Old Math/New Math experiment--day 1

[Reya]

Background: DS wants to do NEM 1. The last level he's completed is second grade. That would be a 4 grade level skip. I'm not willing to do that, so we worked out a bargain. If he does his grade 3 stuff well (and I'll cut it down), I will start going through NEM 1 with him a tiny bit at a time.

 

Program: For those who don't know, Singapore NEM 1 is pre-algebra with some algebra and geometry. I'd give the entire program .5 high school credits. It backs WAY up at the beginning--the first lesson is called The System of Numeration.

 

Logistics: I decided late last night that DS should start practicing new concepts, too, before he hits them in NEM 1. So he's doing that first, 3rd grade math next, and then NEM 1.

 

We are reading the book together. He reads the textbook first, and then I read and explain it. It has words beyond his vocabulary at this point, so that's an additional challenge for him, but I want him to get used to reading textbooks. It's a skill I didn't get for math until college, and it was an ugly shock.

 

He does not have to write during the class activities. He must write the Exercises and do them himself. I'm using the graph paper from the RightStart program to allow him to do this. Without, it'd be a disaster--but then again, I STILL have to have graph paper! :-) Maybe by training him up right, he'll be able to transfer in the future.

 

Speed: Whatever it takes. I won't spend more than 15 min a day, max, on this. And I'm going for depth of understanding, not getting-it-done. Hopefully, it will seem sufficiently rapid to DS. I don't want to pick up speed until he's done with Singapore 6.

 

NOTE: I will continue updating this thread, likely not every day after a short while!

Edited March 18, 2009 by Reya

[Reya]

Warm up: I had him do long division on his own for the first time. He kept trying to cheat it until I put up sufficiently complicated problems that he couldn't do them in his head. Then he saw the necessity of the long approach and worked three problems.

Main course: He did fine today with what I've been having him do. Didn't take him too long. Usually, the day after a meltdown is pretty rocky, but it went okay, if not great.

 

Dessert: NEM 1 p. 2-3, lesson only. The lesson teaches place value up to hundred thousands. He practiced reading various numbers. He asked about millions, billions, and nine billion googolplex and the number of zeros and their relative values. (The last is his favorite number.) The lesson discussed that our system was base-ten or denary. I talked about what base ten means. We practiced counting in base-5 and base-2. Then I had him add in base-2 and had him count in base-4. I tried to make clear the distinction between numerals and numbers by showing how made up symbols will work. Not 100% sure he really got it, but then again, I've tutored college students who don't get it too%. He added in base-4 just fine, and we checked it with our previous counting. So he might not have it completely, but it was close. Then I talked about how computers work--on and off--and why they need a base-two system and explained that it was called binary.

 

He said he enjoyed it and certainly seemed to. More tomorrow, then!

[Nan in Mass]

Reya, can I make a suggestion? The first 4 (I think it is 4) chapters of NEM are a much harder version of primary maths for review, then after that it goes back to being much easier and begins algebra subjects. If I were you, I'd skip those review chapters and start right in on the algebra ones. Also, NEM throws lots of the algebra rules at the student all at once in about chapter 5. Mine had to pause after a chapter or two and do Keys to Algebra 1-3. These are cheap, thin workbooks that are probably about on your son's level. If NEM doesn't fly, you might use these as a bribe. They drill all the "little" rules like how to add and multiply negative numbers, and how juggle 3x+5=17 so that the x is by itself on one side of the equation. 1-3 doesn't get much beyond that. Just in case this is helpful...

[Reya]

Thanks! If he chokes, I'll definitely do that. I don't want to buy even MORE stuff we may not use ahead of time!

 

He does need the review because he hasn't actually learned a few of the topics. But knowing that it's a lot harder than what comes later, I''ll dumb it down if I need to.

[Jean in Newcastle]

Sounds like it is going well.

[Reya]

Sounds like it is going well.

 

I asked him today again if he liked it.

 

He said, "Sort of."

 

I said, "What didn't you like?"

 

He said, "You made me stop."

 

His EYES were slamming shut. And he couldn't think straight anymore. Of COURSE I made him stop! Cruel, cruel mother.

 

*shakes head*

[Reya]

Day 2

 

Warm-up: None today. I let DS play extra and so didn't start math until after AWANA and dinner--yikes!

