Training a resistant kid to write down math

[Condessa]

My ds9 has about half of BA5 left, and is finally hitting the point where he can no longer consistently get all the answers right in his head.  We have been trying to work on this kid’s perfectionism for years, with some progress, but not enough.  (His mantra that we regularly make him repeat is “Human beings make mistakes.  I am a human being.  I make mistakes.”)  We are having a lot of drama with math now,  with ds frequently in tears.  Once I place the pencil in his hand and force him to write down his work, he doesn’t have any trouble,  but I think he sees it as a failure to need to use anything.  
 

I guess I am glad we are working through this now before he gets to Prealgebra, but man, am I tired of it.  I am so ready to be done with this daily drama and back to him being my easiest student.  I wish I knew how long this is going to take.

[SoCal_Bear]

What I found was not going directly to pre-algebra right away helped transition him to the concept of worked solutions. My son was similar at this age. I did Jousting Armadillos before going to AOPS PA. It helped as a interim to practice writing out his work. However, I can't promise this will happen overnight. I wish I could tell you that it will magically happen, but he still gets lazy and at this level of math and science, he can't afford to do it anymore. When I correct his math, I will check each line that is correct and stop where he fails to show the next step and it's on him to rework it from that point on. I have told him that it's not just about getting the right answer...you have to provide a fully worked solution that ANYONE can follow who knows nothing about the problem. It helps that his physics course last year graded that way as will chemistry.

I won't say I am not secretly dreading Geometry this year which is why it is outsourced. The frustration he has had over Intermediate Algebra has been hard because he has similar issues as your son and finally hitting some math concepts that don't come instantenously is a shocker. The step up from the Intro books is real. He's simply not used putting in more study effort. This is a good thing. I would rather he hit the wall at home with me then not hit this wall until college like me.

ETA: There's no way for him to improve with AMC unless he starts working the problems out more systematically. 

Edited August 15, 2021 by calbear

[Not_a_Number]

32 minutes ago, Condessa said:

My ds9 has about half of BA5 left, and is finally hitting the point where he can no longer consistently get all the answers right in his head.  We have been trying to work on this kid’s perfectionism for years, with some progress, but not enough.  (His mantra that we regularly make him repeat is “Human beings make mistakes.  I am a human being.  I make mistakes.”)  We are having a lot of drama with math now,  with ds frequently in tears.  Once I place the pencil in his hand and force him to write down his work, he doesn’t have any trouble,  but I think he sees it as a failure to need to use anything.  
 

I guess I am glad we are working through this now before he gets to Prealgebra, but man, am I tired of it.  I am so ready to be done with this daily drama and back to him being my easiest student.  I wish I knew how long this is going to take.

Can you decouple writing down work from correctness? That is, make it REQUIRED that specific problems are written out step-by-step? That way, he’ll have practice slowing down and organizing his thinking. I’ve found that this kind of practice has made DD9 MUCH more reliable a problem solver, even when she isn’t writing out steps.

[Condessa]

20 minutes ago, calbear said:

What I found was not going directly to pre-algebra right away helped transition him to the concept of worked solutions. My son was similar at this age. I did Jousting Armadillos before going to AOPS PA. It helped as a interim to practice writing out his work. However, I can't promise this will happen overnight. I wish I could tell you that it will magically happen, but he still gets lazy and at this level of math and science, he can't afford to do it anymore. When I correct his math, I will check each line that is correct and stop where he fails to show the next step and it's on him to rework it from that point on. I have told him that it's not just about getting the right answer...you have to provide a fully worked solution that ANYONE can follow who knows nothing about the problem. It helps that his physics course last year graded that way as will chemistry.

I won't say I am not secretly dreading Geometry this year which is why it is outsourced. The frustration he has had over Intermediate Algebra has been hard because he has similar issues as your son and finally hitting some math concepts that don't come instantenously is a shocker. The step up from the Intro books is real. He's simply not used putting in more study effort. This is a good thing. I would rather he hit the wall at home with me then not hit this wall until college like me.

