Transition from S.M to AOPS Pre-Algebra

[mrsfellman]

Hi all! My oldest is starting into 6th grade this year. I am trying to plan out not so much this year but how that will transfer down the road to where we want to end up in high school. Currently he is working in SM Standards Edition 5A. We may be a little behind due to our tranisition from a private school in 4th grade to a short 6 wks in the "public school online" world to me pulling him back into purely "homeschooled". 🙂 I have been working towards finishing 6A with him by the end of sixth grade. I know I would like to transition him to AOPS Pre-Algebra down the road. What I haven't figured out is if there is something I need to do with him between finishing SM 6B and starting AOPS Pre-Algebra. I also plan to have him take that through WTMA online. 

Has anyone on here done this transition before? Any thing I should be including? If not can I have him do 5A/5B for 6th grade, 6A/6B for 7th and then Pre-Algebra for 8th or is that putting him behind?

Thanks!

[The Governess]

How strong is he in math? Dd went from singapore 5B into AoPS pre-Algebra and it was a smooth transition. AoPS was more challenging for her but it was because of the discovery format which she wasn’t so fond of. I would recommend using the Singapore word problem texts if you aren’t already.

[mrsfellman]

1 hour ago, lovelearnandlive said:

How strong is he in math? Dd went from singapore 5B into AoPS pre-Algebra and it was a smooth transition. AoPS was more challenging for her but it was because of the discovery format which she wasn’t so fond of. I would recommend using the Singapore word problem texts if you aren’t already.

He has always grasped Math well. He has also done some playing around with Beast Academy Online but we kept SM as our official curriculum. We haven't been doing the extra Word Problem book this last year. But I can add that back in. 

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

I've now transitioned my second child from SM to AOPS PA.  Here is what we did:

- First, we went straight from SM 5B to AOPS PA.  This has not been a problem with either of my two kids who have switched.  You will need to do some spontaneous teaching/review/reinforcement of negative numbers and powers if you choose to do it this way.  If you are not comfortable with that, doing 6A and B might be a better option.

- Starting in 5A, I had my kids switch to using a spiral bound notebook and copying the problems from the SM workbooks into the spiral and then doing them there.  That gave us a full math year to get good at copying problems carefully, formatting a page, boxing answers, etc.   

- We have not done any of the extra SM books, but we did all workbook problems and all practice and review pages from the textbooks.  

- I still sit with them for AOPS.  My oldest in now in AOPS geometry and my second is in AOPS PA.  My oldest needs to ask me 1-2 questions per lesson, max.  My younger asks me questions more often, but unlike SM, I am no longer teaching a lesson, just coaching the more difficult problems.  We've chosen not to do the Challenging problems at the end of the chapters.  I have mixed feelings about this, but ultimately I decided I didn't want to spend a full extra week per chapter, which I think it what it would have taken for many of the chapters.  I may still have my oldest go through and do the challenging algebra problems because geometry is really going fast, but I'm waiting to get AOPS Advanced Algebra first to see how much review is in it already.  

 

Transition to AOPS from SM has gone really smoothly here.  It's interesting to see how my two different kids have approached it, and where the stumbling blocks are for each.  The AOPS books are truly amazing.  Let me know if you have more specific questions.  

Edited July 11, 2020 by Monica_in_Switzerland

[Clemsondana]

Neither of my kids found that Singapore 6 took an entire year.  My older did it in a semester, although he doubled up on easy days to make that happen.  My younger worked at the regular pace and had a month left at the end of each semester, which we used for some Life of Fred fractions practice.  

There is nothing that you need to do between Singapore 6 and pre-A - it's what math comes next.  Pre-A in 8th, with Alg  in 9th, geometry and alg. 2 in 10th and 11th,and precal or statistics in 12th isn't an unusual sequence - of course, there will be kids who get through calc in high school, but it's not necessary unless your student needs it to apply to more competitive colleges. 

I will caution that AoPS is a very challenging program. I am using it with my older kid, who got to the pre-A books early.  We took 1.5 years each for pre-A and A.  A lot of this was due to age and frustration tolerance - we have moved through later books at the expected pace.  I am not planning to use AoPS for my younger child.  My older talks about jobs that will involve a lot of problem solving - cryptography, different types of engineering - while if my younger uses math it will be as a tool (perhaps calculating a dose in medicine, or profits in a business), so I going for 'effective' without the extra challenge.  And, since the post above mine came in while I was typing, whether you choose to do the challenge problems will make a huge difference.  We had read that, to get the full benefit of the program, you should do them all.  I'm guessing that was a large part of why we moved slowly - we were not going to spend 2+ hours a day on math.  Now we do a selection of challenge problems and definitely not all of the end-of-chapter ones.  

Edited July 11, 2020 by ClemsonDana

[daijobu]

We used SM U.S. edition, through Level 5B and like the PPs we made the transition to AoPS prealgebra seamlessly.