 

Main Course: DS forgot how to tell time. Again. Argh. This is the third time--I'm going to be adding a single tell-me-the-time drill to the beginning of math for a while and hanging an analog clock and maybe getting him an analog watch. (The request is for one with flames on the wristband.... Er.....) But once he remembered, he had no time adding/subtacting time and tying it to the study of bases that we did yesterday. At the end of the lesson, I had to draw a house with lighning striking it (because of his science reading), and he's keeping the math packet because he wants to do the questions I didn't assign. He asked how many second in an hour, then asked how to do the multiplication problem of 60X60, so I've promised tomorrow I'll teach him mutlidigit by multidigit multiplication.

 

Dessert: NEM 1.1 Class Activity only. Addition, subtraction, and multiplication problem with explanation was trivial for him. The long division with explanation too a bit longer. The largest numbers were instantaneous--he had to think about the smallest numbers. (First guess: 012. That's not 3 digits. Second guess: 123. It took a bit of coaxing to get 102, then later 100.)

 

Tomorrow we start exercise 1.1. I'll write half of them. He has to write the other half. There's some new stuff for him to practice here--copying equations and the long division/multiplication in question 2. The rest is pretty similar, if not identical to, things he's already done, so if he gets the multiplication warm-up, he'll be fine.

 

I think he'll like the writing fine if I talk it up enough. He doesn't much care for writing normally, but if you throw enough Latin or math at it, he thinks it's pretty awesome.

[Nan in Mass]

Don't forget you can do it standing at a whiteboard. That makes a nice change.

[Reya]

Don't forget you can do it standing at a whiteboard. That makes a nice change.

 

We've got a little one he might use! He very badly needs a grid, though, so I have to draw it. :-) We have a big one, too, but he's already starting to call Algebra "snuggle math" and wants to do it in bed.

 

Since this is a for-credit high school course (YIKES! He's in two now--Cambridge Latin is, too.) I want to document this a bit better than I do everything else.

[Allearia]

I'm going to be adding a single tell-me-the-time drill to the beginning of math for a while and hanging an analog clock and maybe getting him an analog watch. (The request is for one with flames on the wristband.... Er.....)

 

I'm so glad to hear your son is enjoying the new math! It sounds like you are doing a great combo of making sure he keeps up the less fun skills while zooming ahead to some more interesting concepts, I'll have to keep watching this thread to see how it works.

 

My son has the Timex Indiglo watch with flames on the wristband and a kind of lightning bolt second hand. It helped a lot to just keep asking him what time it was several times a day so we don't really need to cover it for "math" any more. My watch broke so now I am wearing the flames watch... it is pretty comfortable. And was really cheap.

[Nan in Mass]

You probably want to use a graphpaper notebook, then, so you have a paper trail.

[Reya]

You probably want to use a graphpaper notebook, then, so you have a paper trail.

 

Yep! I'm not going to be GRADING this--I don't think it's appropriate. :-) I will be granting credit eventually, though. It will not factor into GPA.

 

I'm going to be using EMACS and Gelfand materials, too, so it's not like he'll be done with his pre-college math any time soon.

[Reya]

This morning, DS climbed into our bed as soon as DH left and slept for a little while. When he woke the second time, he rolled over, blinked once, and said, "Mom, 3+2=2+3, and 3*2=2*3, but 2/3 doesn't equal 3/2."

Warm-up: I did this out of order. Warm up was actually last. :-) I showed him, first, how to formally multiply two digits by one digit (he'd figured out the algorithm himself, but hadn't ever seen how it's written), and then how to do multidigit by multidigit number. He did a couple of problems himself, and we returned to the problem of how many seconds in an hour that he asked about yeasterday.

 

Main course: The challenge materials had calendar work and more clock work today. I've decided that we really have to get calendar stuff down--which was why I added these pages, anyway. We had multistep $ problems, too. They went fine. DS still needs LOTS of handwriting work. I think it could be summed up as: EEEK! I'm not going to try to get him to show his work without graph paper right now. It's pretty appalling.

Dessert: NEM Exercise 1.1, problem 1 (which had 6 sub-problems). Went okay. Did this at bedtime, so DS was a bit flaky at first. I told him it was extra, so I was perfectly happy to put it away, and it was what he had begged for, anyway, so he changed his mind and did the rest just fine. He talked himself through them aloud. He doesn't have the working memory of a 12-year-old (the age this is designed for), but he compensated. Tomorrow, we'll do some practice long division and multidigit multiplication for warm up and then do problems 2-4. (3 and 4 are pretty trivial.) His work is infinitely better with graph paper!