ETA: There's no way for him to improve with AMC unless he starts working the problems out more systematically. 

I am hoping we can get past this before he finishes BA, and then I am confident he will be ready for AOPS Prealgebra.  I have slowed his math progress at times with various side tracks to avoid him passing his big sister, and the work he’s doing is not very challenging for him once I get him to use paper.

Where is your son taking his physics and his chemistry classes?

[Condessa]

27 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

Can you decouple writing down work from correctness? That is, make it REQUIRED that specific problems are written out step-by-step? That way, he’ll have practice slowing down and organizing his thinking. I’ve found that this kind of practice has made DD9 MUCH more reliable a problem solver, even when she isn’t writing out steps.

I think this is a is a good idea.  

[SoCal_Bear]

I slowed his progression wasy down on purpose. I realized given his nature, the time spent in exploring other math would be well worth the time. After AOPS PA, I did Jacobs: A Human Endeavor before we started AOPS Algebra. I wasn't tied to a class so we had all the time in the world. 

I also decided to delay both of these a year from when he was mathematically ready because I was working with him on executive functioning skills and EQ. He did Clover Creek Physics with Jetta and will be doing Clover Valley Advanced Honors Chem with Connie this fall. 

[Not_a_Number]

29 minutes ago, calbear said:

I slowed his progression wasy down on purpose. I realized given his nature, the time spent in exploring other math would be well worth the time. After AOPS PA, I did Jacobs: A Human Endeavor before we started AOPS Algebra. I wasn't tied to a class so we had all the time in the world. 

I also decided to delay both of these a year from when he was mathematically ready because I was working with him on executive functioning skills and EQ. He did Clover Creek Physics with Jetta and will be doing Clover Valley Advanced Honors Chem with Connie this fall. 

What’s the purpose of slowing it down, if you don’t mind me asking?

[Condessa]

18 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

What’s the purpose of slowing it down, if you don’t mind me asking?

For my son, slowing him down served a dual purpose of not crushing his sister by passing her and also giving him more time to mature before getting into too difficult of work.  Because even if he could answer most of the questions right a year or two ago, doing the work in his head often faster than I could, if he got that twentieth question wrong he’d be rolling around on the floor crying that the computer was lying, or that it was just trying to trick him to make him look stupid.  So we took lots of forays into math games and challenging word problems to slow his progress through his main curriculum while we worked on that.

[Not_a_Number]

Just now, Condessa said:

For my son, slowing him down served a dual purpose of not crushing his sister by passing her and also giving him more time to mature before getting into too difficult of work.  Because even if he could answer most of the questions right a year or two ago, doing the work in his head often faster than I could, if he got that twentieth question wrong he’d be rolling around on the floor crying that the computer was lying, or that it was just trying to trick him to make him look stupid.  So we took lots of forays into math games and challenging word problems to slow his progress through his main curriculum while we worked on that.

I guess I generally have more options by writing my own problems 🙂 . I’ve gone up the topics and the difficulty asynchronously. This is where something like the AMC is a good idea to tie everything together for us…

[Condessa]

1 minute ago, Not_a_Number said:

I guess I generally have more options by writing my own problems 🙂 . I’ve gone up the topics and the difficulty asynchronously. This is where something like the AMC is a good idea to tie everything together for us…

Yeah.  I have wished that all my kids, but especially ds9, could have a teacher like you for their math instead of me.  I have learned a ton about math education and done well by them, but it still surprises me that between two very “languagey” parents we managed to get four “mathy” kids.  At least we have AOPS for when they surpass me, which my dd12 is only about a year away from doing.

[Not_a_Number]

44 minutes ago, Condessa said:

Yeah.  I have wished that all my kids, but especially ds9, could have a teacher like you for their math instead of me.  I have learned a ton about math education and done well by them, but it still surprises me that between two very “languagey” parents we managed to get four “mathy” kids.  At least we have AOPS for when they surpass me, which my dd12 is only about a year away from doing.

Whereas we have two mathy parents and two mathy kids, lol. Not so many surprises here... 

