AOPS Prealgebra implementation

[Amity]

We are going to be starting AOPS Prealgebra with my 9 yo soon. How has your family implemented this curriculum? We are not doing the online class because it goes past bedtime. :) We are planning to use the textbook, videos, and alcumus. Would you recommend purchasing the online book as well? My daughter can work problems independently, but she has never independently read and taught herself from a math text before. My husband and I are both comfortable with math and available to help, but she will need to do at least some or preferably most of the work independently due to time constraints. 

She was working through BA but asked to skip to prealgebra, and she passed the placement test. She has also done some Singapore and a bunch of other math stuff like contest problems, problems from a Russian book, etc.

[silver]

My 5th grader has been doing AoPS Pre-Algebra this last year. I set a timer for 40 minutes and when it goes off, he finishes up the problem he's working on, and then he's done for the day. He does at least one problem a day on Alcumus. I have Alcumus set to have him get his bars blue (instead of green) before moving him to the next topic.

I know my son well enough to know he will not read through the text fully. So when he's at the start of a section, I read any of the text before the problems to him. He does the problems. I look over his solution and share anything from the text solution that he may have missed. Once he's done with that, he goes through the exercises and I check his work after he's done. If he gets a problem wrong, I have him redo it. For the review section, he works all the normal review exercises, but in the challenge section, he does the even exercises independently, and I work with him on the odd ones.

Doing it this way, and with the timer, he gets done with a section in two days (one day on the intro/problems, one day on the exercises). Occasionally he can get through both problems and exercises in a single day, depending on the topic. The review problems (with the challenge section) take about 3-4 days the way we do it. 

[SoCal_Bear]

We went the route of Jousting Armadillos and then AOPS pre-algebra. My son decided to stop BA and wanted to go on to pre-algebra. It is not as text dense as AOPS. He knocked it out pretty quickly. It was useful for us as a transition to a text with no pictures and learning to read a text. It is also discovery method which is also similar to AOPS. So far, he has not really had a problem working through the text on his own. JA was also good training in writing out problems on paper (neatly!) and how to work out problems so that it is logical and legible. He liked Linus' sense of humor in the book. The JA book is pretty uncluttered. A big shift for him was that the expectation was that he should not be able to get 100% correct in AOPS and that making mistakes and going back and rethinking through was necessary. He is used to doing that in math circle, but not in his core math curricula. JA wasn't hard for him, so it was a pretty easy ramp into AOPS for my 9yo after that. Since time was on our side, I wanted to equip him with the tools I thought he would have to rely on to handle AOPS PA. 

He watches the videos after he works the problem sets. I actually am not sure how much he does on Alcumus. He pretty much works through a section a day. Sometimes we will split a section that has more material and problems into two days. I usually tell him to set a timer for 45 minutes for those sections and for when he is working through the review and challenge sections. With the starred problems, he will ask for help. Usually I ask him first if he gave it a try and if so, what did he try so that we can talk about his dialogue. Then I will ask questions about aspects of the problem that he may not have considered. I usually never tell him how to solve a problem. This is the approach I use in math circle so that the problem solving remains more self-directed and that he learns from mistakes he made as there are often useful things that can be discovered from going down different paths.

[SeaConquest]

Just now, calbear said:

We went the route of Jousting Armadillos and then AOPS pre-algebra. My son decided to stop BA and wanted to go on to pre-algebra. It is not as text dense as AOPS. He knocked it out pretty quickly. It was useful for us as a transition to a text with no pictures and learning to read a text. It is also discovery method which is also similar to AOPS. So far, he has not really had a problem working through the text on his own. JA was also good training in writing out problems on paper (neatly!) and how to work out problems so that it is logical and legible. He liked Linus' sense of humor in the book. The JA book is pretty uncluttered. A big shift for him was that the expectation was that he should not be able to get 100% correct in AOPS and that making mistakes and going back and rethinking through was necessary. He is used to doing that in math circle, but not in his core math curricula. JA wasn't hard for him, so it was a pretty easy ramp into AOPS for my 9yo after that. Since time was on our side, I wanted to equip him with the tools I thought he would have to rely on to handle AOPS PA. 

I am so impressed that your DS actually writes out the problems. I am hoping for an AoPS PA miracle over here. Sacha still does everything in his head (and this doesn't always end well with more challenging problems)! 

[Porridge]

DD9 has been able to work through it on her own. It was a little bumpy the first week, but she developed a rhythm that has worked. WE do not use the online textbook, mainly because we both prefer paper texts. She usually reads the problems, attempts them, and reads the explanations on day 1. The next day, she does the exercises. I check the exercises when she's done. If she has missed any, we go over those problems together. We forget to watch the videos, though when we remember she thinks they are funny.  IF your child has never read and taught themselves from a math text before, it may be a jump for them, as the text of AOPS can be dense. You may want to expect to need to sit side by side with her for awhile to see how she adapts adn help her learn how to do that.

[Cake and Pi]

My DS#1 started AoPS prealgebra this year at 9yo after finishing Beast 3-5.  At first I had him do it all independently, working for about 30-45 minutes per day.  He did the section problems, watched the videos, then did all the exercises, review, and challenge problems.  It really dragged on and he didn't enjoy it.  Then I switched things up and started reading the book to him and having him do the section problems on the white board with me.  I began writing out the exercises on e2 paper with the wordings changed so that the questions fit in the BA universe.  He liked the exercises presented in worksheet format a lot better.  Then he discovered Alcumus and decided he preferred it  to doing the regular exercises for each section (he still had to do the challenge problems from the book).   