 

Notes for future: We are NOT going to do the chapter one challenge. DS would get it, but he doesn't have the self-discipline to think of a plan of attack. Instead, he'd just guess and check. And since the point is to NOT guess and check, there's no point.

 

The only section coming up that I'm concerned about is 1.8--patterns using the nth term plus rule gets output. I think this is a bit beyond him to generate. He can apply the rule fine, though.

 

The fractions chapter--ch 2--is something we'll have to camp on for a while, too. Ch 3 looks pretty easy. Parts of ch 4 will be easy, parts challenging.

[Reya]

My son has the Timex Indiglo watch with flames on the wristband and a kind of lightning bolt second hand. It helped a lot to just keep asking him what time it was several times a day so we don't really need to cover it for "math" any more. My watch broke so now I am wearing the flames watch... it is pretty comfortable. And was really cheap.

 

Oh, he'd LOVE this! I'll look for it!

[Spy Car]

I'm going to be using EMACS and Gelfand materials, too, so it's not like he'll be done with his pre-college math any time soon.

 

I just want to be clear, you are taking about a 6 year-old?

 

Bill

[Reya]

I just want to be clear, you are taking about a 6 year-old?

 

 

Yes. I think I wasn't clear. Sorry.

 

I will introduce the others only AFTER we do NEM 1 and he can do the challenge sections, too. :-) I was saying that even if he tore through NEM, we have a lot more material we can do at home.

 

I'm really rusty with my upper maths but fairly comfortable overall.

Edited March 20, 2009 by Reya

[Nan in Mass]

I didn't grade - correct, yes, but grade, no. I didn't test, either. I showed them how to figure out a percentage, explained letter grades and how they corresponded to the percentages and moving on to new material, but then left it to them to guestimate their own success. I didn't do that until they were older, but mine are/were working at NEM (and the rest of their subjects) at the normal age. Having no grades wasn't a problem for the older one because he had community college grades in a few English, math, science, and art classes by the time he applied to college, at least not where he applied. I'm not the only one who has gotten a child into college without homemade grades, either. Just in case this helps. : )

[Nan in Mass]

In case you hadn't noticed and it is helpful: NEM is very nice in that the problems go from easiest to hardest. The starred ones are the hardest. And I've heard that in Singapore, the grading scale is different. The ceiling is higher. You can check the site, I think, to see. This helped give me confidence moving forward when my older, non-math son consistently was getting 1/3 of the problems wrong.

[Reya]

I didn't grade - correct, yes, but grade, no. I didn't test, either. I showed them how to figure out a percentage, explained letter grades and how they corresponded to the percentages and moving on to new material, but then left it to them to guestimate their own success. I didn't do that until they were older, but mine are/were working at NEM (and the rest of their subjects) at the normal age. Having no grades wasn't a problem for the older one because he had community college grades in a few English, math, science, and art classes by the time he applied to college, at least not where he applied. I'm not the only one who has gotten a child into college without homemade grades, either. Just in case this helps. : )

 

I'm def. going to give tests--my DS will need test practice more than most. I'll going to track grades later, too, in case I need them. I make TONS of plans, but not any one track seems to work out the way I envisioned it. This annoys the planner in me but is accepted by the realist!

[Reya]

I saw that on the site!

 

A1: 75% and above

A2: 70% to 74%

B3: 65% to 69%

B4: 60% to 64%

C5: 55% to 59%

C6: 50% to 54% (passing grade)

D7: 45% to 49%

E8: 40% to 44%

F9: Below 40%

 

Right now, I'm not letting him get them wrong. So it CAN'T be properly graded. He's getting them right with varying levels of support. His other math he's doing alone and being allowed to make whatever mistakes he does, thoguh I usually read word problems aloud for him once to make them easier for him to read.

 

It's funny, but he'll do best on 3 and 4 of the first assignment. They involve more thought but less tedious calculations.

[Spy Car]

Yes. I think I wasn't clear. Sorry.

 

I will introduce the others only AFTER we do NEM 1 and he can do the challenge sections, too. :-) I was saying that even if he tore through NEM, we have a lot more material we can do at home.

 

I'm really rusty with my upper maths but fairly comfortable overall.

