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Help me pick a good Algebra I textbook?


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My ninth grader is just finishing up Saxon Algebra 1/2, but it's been a bit of a struggle and I think she might do better with more mastery based exercises and more explanation.  Here's the problem.  She wants all the instruction in the student textbook.  No online classes, etc.  She doesn't learn well from videos and doesn't like them, and wants to avoid anything where a lot of the material is in a teacher book that makes it hard for her to work independently.  

So what would be some good options?  I've been looking at Lial's or Abeka or Foerster.  Any opinions on these?

Edited by LauraBeth475
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My 14yo is using Introductory Algebra by Auffman, which fits those requirements. We have the Mosely DVDs to go with it but they rarely to never use them. 

 

Other authors in my school closet that also do this are Lial, Jacobs, Foerster, and Larson. My Marine used and loved Foerster! It prepared her well. 👍

 

We're using Auffman because that's what they chose after flipping through some lessons in all of the above. It's been working well and I have no complaints. 🙂

 

Edited by SilverMoon
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10 hours ago, LauraBeth475 said:

Would Dolciani be a good choice?  I can't seem to find a way to look inside those books

You can check it out here on archive.org.  This is the 1988 edition. There is a thread here somewhere but you don't want a late edition of this text. It was apparently changed significantly in not good ways.  Something up through early 90s is okay I think??  https://archive.org/details/algebra00brow

 

I have zero experience with Lial's, but it is known for self-teaching. 

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3 hours ago, cintinative said:

You can check it out here on archive.org.  This is the 1988 edition. There is a thread here somewhere but you don't want a late edition of this text. It was apparently changed significantly in not good ways.  Something up through early 90s is okay I think??  https://archive.org/details/algebra00brow

 

I have zero experience with Lial's, but it is known for self-teaching. 

I love archive.org

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Lial's has a huge amount of practice, Jacobs and Foerster have a more coheseive narrative and lot more character due to being single-author books, which might be nice for someone experiencing mathematical whiplash from a spiral curriculum

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23 minutes ago, LauraBeth475 said:

I love archive.org

I feel that archive.org love. 😉

You can also see samples of Lial's on archive... https://archive.org/details/introductoryalge0000lial_18ed/mode/2up

and one that I've used with multiple kids.. Tobey and Slater Beginning Algebra (very similar to Lial's)... https://archive.org/details/beginningalgebra0000tobe_d0n6

Jacobs's Elementary Algebra is there as well ... https://archive.org/details/elementaryalgebr00jaco

and Foerster's Algebra ... https://archive.org/details/algebraiexpressi00foer

 

I would sit down and skim through each of these, and have your daughter do so as well.   If she's going to be the one wrestling through the book, it has to be readable to her. 

 

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Dolciani user here, too, because our older kids were also completely opposed to screens in math learning. I hesitated (because I doubted my ability to "teach" math), but have now been all the way through Alg 2 / Trig with several students. The explanations are GOLD, and the problem sets come in 3 difficulty levels, A-level, B-level, and C-level, for each lesson. 

We use Algebra: Structure & Method (which my IRL friends call Houghton, but posters here call Dolciani).

 

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I think I have picked the book.  We're going to try Basic Algebra by Brown and Dolciani.  It looks like a good choice to solidify her skills and move step by step through early algebra. It doesn't cover as much as Dolciani's structure and method books and has more review.  Then we'll see if she wants to continue with Dolciani or go back to Saxon's algebra sequence.

 

Thanks all!

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On 8/25/2022 at 6:13 PM, LauraBeth475 said:

I think I have picked the book.  We're going to try Basic Algebra by Brown and Dolciani.  It looks like a good choice to solidify her skills and move step by step through early algebra. It doesn't cover as much as Dolciani's structure and method books and has more review.  Then we'll see if she wants to continue with Dolciani or go back to Saxon's algebra sequence.

 

Thanks all!

Will you be getting a physical textbook or use the archive.org versions?

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