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If you use AOPS materials do you help with alcumus?  Quite frequently, ds will get stuck and I can see he just needs a bit of a hint to get going. But if I understand it right alcumus is kind of “smart” and increases difficulty level or changes focus once a certain number of problems are correctly completed?  Will giving help push DS through faster than he’s ready for?  Should I insist he completes it totally independently?  We do need some problems for extra practice to go over beyond what’s in the book.

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5 hours ago, Ausmumof3 said:

If you use AOPS materials do you help with alcumus?  Quite frequently, ds will get stuck and I can see he just needs a bit of a hint to get going. But if I understand it right alcumus is kind of “smart” and increases difficulty level or changes focus once a certain number of problems are correctly completed?  Will giving help push DS through faster than he’s ready for?  Should I insist he completes it totally independently?  We do need some problems for extra practice to go over beyond what’s in the book.

I don't use it, but I'd probably at least let him be stuck for a bit 🙂 . Often, getting unstuck is what helps you put the ideas together... at least, that's how AoPS is designed. 

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10 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

I don't use it, but I'd probably at least let him be stuck for a bit 🙂 . Often, getting unstuck is what helps you put the ideas together... at least, that's how AoPS is designed. 

But if he stays stuck should I eventually intervene?  Or just leave him to sit with it.  I’m working on getting him to put pen to paper and at least start playing with what he does know.  Also I have to admit some of these casework counting problems are pretty tedious and I’m probably just getting impatient.

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Just now, Ausmumof3 said:

But if he stays stuck should I eventually intervene?  Or just leave him to sit with it.  I’m working on getting him to put pen to paper and at least start playing with what he does know.  Also I have to admit some of these casework counting problems are pretty tedious and I’m probably just getting impatient.

My personal stance is that I'll intervene if a serious effort was made. As you know from our group, sometimes that means I don't intervene for a while 😉 . But generally, yes, I help out if the level of frustration seems unproductive and a genuine effort has been observed. 

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2 minutes ago, Ausmumof3 said:

 I’m working on getting him to put pen to paper and at least start playing with what he does know.

I would absolutely require putting pen to paper and being able to clearly explain where he's stuck and why. If he has no clue what to write down, I'd probably do some prompting and ask him for some suggestions on where he could start. 

Edited by Not_a_Number
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10 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

I would absolutely require putting pen to paper and being able to clearly explain where he's stuck and why. If he has no clue what to write down, I'd probably do some prompting and ask him for some suggestions on where he could start. 

Yep that makes sense.  It has been an ongoing battle to get him to show his work.  He is a perfectionist who doesn’t like things to be messy.  At the moment we have a compromise where the messy working out goes on one side of the book and he has a nearly ruled perfect page on the other.  I don’t help because I’m messy when I work things out so I can’t role model doing the working out in a way that would make him ok with it.  I keep telling him that part of math is communicating math to everyone else.  You can’t just say “the answer is” without being able to demonstrate how you got there.  Anyway... thanks for your help, I think that gives me some ideas to work with.  

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I don't help DS with Alcumus at all.

If he gets stuck then he gives up or guesses and gets it wrong. Then he reads the solution provided.

I feel this allows Alcumus to address his weaknesses, provide appropriately challenging questions, and accurately assess when he has mastered a topic.

If DS starts to get frustrated because he is "never" progressing to a new topic, then he and I will sit down and look at the log of all the problems he has gotten wrong, and I will see if there is an underlying thread that points to a misunderstanding or hole in his foundational understanding. I will teach specifically whatever is tripping him up, and then he will go back to Alcumus and hopefully "master" that topic more easily.

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10 minutes ago, wendyroo said:

I don't help DS with Alcumus at all.

If he gets stuck then he gives up or guesses and gets it wrong. Then he reads the solution provided.

I feel this allows Alcumus to address his weaknesses, provide appropriately challenging questions, and accurately assess when he has mastered a topic.

If DS starts to get frustrated because he is "never" progressing to a new topic, then he and I will sit down and look at the log of all the problems he has gotten wrong, and I will see if there is an underlying thread that points to a misunderstanding or hole in his foundational understanding. I will teach specifically whatever is tripping him up, and then he will go back to Alcumus and hopefully "master" that topic more easily.

I feel like this is how it’s supposed to work.  I think maybe I need to back up a bit and have him work at a slightly lower level for longer.  

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8 minutes ago, Ausmumof3 said:

I feel like this is how it’s supposed to work.  I think maybe I need to back up a bit and have him work at a slightly lower level for longer.  

Yes, I always make sure Alcumus is lagging significantly behind his math lessons (normally at least a couple months and/or 3-4 chapters behind). I use it as review, and longer-term assessment.

Obviously he will occasionally come upon minor definitions or problem solving techniques that he forgot, and those just need the quick reminder of the solution and he is good to go the next time that concept is tested.

OTOH, if he is having significant problems with one section of Alcumus, then I worry that there are deeper conceptual misunderstandings. I don't want to put a bandaid on those by helping him with each individual problem without delving deeper into why exactly he is struggling.

