Math beyond Beast Academy for my 2E girl

[Condessa]

My second dd is very bright and grasps the concept side of math well and quickly.  She also is dyslexic, possibly (undiagnosed) ADD, and has an extremely slow processing speed.  She also hates writing down her work.  So in math, she frequently struggles with keeping track of all of the pieces of harder questions.  She loves doing Beast Academy Online and learns well with it, but it takes her much longer than most of my other kids and often on the harder sections she struggles unless someone is constantly pushing her to write down her steps, so that each time she loses her line of thought she can look over what she has already done and pick up again from there instead of starting the question over and over again.

She is in BA 5, and I am wondering what math to use for prealgebra when she finishes in a few months.  I am stuck between wanting something that won't be super boring and easy conceptually for her, and wanting something that she can manage without having someone supporting to keep her on task and doing what she needs to keep track of the pieces.  I am concerned that it would be difficult to keep up with the homework load in an online class, since she takes twice as long or more to do the same work.  AOPS self-paced is a possibility, but it is very expensive to try out not knowing if she will wind up needing as much of my time as if I were just teaching her from the book.

ETA: I stopped typing to help a kid, and my four-year-old came along and posted for me.

Edited February 12, 2021 by Condessa

[Jackie]

I don’t have any great suggestions for you, but I will say that on days my DD forgets her ADHD medicine, solo AOPS work is a complete bust. The ability to think logically and stay on track is just not there unless she is being directly engaged by me or some other person. The online class format doesn’t work for her, probably in part because the meds are completely out of her system by the time the classes start and there’s no audio whatsoever, not even a chime or something when answers are pushed through to draw the kids’ attention back (she usually can manage online classes well even when unmedicated because of the interaction involved, but not these ones).

The workload of the classes is high compared to what my kid needed. She had been managing fine with the Intro to Algebra book using the online videos and Alcumus, with good understanding. She decided to switch to the online Algebra A class because she wanted the official grade to qualify for a program she was applying for. The total workload for the class was probably about 2-3 times what she had been doing (Alcumus, plus about 10 additional questions in the same style as Alcumus, plus one writing question each week). The lower amount of work that she had been doing was sufficient for her, and the higher amount therefore felt like busywork to her.

Shes been fairly independent since then. I sit with her while she does the initial learning from the book. She then goes to Alcumus until she masters every topic covered in that chapter. 

[kiwi mum]

We had a similar situation. No Dyslexia, but everything else you listed, plus Autism. Beast Academy didn't exist at that time, so we used other things and jumped into AOPS at Algebra.

Online courses were not an option for us due to budget constraints and time zone issues. We just used the books and that was perfect because he could go at his own pace. There is no need for you to teach it as it is written to the student. You have the benefit of time because of the age of the student so I would not worry about completing a book each year, just take it at her pace.

With the benefit of hindsight the one thing I would do differently is to look at medicating the ADD earlier. We didn't do meds until age 15 and I wish we had started them at around age 9. It would have made a huge difference. At the time I was concerned about labelling my kid, yet he had already been labelled by others as naughty for not paying attention. I was concerned about the meds changing his personality or making him a zombie, but his conclusion was "they help me be a better me'.

So my recommendation would be to look at diagnosis and treatment of the ADD and work at her own pace through the AOPS books

[Dmmetler]

FOr PA and Algebra, you can do the Alumcus videos, etc and book self-paced, and that might be worth trying. We never did an AoPS class in part because L sometimes needed almost no time to grasp a concept and sometimes needed much longer, and I was afraid that the time pressure of a class would be too much. That and I have bad memories of TeX in grad school, so the idea of having to teach a 3rd grader LaTeX was terrifying. 

[Cake and Pi]

We've had similar issues with my 2e DS 11. He has dyslexia, dysgraphia, ADHD, SPD, lower processing speed and working memory, etc. and finished BA 5 around this time last year. We've spend the last year bouncing around between various curricula. Long story, but we're still searching for the best fit. I don't really have advice, but I can share what we've tried so far.

He ended up doing Right Start level G immediately after BA 5 because he flipped through AoPS Prealgebra and just wasn't interested at the time. RS G and H together are pre-algebra, so that was my original plan. RS G turned out to include quite a bit of review after BA 5 (and public school 6th grade math before that), but it had enough new geometry concepts and an approach (drawing with tools) such that he found the lessons novel and interesting. It only lasted him a few months, though. I bought RS level H next, but he had a change of heart about AoPS Prealgebra and decided he just had to switch to AoPS instead of moving on to RS H. This was probably a competitive-sibling-motivated thing since he has two brothers, one older and one younger, using AoPS. I've thought all along that AoPS is probably not going to be his happy place, but he is ultimately the one calling the shots. I just offer options and my opinion. 

So, he started AoPS Prealgebra just using the book, online videos, and Alcumus. He wanted to be in an actual class like his brothers, so after a few weeks I switched him over to the self-paced AoPS Online Prealgebra 1 class, fearing that the live class might move too quickly for him. He liked the teaching bot and benefited from feedback on his proofs from someone other than me. He only took about 9 weeks to get through the class, though, so I figured he could handle the live version for Prealgebra 2, which covers roughly the same amount of material in 16 weeks, and signed him up for that next.

Between Prealgebra 1 and Prealgebra 2 we took a 3 week detour to do all of Jousting Armadillos, which was more review but was exceptionally well received. The whole Arbor Algebra set is free on Google Books right now and I really wanted to give it a try. 

He's now about a quarter of the way through Prealgebra 2 and doing just fine, but he doesn't love it. I think that after he finishes AoPS Prealgebra 2 we may go through one or both of the Arbor Algebra books since Jousting Armadillos went over so well (I say "we" because he needs his math textbooks read aloud to him). I might have him follow up with AoPS Intro to Algebra, or maybe not. On the other hand, perhaps his preference for JA indicates that he'd do well with a clean switch to Jacobs for algebra. I'll probably try to get a copy from the library to test out with him before attempting to solidify plans any further.

[kirstenhill]

I could start a thread with a similar title, except 2E boy.  My youngest is currently 3rd grade, and we'll probably finish BA 5 early next fall.  He has dyslexia and dysgraphia, and is hitting these books at a younger age than his older brothers did...so he isn't going to end up with the same level of skill at organizing work and working independently that they had by the end of BA5. 

One of his big struggles is mapping math terminology to correspondeding concepts - like he will forget the meaning of the word "exponent", but if I point to a problem with an exponent, he totally understands the concept and can do math operations related to it...but the word "exponent" isn't firmly in his brain. So I know we need to work on that. As of right now, AoPs Pre-A would almost certainly be too "wordy" for him. 

I don't have a lot of advice...just commiseration I guess! I still have a few months to think about it and I'm eagerly following the advice other people are getting on this topic. 😊

 

[Condessa]

Another idea: maybe do some select chapters from Singapore 6 to work on solidifying the skills of focusing, organizing, and writing down her work at this level, plus something like Math-u-see Prealgebra to be keeping things interesting with introducing some new concepts.  We could then do Math-u-see algebra as the rest of our Prealgebra.  I think 8 uses Math-u-see algebra as Prealgebra, right?
 

The pros of this idea are that dd is very much a visual-spatial thinker so Math-u-see might work well for that, that we would focus first on her application of executive function skills in math, and also that we would be able to take the time to do that without having to deal with fallout from little brother starting a book called “Prealgebra” before her.

The con is that I would really like something that she can carry on with greater independence when I am unavailable, and this is not it.