Foerster Math Sequence

[kokotg]

For people who have done Foersters and then gone on to Calculus: did you do the Algebra and Trig book followed by Pre-Calculus (this is for a kid who did Jacobs Algebra and is just finishing Jacobs Geometry)? DH is looking through the books now, and finding lots of overlap between the two (but not enough trig in the first book to take him straight into calculus). My oldest did kind of a compressed version (in one year plus a summer) of the two books, with DH going through and telling him which things to include and which to skip, but it left some gaps that had to be filled in as he's done calculus--which has been fine, but I'm wondering if there's a more organized way to do this. Are the books meant to be completed one after the other? Is the repetition intentional to really cement the concepts?

[RootAnn]

Note: My oldest is only in pre-calc this year.

Foerster himself said to skip the trig parts of his Alg/Trig book & just do all of his PreCalc book.

DD#1 did his Alg/Trig book (all the chapters, but not necessarily all of the sections of all of the chapters). It was a good intro to trig, but not enough to cement things for her. My kids need a lot of spiral review, so the return to all those topics in more depth this year in PreCalc was helpful. I personally did not like Foerster's PreCalc book, so we went in a different direction. I would do it again this way if any of my other kids use Foerster.

Several online schools (Kolbe, Veritas Press, and Homeschool Connections) offer Algebra 2 classes using Foerster's Alg/Trig book. VP uses it over two years - the first year being Alg 2 & the second being Trig/Pre-Calc. Kolbe doesn't covers different amounts of the book depending on if you take their regular or honors Alg 2. They use Foerster's PreCalc book in their PreCalc class & Foerster's Calc book in their AP Calc class. (If you want to spend the $50 each, their course plans would lay out exactly which chapters & problems to do in each.) Homeschool Connections covers all the chapters of the Alg/Trig book, but not all the sections of each chapter. Their only PreCalc class is based on Saxon, though, so I don't know what their non-Saxon kids do . . . 

[Penelope]

We did the algebra and trig book, including most of the topics in the trig chapters. We switched to another book with an outside class for precalculus. There are some topics from the algebra 2 book that are covered again in precalc, but sometimes in more depth,  and others that are not. The trig from the algebra 2 book is not adequate to constitute a good trigonometry course, IMHO. For a student that is reasonably strong in math, I would not feel comfortable with courses that use the second half of the algebra and trig book over a second year and call it Precalc, or with using the entire book over one year and skipping precalc. I could see how one could cover algebra 2 and precalc over three semesters by going straight through and avoiding repetition, but I wouldn’t know how to do that with the Foerster books. Really, there is some repetition throughout high school with topics building on one another, algebra 2 reviewing and expounding on the algebra 1 year, so it makes sense to me from a mastery standpoint to introduce topics in one year and go more in depth in the next. 

[kokotg]

Okay, thanks--that all makes sense. We're thinking maybe he'll do the alg/trig book next year (or however much of it he gets through; if he doesn't finish the trig sections, we won't worry about it) and then switch to a different pre-calc the next year. DH (he teaches calculus at a public school, so I am totally uninvolved with math decisions at this level...except to ask questions for him here when needs me to :)) likes the Foerster alg/trig a lot, but isn't thrilled with pre-calc. He also doesn't like the pre-calc book HIS school is using now, but he still has a copy of the one they used a few years ago and might go with that. 

[8filltheheart]

I have finally settled into a pattern that works.  I am NOT a math person at all, but I have kids who are.  We do all of the alg 1 book. We skip chpt 10 in the alg 2 book, move on to chpt 11 and finish the yr through chpt 13. I have only had 1 use the precal book and that was with a tutor. I think the consensus is that it is not as good as the alg books.

For my younger kids, I have taken the approach of switching to Sullivan's precal book and using DO's lectures to supplement. It is an approach that worked well with my last Dd and it is what my next Dd will do next yr (we are finishing up alg 2/trig right now.) We don't use DO's materials or grading. Just the lectures. They just work through the Sullivan textbook and I have a SM. 

[Kendall]

I've done the Algebra/trig book through Chapter 12 for Algebra 2 and then The newer Foerster pre-calc and trigonometry book. I did this for 3 kids. I think I may try a different pre-calc book next year with my next two kids. The pre-calc book was quite graphing calculator heavy and the text more on the difficult side I think, and I need something else for the next two.

[Christa]

Can someone tell me if Saxon Algebra 1 and Foerster's Algebra 1 correlate?