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4 minutes ago, wendyroo said:

I don't want to put a bandaid on those by helping him with each individual problem without delving deeper into why exactly he is struggling.

Yeah, I wouldn't do that, either. I also wouldn't hint, per se -- I'd just talk it out, and hopefully that would help. But if a kid wouldn't know where to start, I'd assume we were having a real issue and back up. 

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1 hour ago, Ausmumof3 said:

But if he stays stuck should I eventually intervene?  Or just leave him to sit with it.  I’m working on getting him to put pen to paper and at least start playing with what he does know.  Also I have to admit some of these casework counting problems are pretty tedious and I’m probably just getting impatient.

I don’t intervene and let ds miss the problems. I asked the director of our AoPS academy this very question and he told me that it’s better to have them miss the problems. Alcumus will adjust and give him an easier problem and work him up to the harder problems.

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I never help with Alcumus. If my son is stuck for too long (some problems in Intermediate Algebra took him a few hours each) he tries everything that he knows, then I ask him to list all the salient points that are provided in the question, ask him to check if there is some data in there that he has not made use of in his solutions, ask him to open his AOPS textbook to the section that problem is from and check to see if there is any problem in there either in the worked out solutions or exercises which resemble it, check to see if the solution can be achieved by combining more than one approach and if all else fails, he hits the "give up" button. Then, I make him study the official solution and explain it to me using a paper and pencil in his own words. I also have a google doc where I note down the topic name that he had trouble with and a few weeks later, will ask him to go to alcumus and work on more problems on that topic even if he got a Blue.

Alcumus will automatically give him more easier practice problems after he hits the "give up" button. Another idea is to move to another topic for a couple of weeks and then go back to the sticky topic so that he gets some time to sleep on the concepts.

2 hours ago, Ausmumof3 said:

At the moment we have a compromise where the messy working out goes on one side of the book and he has a nearly ruled perfect page on the other. 

We have the same problem and our solution is to have my son work out messy and difficult problems on a clipboard on scratch paper in it and eventually when he finds the correct answer, he transfers it to his notebook.

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3 hours ago, Ausmumof3 said:

Yep that makes sense.  It has been an ongoing battle to get him to show his work.  He is a perfectionist who doesn’t like things to be messy.  At the moment we have a compromise where the messy working out goes on one side of the book and he has a nearly ruled perfect page on the other.  I don’t help because I’m messy when I work things out so I can’t role model doing the working out in a way that would make him ok with it.  I keep telling him that part of math is communicating math to everyone else.  You can’t just say “the answer is” without being able to demonstrate how you got there.  Anyway... thanks for your help, I think that gives me some ideas to work with.  

Oh, if only. If you were to look at my DS's Alcumus work...well, first you would have to find where in his notebook he worked a problem...it could be written on the front of pages or upside down on the back or sideways on the cover or randomly scattered over many pages for no reason, you never know. Once you find the work area...hmmm. There is, what appears to be, the number 27 written about 3 inches across. It is hard to tell, because he has written several more numbers of various sizes directly on top of it without erasing anything. There is an unlabeled grid of 4 by 5 dots, some of which have been turned into smiley faces. There is the word antediluvian written upside down in cursive. And there is the neatly written equation: 2 + 13 = 75 with the note added "but does it really?"

All of that somehow added up to a trigonometry problem about the height of a lamppost...which he got wrong...and wanted me to help him with.  I took one look at the notebook and walked away, reminding myself why I don't look at his notebook. All of his work looks like that, but he is managing to master the topics at a speedy clip, and seems to have deep, conceptual understanding, so I'm assuming that if some day he is called upon to show his work, he is going to do so through interpretive dance or emoji poetry or something. 

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3 hours ago, wendyroo said:

Yes, I always make sure Alcumus is lagging significantly behind his math lessons (normally at least a couple months and/or 3-4 chapters behind). I use it as review, and longer-term assessment.

Obviously he will occasionally come upon minor definitions or problem solving techniques that he forgot, and those just need the quick reminder of the solution and he is good to go the next time that concept is tested.

OTOH, if he is having significant problems with one section of Alcumus, then I worry that there are deeper conceptual misunderstandings. I don't want to put a bandaid on those by helping him with each individual problem without delving deeper into why exactly he is struggling.

That makes sense too.  I keep getting caught where I’m like huh?  I don’t think we’ve covered that yet.

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I didn’t because that was one of those areas where they can learn to fail with little consequences. Alcumus does adjust accordingly.
My perfectionist has a pile of scrap paper for any homework. He scans and submits the nicely written tutorial assignments. His maths scrap paper has doodles, Chinese, Japanese and Korean sentences on them (besides the maths rough work). Kind of resembles collage instead. 

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6 hours ago, wendyroo said:

Oh, if only. If you were to look at my DS's Alcumus work...well, first you would have to find where in his notebook he worked a problem...it could be written on the front of pages or upside down on the back or sideways on the cover or randomly scattered over many pages for no reason, you never know. Once you find the work area...hmmm. There is, what appears to be, the number 27 written about 3 inches across. It is hard to tell, because he has written several more numbers of various sizes directly on top of it without erasing anything. There is an unlabeled grid of 4 by 5 dots, some of which have been turned into smiley faces. There is the word antediluvian written upside down in cursive. And there is the neatly written equation: 2 + 13 = 75 with the note added "but does it really?"

