Can your grade 7 student?

[Ausmumof3]

Reliably use the algorithms to calculate more complicated problems involving long division, multiplication with decimals, subtraction with decimals.  I ran some stuff by mine yesterday and he struggled with some of it which took my by surprise.  We’ve finished Singapore standards right through the end of 6 and he appeared to know all of it at the time but it’s like everything fell out of his head this year.

we are working through math mammoth 7 but it’s more pre algebra / algebra focused. I’m not totally in love with it but it’s ok.  I’m just wondering if I should take a bit of time out to review that stuff yet again.

[Lori D.]

The Keys to Decimals series might be a handy supplement to use in addition to your "spine" math. We used parts of that workbook series, as well as the Keys to Fractions and Keys to Percents as supplement for math struggling DS#2 during grades 6-8, just to keep those concepts fresh for him. I had him do about 2 pages a day at a separate time to his spine math, and it took him about 10-15 minutes. Once it was clear he was solid in understanding the particular concept, we skipped the rest of that section and went to the next one -- in other words, don't feel you have to do every single problem and every single page. (:D

Edited May 2, 2019 by Lori D.

[Melissa in Australia]

 Boys in particular at around year 7 have brain rearranging happening. They have trouble accessing information for a while while this happens.  I cannot remember all the technical terminology for this and I am away from home for a few days so cannot look it all up.

i remember one of my older boys, at around age 12 telling me he felt that all his synapses  had snapped 

[Ausmumof3]

52 minutes ago, Melissa in Australia said:

 Boys in particular at around year 7 have brain rearranging happening. They have trouble accessing information for a while while this happens.  I cannot remember all the technical terminology for this and I am away from home for a few days so cannot look it all up.

i remember one of my older boys, at around age 12 telling me he felt that all his synapses  had snapped 

Lol... yes it definitely feels like that!  Which is partly why I think taking a break from algebra and forward progress to consolidate might be helpful.  But I need to figure out how to do it without kid feeling he’s been “put back”

[Arcadia]

1 hour ago, Melissa in Australia said:

i remember one of my older boys, at around age 12 telling me he felt that all his synapses  had snapped 

 

My kids have teenage fog when they have their puberty growth spurt. Mine just wanted to eat and sleep most of the time. They end up doing only two core subjects per year. 

37 minutes ago, Ausmumof3 said:

  But I need to figure out how to do it without kid feeling he’s been “put back”

 

Does he like puzzles? Would something like this link work? https://www.target.k12.mt.us/cms/lib7/MT01000812/Centricity/Domain/68/Pizzaz Bridge to Algebra.pdf

[Ausmumof3]

8 hours ago, Arcadia said:

 

My kids have teenage fog when they have their puberty growth spurt. Mine just wanted to eat and sleep most of the time. They end up doing only two core subjects per year. 

 

Does he like puzzles? Would something like this link work? https://www.target.k12.mt.us/cms/lib7/MT01000812/Centricity/Domain/68/Pizzaz Bridge to Algebra.pdf

That looks like a good resource.  He doesn’t love puzzles really mostly he loves fishing, football, building stuff, kicking around outside.  But that does look slightly more fun so we might have a go at it.

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

Mine is entering 7th.  We finished SM5, then did PreA, now we are in A.  He definitely was rusty on them at the end of PreA.  We did a quick brush-up, it did not take more than a few days for him to have them all down again.  

[Farrar]

Absolutely yes, they could at that age and they were not advanced math students. I think if they went a couple of months without doing any work with fractions, they might have needed a mild nudge to remember the four operations for more difficult fractions, but just a mild nudge. For some reason, even division with decimals, which is the one thing that's slightly tricky with decimals, is something they always seem to remember even without a nudge.

Edited May 3, 2019 by Farrar

[Crimson Wife]

My oldest actually repeated 6th because she had such bad puberty-related brain fog. We also switched away from Singapore DM to Lial's because she had ZERO retention of any algebra in DM 7-8.

When she came out the other side of puberty she wound up skipping 8th and starting dual enrollment at the local CC at not-quite-14.

[Meriwether]

Yes, my current 12 year can do those things. He has been doing well with applying them in Algebra. Until the last month or so. Now he is slower and will randomly forget odd things like how to multiply fractions sometimes. I do think it is spring fever or puberty or something, because he truly understands.