On the other hand, I wish I had the patience that some of the rest of you clearly do! That, or more compliant kids 😉 . 

[SoCal_Bear]

I slowed down because I'm not in a rush to get to calculus. I'm also not going to spend the bulk of our time with maths when he has other rigorous courses to cover. He has lots of other interests foreign languages, science, computer science, golf, competitive chess, etc. Plus Science Olympiad is a time sink.

The rest of us aren't like you @Not_a_Number, I'm not going to design a customized math education. However I can take time to do other branches of mathematics using books that are readily available. I think you are getting a foreshadowing of the tween years. It's hard and challenging. I didn't want to kill a love for math when he clearly needed time to grown in EF and EQ. He also really needed to grow in pushing through frustration and learning to be ok with not getting problems right the first time he tries solving it. I think girls tend to organize their work more readily than boys do IMO.

Edited August 15, 2021 by calbear

[Not_a_Number]

9 minutes ago, calbear said:

I slowed down because I'm not in a rush to get to calculus. I'm also not going to spend the bulk of our time with maths when he has other rigorous courses to cover. He has lots of other interests foreign languages, science, computer science, golf, competitive chess, etc. Plus Science Olympiad is a time sink.

We don't really spend the bulk of our time on math, except insofar as I'm letting her have a lot of free time right now, due to behavioral difficulties, and this means that math is one of the few things she currently owes me output for. But if she bothers to do her work, we spend something like an hour and 15 minutes a day on math. (There are definitely days she just doesn't work and has to finish things in the evening. But that's just her attitude issues right now -- everything is being dragged out 😕 . ) 

I've never either slowed down nor sped up. We work on whatever comes next that she's interested in 🤷‍♀️. It's just curious to hear about people intentionally slowing down, since I've never thought about things that way. 

 

9 minutes ago, calbear said:

The rest of us aren't like you @Not_a_Number, I'm not going to design a customized math education. However I can take time to do other branches of mathematics using books that are readily available. I think you are getting a foreshadowing of the tween years. It's hard and challenging. I didn't want to kill a love for math when he clearly needed time to grown in EF and EQ. He also really needed to grow in pushing through frustration and learning to be ok with not getting problems right the first time he tries solving it. I think girls tend to organize their work more readily than boys do IMO.

Hmmm, I have no idea whether that's true or not. By the time they hit college, I definitely had many more boys than girls that were able to write logical proofs, and it was probably even more skewed than the classes themselves. In general, I haven't found either boys or girls particularly good at linearizing their ideas, having taught quite a few young kids -- I think it's actually a very unnatural-feeling skill for most people. (Not the writing part of it, per se, but just getting their thoughts in order.) We work on this skill a lot, which is why I think DD9 is accelerated in it, aside from her innate mathiness.

Edited August 16, 2021 by Not_a_Number

[Not_a_Number]

6 hours ago, Condessa said:

I think this is a is a good idea.  

That's what AoPS online classes do, for what it's worth: there's one writing problem a week that needs to be explained in paragraphs, and everything else is short answer. I do something very similar with DD9. She knows how to write proofs and organize her work, but mostly she doesn't want to, and that's fine. But the skills she's gained from knowing how to arrange her ideas have really been invaluable. 

For us, the writing process itself hasn't been super important, but that's because we've always done a LOT of organizing via discussion anyway. With my tutored kids, I can see that both the writing and the discussions really help them get their thoughts straight. 

[Porridge]

In beast 5, I started mandating that DD write out all her steps for 1-2 problems per day. This decoupled the writing mandate from the problem solving, as @Not_a_Number mentioned, and made the idea of writing approachable. I told her it was practice for writing proofs.  Perhaps that will help your child not to feel that the writing mandate is a criticism of their performance. Rather, it is the next step to more advanced problem solving. Maybe that will help decrease whatever stigma your child Has against writing

[Noreen Claire]

On 8/15/2021 at 1:20 PM, Condessa said:

We are having a lot of drama with math now,  with ds frequently in tears.  Once I place the pencil in his hand and force him to write down his work, he doesn’t have any trouble,  but I think he sees it as a failure to need to use anything.  