All of that somehow added up to a trigonometry problem about the height of a lamppost...which he got wrong...and wanted me to help him with.  I took one look at the notebook and walked away, reminding myself why I don't look at his notebook. All of his work looks like that, but he is managing to master the topics at a speedy clip, and seems to have deep, conceptual understanding, so I'm assuming that if some day he is called upon to show his work, he is going to do so through interpretive dance or emoji poetry or something. 

You should see my notebooks. I write in all possible directions. I doodle. I scribble.

I did the same thing on my scrap paper for the IMO 😉 

Edited by Not_a_Number
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12 hours ago, Marie.Sd said:

I don’t intervene and let ds miss the problems. I asked the director of our AoPS academy this very question and he told me that it’s better to have them miss the problems. Alcumus will adjust and give him an easier problem and work him up to the harder problems.

This is what I do. I wouldn't be able to help him with a lot of the questions at this point, even if I wanted to.

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9 hours ago, wendyroo said:

Oh, if only. If you were to look at my DS's Alcumus work...well, first you would have to find where in his notebook he worked a problem...it could be written on the front of pages or upside down on the back or sideways on the cover or randomly scattered over many pages for no reason, you never know. Once you find the work area...hmmm. There is, what appears to be, the number 27 written about 3 inches across. It is hard to tell, because he has written several more numbers of various sizes directly on top of it without erasing anything. There is an unlabeled grid of 4 by 5 dots, some of which have been turned into smiley faces. There is the word antediluvian written upside down in cursive. And there is the neatly written equation: 2 + 13 = 75 with the note added "but does it really?"

All of that somehow added up to a trigonometry problem about the height of a lamppost...which he got wrong...and wanted me to help him with.  I took one look at the notebook and walked away, reminding myself why I don't look at his notebook. All of his work looks like that, but he is managing to master the topics at a speedy clip, and seems to have deep, conceptual understanding, so I'm assuming that if some day he is called upon to show his work, he is going to do so through interpretive dance or emoji poetry or something. 

I pink puffy heart you. I am so glad that I am not the only one with this kid. I have no idea how he solves problems. It's been this way for so many years that I have just given up. A real mathematician is trying to sort out his ADHD brain at the moment and I feel like sending her a case of wine because she must be banging her head against a wall by now, trying to get him to focus and sort out his thoughts into some semblance of a logical structure. It seems like the only fair thing I can offer her in exchange.

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2 minutes ago, SeaConquest said:

I pink puffy heart you. I am so glad that I am not the only one with this kid. I have no idea how he solves problems. It's been this way for so many years that I have just given up. A real mathematician is trying to sort out his ADHD brain at the moment and I feel like sending her a case of wine because she must be banging her head against a wall by now, trying to get him to focus and sort out his thoughts into some semblance of a logical structure. It seems like the only fair thing I can offer her in exchange.

Hahahahaha, oh, I'm pretty sure he reminds her of every other kid she's taught and she's used to it 😛. Kids are NOT inherently logical creatures!! 

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21 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

Hahahahaha, oh, I'm pretty sure he reminds her of every other kid she's taught and she's used to it 😛. Kids are NOT inherently logical creatures!! 

Omg, I looked at your email chain from yesterday afternoon for a brief second and I'm like, you wasted 2 hours yesterday saying absolutely nothing except how your software program is being wonky. Focus, kid!

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5 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

He's fiiiine. Really. 🙂 When is his work due? 

Today. He swears he is almost done. Mhmmm, sure. He sucks at trig, btw. Both he and I are like whaaaaat when it comes to trig. 

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41 minutes ago, SeaConquest said:

Today. He swears he is almost done. Mhmmm, sure. He sucks at trig, btw. Both he and I are like whaaaaat when it comes to trig. 

Last I checked, his part (a) was correct and his part (b) needed redoing. (There are also (c) and (d).) It doesn't use trig, though: just similar triangles. The trig comes in later. 

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  • 1 month later...

What settings do you use for alcumus? I have it set on normal, should I set it harder. If it is set on normal will my dd eventually get to the harder problems, just at a slower pace. Or is it that you will never see the really hard problems if it’s set at normal level. 

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Didn’t see this the first time around. We use Alcumus as our primary set of problems. In other words, DD learns from the book with me but all her independent problem solving is with Alcumus, not the book. I generally require that she work the problems independently and submit one answer. If she gets it wrong on the first try, she can call me over. I read the problem, she explains her reasoning and what she did (and, yes, this took time to develop), shows me her work (she works on a small whiteboard, so only the current problem’s work is there), and I’ll help by either finding her arithmetic error or by prompting her withanother way to approach the problem.

If she were calling me over frequently, we would go back to the book for a bit and figure out what she didn’t grasp the first time through.

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