[kbutton]

One could, but he struggled with learning new, more abstract math. I say struggled loosely--he would work example problems that he'd never seen while covering up the answers and then fly through the concept, but two weeks later have ZERO recollection of doing so and no idea how to do them again. 

My other kiddo is doing fine with acquiring new pre-algebra and early algebra concepts but is forgetting stuff like how to change a fraction to a decimal. He is somewhat shaky on algorithms, but he's always been terrible at steps (concepts were always easier). The algorithms are there, just not efficient, but he's reverting back to partial quotient division. This seems to be kind of sudden, and he's definitely growing a lot and about to grow more. He's 11.5, but if he takes after his brother, he'll be on the slightly early side to go through his first really big growth spurt. 

[Ausmumof3]

On 5/5/2019 at 4:00 AM, square_25 said:

Could he do it without the algorithms? 

He can do a mental calculations often faster than me but he tends to get lost in the thought process sometimes and make mistakes.  

This is where I think more rote learning may have been beneficial for us in the early years.  I feel like those processes were fairly well automatic and mostly error free for me by the time I hit that age, not something I had to think about.  But maybe that’s just the kind of learner I was?  It’s hard to know.

[Ausmumof3]

On 5/4/2019 at 5:57 AM, Farrar said:

Absolutely yes, they could at that age and they were not advanced math students. I think if they went a couple of months without doing any work with fractions, they might have needed a mild nudge to remember the four operations for more difficult fractions, but just a mild nudge. For some reason, even division with decimals, which is the one thing that's slightly tricky with decimals, is something they always seem to remember even without a nudge.

Interesting that you mention the break thing.  We’ve had summer break (6 weeks) then launched into AOPS algebra which wasn’t super successful.  After I’d explained the same exponent laws for like the fifth time in about week 6 of term 1 I decided it wasn’t working and moved to using math mammoth which we had stashed.  This is definitely better pacing but I am finding a few irritating errors in it.  However it’s very much all algebra and not much arithmetic and just out of interest I threw a few problems at him.  The outcome wasn’t great.  I really would like to get to the point of these kind of calculations being and automatic error free process.  

[EKS]

I kept reviewing fractions, decimals, and percents for several years after my kids had officially finished arithmetic.  I'd just keep doing a bit of review along with your other work in math.  There's a reason why most people as adults have forgotten everything beyond the most basic elements of fractions, decimals, and percents.  It's because of the jump in abstraction coupled with far less review than you get with whole number concepts and operations.

[Mbelle]

My oldest had math spurts.  She did great for years, then 4th grade was a bit hard.  Then she did great again for a few years, then Alg 1 was hard.  I did use Key to Series when we hit those stumbling places. 

 

[Arcadia]

1 hour ago, Ausmumof3 said:

This is where I think more rote learning may have been beneficial for us in the early years.  I feel like those processes were fairly well automatic and mostly error free for me by the time I hit that age, not something I had to think about.  But maybe that’s just the kind of learner I was?  It’s hard to know.

 

DS14 compute mentally so fast as a young kid that it looks automatic to an outsider. DS13 reach close to automacy when he finished SM5B and started AoPS prealgebra.

My husband is slower than DS13 when it comes to mental math. He has automacy with multiplication and division because we were kids when small neighborhood shops owners and the farmers markets use either mental math or an abacus, and cash only was the norm. We also grew up with mixed units of yards and meters when buying cloth/linen, kati (weight), kg and lb when buying dry rations, so doing unit conversions in our heads was a regular affair. 

1 hour ago, Ausmumof3 said:

  I really would like to get to the point of these kind of calculations being an automatic error free process.  

 

When DS13 regress, I did not let him use a calculator for math. SAT has a no calculator portion for math so I have an “excuse” for making sure my kids can “survive” without a calculator. My husband would give random math problems in the car to pass time during traffic light stops. 

[Farrar]

3 hours ago, Ausmumof3 said:

I really would like to get to the point of these kind of calculations being and automatic error free process.  

I have one kid who will absolutely never be error free. He always makes some mistakes. It doesn't matter how well he understands it - he just is the sort of kid who is always going to make an error or two. I think the goal should be understanding and getting an "A" or "B" grade on a test of a sufficient number of them, not getting no errors at all.