We had this same problem, only I threw in the towel in the middle of Pre-Algebra. That's when I signed him up for the AoPS online course to finish the book, and had someone else be the bad guy for a while. I let the writing part slip as we worked through the alg1 part of the Intro book last year, so I will need to make a note to bring it back this year, as we move to alg2.

[Not_a_Number]

10 minutes ago, Noreen Claire said:

We had this same problem, only I threw in the towel in the middle of Pre-Algebra. That's when I signed him up for the AoPS online course to finish the book, and had someone else be the bad guy for a while. I let the writing part slip as we worked through the alg1 part of the Intro book last year, so I will need to make a note to bring it back this year, as we move to alg2.

There's really something to be said for letting someone else be the bad guy for a bit... 

[chocolate-chip chooky]

On 8/16/2021 at 3:20 AM, Condessa said:

My ds9 has about half of BA5 left, and is finally hitting the point where he can no longer consistently get all the answers right in his head.  We have been trying to work on this kid’s perfectionism for years, with some progress, but not enough.  (His mantra that we regularly make him repeat is “Human beings make mistakes.  I am a human being.  I make mistakes.”)  We are having a lot of drama with math now,  with ds frequently in tears.  Once I place the pencil in his hand and force him to write down his work, he doesn’t have any trouble,  but I think he sees it as a failure to need to use anything.  
 

I guess I am glad we are working through this now before he gets to Prealgebra, but man, am I tired of it.  I am so ready to be done with this daily drama and back to him being my easiest student.  I wish I knew how long this is going to take.

I could have written this post myself, about 6 years ago. I actually think that Googling 'my child won't show working in maths' brought me to this forum all those years ago. Things were so hard at that point in time.  I can really relate to your post.

My daughter saw writing down her work as unnecessary, tedious, a waste of time etc. In hindsight, I realise that it was for her at that point in time. For a maths brain that can go from A to E in one step, why would you bother stopping at B, C, and D along the way? 

My daughter likened it to catching a train. Why stop at all those stops if you can take the express? 🙄

 

But as her homeschool mum, with ALL THE RESPONSIBILITY to ensure she comes out the other end with all the skills, it still worried me heaps.

Here's what I did for her:

- fast-tracked her maths big time. We skipped ahead to maths that had too much in it to hold it all in her head. Even if she just had to jot down a number here or there, that was a positive step in my mind.

- didn't make her do every single problem. Most of the time she only did the hardest in an exercise.

- bought a whiteboard for maths. My perfectionist was *much* more comfortable using a whiteboard. Any error is so easily swiped away. The permanence of pencil on paper was too much at that age (9 yrs old)

- I scribed her working. This had her verbalising the steps. We did this for a long time - a couple of years perhaps.

- With time, I started to insist that she practise showing full working, and explained that in exams this is a requirement. I had her do full working every now and then, but not all the time. When she did do the full written working, it was spot-on, so there was no need to insist on any more than that. And when I say every now and then, it was maybe once every couple of weeks. If that. It would have been a waste of her time to insist on any more frequently than that.

 

And the happy ending: She completed Australian highschool maths (she did the official exam that included everything from calculus to stats to trig) at age 13, and got the highest possible result. 'Mathematical communication' is one essential criterion, and she blitzed it. 

She's now at uni doing nothing remotely maths-related 😅

 

I wish you all the best. I know it's hard. Hang in there.

Edited August 18, 2021 by chocolate-chip chooky

[chocolate-chip chooky]

On 8/16/2021 at 8:06 AM, Condessa said:

For my son, slowing him down served a dual purpose of not crushing his sister by passing her and also giving him more time to mature before getting into too difficult of work.  Because even if he could answer most of the questions right a year or two ago, doing the work in his head often faster than I could, if he got that twentieth question wrong he’d be rolling around on the floor crying that the computer was lying, or that it was just trying to trick him to make him look stupid.  So we took lots of forays into math games and challenging word problems to slow his progress through his main curriculum while we worked on that.

