Kathie in VA Posted January 7, 2009 Share Posted January 7, 2009 I was just wondering as we look at a list of possibilities for Algebra. We are used to the mastery approach and are considering: Jacobs Lial's (using BCM now) Life of Fred Teaching Textbooks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sharon in MD Posted January 7, 2009 Share Posted January 7, 2009 We used Jacobs and loved it, for both Algebra I and Geometry. I would definitely use it again because I feel that it teaches the "why" and applications with good problems, built in review and a little comic humor as well. As far as mastery is concerned, I feel that is more up to the person sitting in the evaluator's seat. Each of us determines mastery differently, so unless you are using a computer based course which requires that you meet X% before you move on, I don't know how you would determine that a course uses a "mastery approach", as you call it. I do think that Jacobs builds on itself and that there are problems within the assignments that actually are part of the teaching, ie you learn as you solve the problem. I don't know if this helps or not, but we were very happy with Jacobs and Forester as a follow on after that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kathie in VA Posted January 7, 2009 Author Share Posted January 7, 2009 I think of a mastery program as one that teaches a lesson and then has you work on that till you've mastered it. Review is included both within the problems since math builds on itself and maybe in a separate review set. However review is NOT used a a means to learn the material (like a spiral approach). Jacobs does sound like a great program. thanks for responding Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sharon in MD Posted January 7, 2009 Share Posted January 7, 2009 through problems. He teaches the material in the text but there are times when an additional "aha" moment is taught through a problem. I found Jacobs to be very thorough, it was not as if you might skip a problem and miss something foundational. But there were teaching moments in the problem sets from time to time. We found the texts to be very well written and self-explanatory. We used them before the Dr. Callahan material was available (ds is a senior now) so I don't really know how that might benefit your children, but I've heard it is good. The thing I really liked about Jacobs was that I felt it explained the WHY, which is so important to me. I also like the way the geometry has built in AL I reviews at the end of every chapter. It made going on to AL II much easier for my son. There a lots of good programs out there, you just have to decide what will work best for your family. There are multiple ways to skin a cat....you just have to figure out which one will leave you with fewer scratches! ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sharon in MD Posted January 7, 2009 Share Posted January 7, 2009 Jacobs does have review problems at the start of each problem set, as I recall. Foerster does too. When we moved to Foerster for Al II, the first part of each problem set had a section of problems that you were supposed to do fast as a review....FWIW Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sandy in KY Posted January 9, 2009 Share Posted January 9, 2009 TT uses the spiral method rather than the mastery method, so I switch my kids over to Videotext once they begin Algebra so they can get a sufficient amount of practice on each new concept. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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