When he still wasn't loving math, I decided to ease off of AoPS pre-a and have him rotate through Jacobs Mathematics a Human Endeavor and  Picciotto Algebra with just a little bit of AoPS every now and then.  We focused on Picciotto for most of this semester, finishing all but the last few chapters.  However, he only completed the first 4 chapters in AoPS pre-a all this year.

He just started the AoPS online prealgebra 1 class.  So far he really likes it.  He's tickled pink that he's 8 weeks ahead in Alcumus, lol.  I'm anxious to see how he likes the class once they get to the chapters he hasn't done on his own already.

2 hours ago, SeaConquest said:

I am so impressed that your DS actually writes out the problems. I am hoping for an AoPS PA miracle over here. Sacha still does everything in his head (and this doesn't always end well with more challenging problems)! 

Agree, and same with my DS#1.  He totally won't write the questions.  He's getting a little better about writing out some of the steps to the solutions now, but he took a long break from AoPS prealgebra to work on Picciotto algebra.  I'm not sure if I should credit the other math programs or if it's just time and increased maturity.

 

[silver]

14 hours ago, SeaConquest said:

I am so impressed that your DS actually writes out the problems. I am hoping for an AoPS PA miracle over here. Sacha still does everything in his head (and this doesn't always end well with more challenging problems)! 

I figure learning this is part of the purpose of PreA. My son isn't 100% there yet, but he's gotten a lot better, mostly because he's made enough mistakes from not writing things down (or being sloppy about it), and he's leaned from experience that it's better to go over the work to find the mistake than to do the whole thing over again.

[SanDiegoMom]

On 5/16/2018 at 9:26 PM, SeaConquest said:

I am so impressed that your DS actually writes out the problems. I am hoping for an AoPS PA miracle over here. Sacha still does everything in his head (and this doesn't always end well with more challenging problems)! 

 

Mine started early so I didn't sweat the handwriting or showing work too much -- I even scribed sometimes for him when he was needing the emotional support. So Pre-A was a bit of a mess, Algebra got a little better, and now he's writing out solutions for the online class and regularly getting perfect scores for style.   

My daughter is doing PreA now and boy is it a mess. We are slowly working towards it but I am expecting it won't be until Algebra that it gets better. 

[Porridge]

I told my DD, don't worry about killing trees. She didn't want to "waste" paper. I told we could offset her carbon footprint in other ways ?

[SeaConquest]

2 hours ago, SanDiegoMom in VA said:

 

Mine started early so I didn't sweat the handwriting or showing work too much -- I even scribed sometimes for him when he was needing the emotional support. So Pre-A was a bit of a mess, Algebra got a little better, and now he's writing out solutions for the online class and regularly getting perfect scores for style.   

My daughter is doing PreA now and boy is it a mess. We are slowly working towards it but I am expecting it won't be until Algebra that it gets better. 

 

Thank you for this. It is encouraging. We are working in the factoring square roots section of BA5D right now, and he's still trying to hold all the factors in his head. It doesn't help that he pretty much types of all his assignments in his online classes now, so he really doesn't get much practice in the way of handwriting.

[Amity]

Thank you all so much for sharing your insight and experience. I think it's great that kids this age are working on reading math texts independently. I don't remember doing this myself until high school, and I think I was in college before I could do it properly.

My daughter has been doing a lot of math on the white board recently, which has helped with the not writing things down problem. At some point she'll need to switch back to working everything out on paper, or learn to copy down what she's done on the white board.

[SoCal_Bear]

Amity,

Have you considered using eraseable pen? Sometimes that makes a difference because using a pen is less taxing than pencil on paper. I really like the Frixon ones.

 

[alewife]

AoPS pre-algebra wasn't around for my older two, but my now soon to be high school senior (Yikes! Where has the time gone?) worked though the pre-algebra book when she was 9 after completing  Singapore 6B.(BA wasn't available back then, either) 

She did not work through the book independently: I would guide her through each new topic, while she worked the problems out on our whiteboard.  She would then work through the section exercises on her own.  I don't think Alcumus had pre-algebra at that time, but if it did, we didn't use it.  There were plenty of practice problems in the textbook.

[Amity]

9 hours ago, calbear said:

Amity,

Have you considered using eraseable pen? Sometimes that makes a difference because using a pen is less taxing than pencil on paper. I really like the Frixon ones.

 

Yes, she likes those too and has them in multiple colors! ? She used to use them for math but got away from it for some reason. I'll suggest she try that again.

[Amity]

3 hours ago, alewife said:

AoPS pre-algebra wasn't around for my older two, but my now soon to be high school senior (Yikes! Where has the time gone?) worked though the pre-algebra book when she was 9 after completing  Singapore 6B.(BA wasn't available back then, either) 

She did not work through the book independently: I would guide her through each new topic, while she worked the problems out on our whiteboard.  She would then work through the section exercises on her own.  I don't think Alcumus had pre-algebra at that time, but if it did, we didn't use it.  There were plenty of practice problems in the textbook.

Thanks! Sounds like an approach that would work well here. What math is your oldest working on now? 

[alewife]

13 minutes ago, Amity said:

Thanks! Sounds like an approach that would work well here. What math is your oldest working on now? 

My oldest homeschool grad is finishing up his junior year as a math and computer science major at MIT.   I am not sure what math classes he took this year.  The only thing I am sure of is that I would have no idea how to do any of it. ?  I used the same approach in math with him as I used with my D.