To the bold: oh my goodness, yes. 

[Not_a_Number]

1 hour ago, chocolate-chip chooky said:

- fast-tracked her maths big time. We skipped ahead to maths that had too much in it to hold it all in her head. Even if she just had to jot down a number here or there, that was a positive step in my mind.

We've definitely done this. I didn't want to forever stay on math DD9 could do without trouble. When something started becoming obvious, we'd do the next thing, whether that was harder problems or a new concept. Whatever made more sense and DD9 was readier for. 

 

1 hour ago, chocolate-chip chooky said:

She's now at uni doing nothing remotely maths-related 😅

What's she doing in uni? 🙂 

[chocolate-chip chooky]

2 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

 

 

What's she doing in uni? 🙂 

She's doing a double degree - Bachelor of Communication/Bachelor of Arts

Truly, about as far from maths as it gets 😄

[Not_a_Number]

Just now, chocolate-chip chooky said:

She's doing a double degree - Bachelor of Communication/Bachelor of Arts

Truly, about as far from maths as it gets 😄

Ha, so it is! Did she lose interest or was it never a serious focus? 

[chocolate-chip chooky]

22 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

Ha, so it is! Did she lose interest or was it never a serious focus? 

It was never a real focus. She clearly had a natural aptitude for maths, but there was no passion.

Maths was very helpful for intellectual stimulation, which she has always needed for her mental health. So it served that purpose, as well as being necessary for her to officially finish highschool. 

Music and languages are her passion 🙂 

Edited August 18, 2021 by chocolate-chip chooky

[Not_a_Number]

9 minutes ago, chocolate-chip chooky said:

It was never a real focus. She clearly had a natural aptitude for maths, but there was no passion.

Maths was very helpful for intellectual stimulation, which she has always needed for her mental health. So it served that purpose, as well as being necessary for her to officially finish highschool. 

Music and languages are her passion 🙂 

When did you figure out what her passions are? I haven't yet figured out with DD9. 

[daijobu]

2 hours ago, chocolate-chip chooky said:

It was never a real focus. She clearly had a natural aptitude for maths, but there was no passion.

Maths was very helpful for intellectual stimulation, which she has always needed for her mental health. So it served that purpose, as well as being necessary for her to officially finish highschool. 

Music and languages are her passion 🙂 

You never know!  A smart kid with quantitative skills AND majoring in communcations/arts may find interesting opportunities that others aren't qualified for.  Good for her!  

[chocolate-chip chooky]

4 hours ago, Not_a_Number said:

When did you figure out what her passions are? I haven't yet figured out with DD9. 

That's a good question. She's always been an intense and passionate person, so it's been a matter of seeing which things were stayers. 

It probably wasn't until about age 12ish that it started being clear which direction she'd take for tertiary study.

[Not_a_Number]

7 hours ago, chocolate-chip chooky said:

That's a good question. She's always been an intense and passionate person, so it's been a matter of seeing which things were stayers. 

It probably wasn't until about age 12ish that it started being clear which direction she'd take for tertiary study.

What was she into at younger ages?

[chocolate-chip chooky]

10 hours ago, Not_a_Number said:

What was she into at younger ages?

This trip down memory lane is quite fun 🙂 

At ages 5-9, she was into: woodwork, making her own paint and paper, inventing things, building things. She was also writing a lot of angsty poetry around age 8-9.

From about 9-11, her big passion was crochet. She got to the point where she could do any amigurumi flawlessly. I think I posted photos of some years ago. She lost this passion because she'd mastered it, and there was no more challenge. Around 9-11 were probably her most focussed maths years too. This was alcumus time.

From 12ish, she started learning Korean, because she needed a bigger mental challenge. And that has persisted, and now at 15 she is near-native level. 

Music has always been there, just with different focuses and levels of passion. She studied piano and music theory from age 5 (but lessons stopped in 2020 due to Covid), and this has developed into composing and music production. 

