Walk me through DOwens math parent grading, please

[Penguin]

I am leaning toward Derek Owens Precalc next year with the parental grading option. What does that look like? Would I pay for a month and get one syllabus-month worth of answer keys? If we deviate from the schedule, we will go through the course slower than the syllabus.

 

And I am trying to decide if I should buy a solutions manual.

 

 

[Julie of KY]

I do parent grading (and have for a couple of courses). When I sign up, I say I want the half-price option and grade it myself.

 

I get invoiced monthly for half the listed price. My son watches the videos online. I buy the DO notebook for him to take notes in. We print the syllabus from online so we have a guide to how much is reasonable per week. When I sign up, I get emailed a file of ALL the solutions to all the homework and tests. I then grade everything myself. My son goes at faster than scheduled pace so it takes us less than a school-year. A few of the weeks on the syllabus are review and a full week for the test. My son does about one day of review and one day for the semester test so he can knock those two weeks out in two days. Also, I think it is scheduled over 32 weeks so you have an extra month in a traditional 36 week schoolyear.

 

No need for any solution manual assuming you understand the math. The textbook has answers. The  DO homework/test solutions are all complete solutions worked out for you. To be able to self-grade, you do need to understand it well enough that if you student is making mistakes, then you know where the mistake is and how to correct it.

 

Edited to say if this arrangement doesn't work for you, you can have just paid for the months you tried it and then bail and do anything else.

Edited April 4, 2017 by Julie of KY

[Penguin]

Julie, that sounds perfect and better than I expected. Thank you so much. I understand the math perfectly well, I am just tired of being in charge of math :)

Edited April 4, 2017 by Penguin

[Julie of KY]

Yes. I was basically in the same boat. I taught my oldest just fine through all of AoPS, but my second needed someone else to be the primary teacher. We were just butting heads too much. Now he can watch DO lectures, do the work and then have me grade it and explain anything he's missing. I've told him that next year we will do a little of the AoPS Precalc book alongside DO Calculus, not that I didn't think DO Precalc was great, but I really like how the AoPS precalc book does certain things (it just feels so much like my engineering courses).

[Penguin]

Julie, I was also an engineering major. My problem is that I assign too many problems and too few tests. And I send us down a few too many rabbit trails. I want less decision making power now :)

[Julie of KY]

... by the way, I felt like DO assigned too many practice problems from the textbook. I would let me son skip many of the easy ones as long as he could do the hard ones. He had to do all of the worksheet homework and tests that were written by DO.

 

[OnMyOwn]

Our experience has been similar to Julie's except that I did need the solutions manual for the textbook when we started precalculus.  We did all the problems in algebra 2 but have felt there were sometimes more problems than needed in precalculus, so we have just been doing the textbook problems and skipping the homework sheets at this level, but maybe we should have done the opposite?  Honestly, the reason we started skipping the homework sheets was that we got so wrapped up in the textbook problems I forgot we were supposed to do them for a few chapters.  My dd still did well on the tests, so I figured there was enough practice in the book for her.

[TarynB]

Our experience has been similar to Julie's except that I did need the solutions manual for the textbook when we started precalculus. We did all the problems in algebra 2 but have felt there were sometimes more problems than needed in precalculus, so we have just been doing the textbook problems and skipping the homework sheets at this level, but maybe we should have done the opposite? Honestly, the reason we started skipping the homework sheets was that we got so wrapped up in the textbook problems I forgot we were supposed to do them for a few chapters. My dd still did well on the tests, so I figured there was enough practice in the book for her.

FWIW, we're not doing the parent-graded option, instead opting to have DO do the grading (currently in DO geometry, having also used DO prealg and DO alg 1 previously), but we view the separate homework sheets - which is what we send in for grading - as quizzes. DS has found that the homework sheets/"quizzes" tend to more closely resemble the problems on the tests, as opposed to the "practice problems" from the text, which are not sent in for grading. Which makes sense to me because DO creates the homework sheets himself, as well as the tests.

 

But since your DD is doing well on the tests, it must not be an issue for her! :)

Edited April 4, 2017 by TarynB

[Penguin]

I have one more question, if someone can help me out.

 

How calculator dependent is the course? 

[Julie of KY]

 We did all the problems in algebra 2 but have felt there were sometimes more problems than needed in precalculus, so we have just been doing the textbook problems and skipping the homework sheets at this level, but maybe we should have done the opposite?  

 

No experience with algebra 2, but for precalculus if I had to pick I'd do less of the textbook problems and all of the "homework" problems. A lot of the textbook becomes rote, but Derek Owen's homework sheets cover everything well (and better in my opinion). DO homework is not enough by itself as you do need more practice.

[Julie of KY]

I have one more question, if someone can help me out.

 

How calculator dependent is the course? 

 

It's a good mix of some calculator and mostly good math logic. Calculators are used for pesky decimal math as well as trig functions such as sin 57 degrees, but I'd say the focus is not calculator math at all.

 

I'm a fan of learning math without calculators and I think Derek Owens is very reasonable in calculator usage. Granted, it's not AoPS which is definitely written to be done without a calculator.