alcumus and he's finishing Pre-A alcumus while working on intro to Algebra this year.

 

Ds only watched about 5 videos the whole year. He likes them but doesn't need them and he doesn't like to take the time. I might try to have them set up on the iPad for him each day once we get past the review in Intro to Algebra to encourage him to watch them this year.