Who knows what she'll be doing in 5 years? 🙂 

[lewelma]

This was a hill I was willing to die on with my younger. Now for him it was mixed up with his dysgraphia - basically the inability to *encode* thought into written form. But it was NOT a fast process to remediate.  It took one hour per day sitting side by side with him for 7 years (from the age of 9 to 16) before he could actually understand *how* to write down his mathematical thinking into proper workings.  And I will add that I am now needing to do it with his AP chemistry. The knowledge he now has as to how to organizing his thinking into writing for calculus and maths in general has not translated into organizing his thinking for mathematical chemistry.

I came to believe that he was resistant because he couldn't, not because he wouldn't.

Edited August 19, 2021 by lewelma

[chocolate-chip chooky]

@Condessa Sorry to derail your thread and turn it into my trip down memory lane. Apologies 🌻

I hope everything is going okay for you and your son.

[Arcadia]

.

Edited March 24, 2022 by Arcadia

[SoCal_Bear]

On 8/18/2021 at 4:45 PM, Not_a_Number said:

When did you figure out what her passions are? I haven't yet figured out with DD9. 

It was they spend time pursuing on their own without schedule time or encouragement from you. Passions can change though. Expose her to a wide array of experiences and activities especially ones that you yourself would not normally gravitate towards. 

Chess, golf, Latin - no interest from my husband and I for any of these.

Programming - yes, that's what my husband does. - my husband can though not a passion

Science - yes, which branch changes depending on who he is inspired by (I really try to select people with the love of their subject matter.) It's abundantly clear it is definitely not life sciences. Math - unclear at this point...used to be a passion and now other things have pushed it out of the way. Aptitude yes...passion - murky.

ETA: I find you don't necessarily do the figuring out...they really do tell you. 

Edited August 20, 2021 by calbear

[SoCal_Bear]

Look at this article for perfectionism profiles among the gifted and intervention strategies.

https://blog.giftedstudy.org/perfectionism-in-gifted-children-developing-a-healthy-mindset/

 

 

Edited August 20, 2021 by calbear

[Not_a_Number]

10 minutes ago, calbear said:

It was they spend time pursuing on their own without schedule time or encouragement from you. Passions can change though. Expose her to a wide array of experiences and activities especially ones that you yourself would not normally gravitate towards. 

What she mostly does on her own time is make things and read books 🙂 . She's also very physically active. 

I do know what she likes, it's just that it's not obvious to me what that's going to become when she's older! She's a science-y kid, so I wouldn't be surprised if that's where she goes, career-wise, but I'm not sure about that or anything. 

[lewelma]

On 8/16/2021 at 10:06 AM, Condessa said:

if he got that twentieth question wrong he’d be rolling around on the floor crying 

Starting at the age of 7, my older boy used to punish himself for getting a problem wrong. Once he gave himself 30 pages of math to do in his workbook as punishment for one problem wrong, and this punishment took him more than 2 hours (he was just 7). By 9, he would just cry and cry over his AoPS Intro A book, but would not allow me to help him in any way.  So I hid the book.  I would not give it back until he and I came to an agreement about maths and his mental health. When he would stop. When he would ask for help. How he would manage his passion. Parenting is tough stuff. 

Edited August 20, 2021 by lewelma

[SeaConquest]

CalBear and I have boys that are close in age, but while my son is still struggling with the EF issues and can't yet write a proof to save his life, it seems that her son has progressed quite a bit in these areas because she intentionally slowed down to focus on these skills. I went back to school to start a new career a few years ago, which is when I started having to outsource Sacha's math entirely to AoPS (first to the Academy and then to the online classes versus us working on it together when he was younger with Beast). So, yes, Sacha is technically a year "ahead" now in math, but he is still struggling to organize his thoughts and show his work in math (still preferring to do much of it in his head, which doesn't work out so well at this level) and to keep his deadlines straight/complete his assignments on time. So while I know that I did the best that I could trying to juggle everything, hindsight shows that the time invested in solidifying these other important skills is just as important (if not more so) as moving forward with curricula.

Having said that, it does take time, and kids develop at different rates, so try not to be stressed with each other if you don't see the skills you'd like by X date. I know that Sacha is still very young and that he will get there eventually. He has ADHD, and the EF stuff is always slower to develop, so I try to remind myself that it's a work in progress. Best wishes, mama.            

[Not_a_Number]

Just now, SeaConquest said:

CalBear and I have boys that are close in age, but while my son is still struggling with the EF issues and can't yet write a proof to save his life, it seems that her son has progressed quite a bit in these areas because she intentionally slowed down to focus on these skills. I went back to school to start a new career a few years ago, which is when I started having to outsource Sacha's math entirely to AoPS (first to the Academy and then to the online classes versus us working on it together when he was younger with Beast). So, yes, Sacha is technically a year "ahead" now in math, but he is still struggling to organize his thoughts and show his work in math (still preferring to do much of it in his head, which doesn't work out so well at this level) and to keep his deadlines straight/complete his assignments on time. So while I know that I did the best that I could trying to juggle everything, hindsight shows that the time invested in solidifying these other important skills is just as important (if not more so) as moving forward with curricula.

Having said that, it does take time, and kids develop at different rates, so try not to be stressed with each other if you don't see the skills you'd like by X date. I know that Sacha is still very young and that he will get there eventually. He has ADHD, and the EF stuff is always slower to develop, so I try to remind myself that it's a work in progress. Best wishes, mama.            

Let me know if you ever need help with helping him organize his thoughts again.

[SeaConquest]

Just now, Not_a_Number said:

Let me know if you ever need help with helping him organize his thoughts again.

You're the best. I no doubt will, but you deserved a summer off, too. Thank you for the kind offer. 🥰 His Intermediate Algebra class starts this week.

I signed him up for CTY's Intro to Proofs and Logic. It's a new class, and the description is rather vague, so I am not entirely sure how helpful it will be. https://cty.jhu.edu/programs/online/courses/introduction-to-logic-and-proofs-ilp1

[Arcadia]

.

Edited March 24, 2022 by Arcadia

[Shoeless]

I have only just kind of tackled the "Yes, you have to write down EVERY STEP of your solution" problem.  Like @chocolate-chip chooky, we bought a whiteboard, which made writing everything down more palatable for some reason.  

I have also been scribing for DS13.  After years of griping that he needed to write things down in an orderly way, and him giving me a blank stare in response, it occurred to me that he may not know what "an orderly way" is supposed to look like.  So I sat with him and worked several pages of problems, writing down every single little piddly step. Then I switched to scribing while he dictated.  Sometimes I would act deliberately obtuse, like "I don't know what you mean by reduce that fraction. Which fraction? How do I write that down? I don't know what to do!", until he was like "JUST GIVE ME THE PENCIL, WOMAN!!!", and wrote it himself. 😁  

He's good about putting everything in his notebook about 95% of the time now. But...it was years of going in circles about this, and then suddenly in a month he "got it" and now acts like it's no big deal. Which is how everything goes with him! 

[Shoes+Ships+SealingWax]

My DS8 was very resistant to writing things out, too. We had a period of meltdowns over it, which triggered discussions about mathematics being a language & the importance of clear communication - not only for yourself, but for others to follow. 

I began occasionally working out challenge problems on the dry-erase board, having him tell me each step while I wrote. Modeled that for a while.

Next I had him work those problems on the dry-erase board. Very occasionally I would have him copy his work from the board onto paper. Only a few problems per chapter. Some written response problems didn’t have adequate room in the workbook, so he’d use notebook paper for that, too. 

Yesterday we were discussing needing to translate word problems into expressions / equations before he could begin to solve them. He has a multi-subject notebook he’s using for history & science, so I said “This last section is going to be for math. Not everything needs to go in here, but when you come across something you want to write out, this is where it will go.” He didn’t bat an eye. I was shocked! I worked one problem step-by-step right on the page, talking him through the formatting & he did the rest of the page the same way. Fingers crossed he keeps it up!

Edited September 14, 2021 by Shoes+Ships+SealingWax