 

Well, it says in your sig "DS6 kindergarten". But this is quite extraordinary. So I wanted to be sure.

 

What is EMACs?

 

Bill

[Reya]

Well, it says in your sig "DS6 kindergarten". But this is quite extraordinary. So I wanted to be sure.

 

What is EMACs?

 

Bill

 

It's so coooooooooooooooool! ;-)

 

It's IMACs, not EMACs--lil ol dyslexic me always gets it backwards.

 

http://www.eimacs.com/

 

I bought the textbooks and can easily teach the ones I've got so far. We'll see if I run out of skill at some point, though.

[Nan in Mass]

I found the whole testing thing so frustrating. My children could think up several different perfectly correct answers to so many of the questions that I gave up. We worked on the whole answering-a-textbook-question-as-if-you-were-stupid thing much later.

[Reya]

Warm up: He did multidigit multiplication entirely alone today. And did a fast long division to warm him up for the NEM problems.

Main course: Mostly fractions today. Some trivial measuring just for practice. I started out the fractions lesson with a review of what fractions mean and how to compare them.

 

Me: So, if you have a really yummy pie and you can either cut it into 5 pieces and have one or 8 pieces and have one, which would you choose?

 

Him: Eight pieces.

 

Me: (pause) Why is that?

 

Him: So I can share it with more of my FRIENDS!

 

Okay. Sure. :-) He did know which would result in the bigger pieces, and though he had to think about some of the comparisons for a second, he could compare fractions with identical denominators of any value with different numerators and also fractions with different numerators of any value with the same denominators. He can also say what fraction plus a fraction is needed to get a whole and did just leeeetle with equivelent fractions. So, yay! This is the one topic I've felt he doesn't have a firm enough grasp on to succeed in algebra, and he's getting there now.

 

It took him FOR. EVER. because he used crayons to color his answers in--many different colors. And then he had to do allt he ones I didn't assign. And then he had to draw a treasure map which, for symmetry, ended at an X (where there is lots of gold) but started at Jesus' cross. (??? Sounds like a particularly dreadul Da Vinci Code spinoff!) But he was having fun. So I let him be. It took about 1.5 hours. *cross eyes*

 

Dessert: NEM1, Exercise 1.1, problems 2 (4 of 6), 3. We didn't get to 4 but will probably do it in bed. As I expected, he tore through 3. 2 was as hard as I thought it'd be, so that took a looooong time and a LOT of thought for DS. We'll probably do the remaining two problems in 2 this weekend, one per day. We'll see. I have a feeling that he'll demand "snuggle math" at bedtime each night.

[Reya]

I found the whole testing thing so frustrating. My children could think up several different perfectly correct answers to so many of the questions that I gave up. We worked on the whole answering-a-textbook-question-as-if-you-were-stupid thing much later.

 

I'll do it with lessening support as the time goes on, bu with dyslexia/associated HW problems, the practice is important. I don't expect him, at 6, to do a test now deemed too hard for Singaporean 12-year-olds in one sitting!

[Perry]

I'll do it with lessening support as the time goes on, bu with dyslexia/associated HW problems, the practice is important. I don't expect him, at 6, to do a test now deemed too hard for Singaporean 12-year-olds in one sitting!

 

I'm really curious about this. Your 6 year old son reads 200 wpm at a 4th-5th grade level with excellent comprehension, and he is dyslexic? Really?

 

Did you have an evaluation? How did they arrive at that diagnosis? Thanks.

[Reya]

I'm really curious about this. Your 6 year old son reads 200 wpm at a 4th-5th grade level with excellent comprehension, and he is dyslexic? Really?

 

Did you have an evaluation? How did they arrive at that diagnosis? Thanks.

 

He does now. With either excellent OR 0 comprehension. :-)

 

Most of my family is dyslexic, so I don't really need to get it Dx officially to recognize it. My mother was a special ed teacher for more than 20 years; she saw it immediately, too. But I did have him do a standard test for dyslexia (available at donpotter.net), which he initially bombed, without any surprise to me.

 

For many people, dyslexia doesn't have to be a lifelong handicap. It depends on the level of dyslexia and the other tools the child has to compensate, as well as his instruction.

 

I am dyslexic and my reading cruising speed is about 500 WPM. My mother is as well. Her speed is 400 WPM. My brother has more severe dyslexia and a grab-bag of other problems, and he's still struggling at 120-150 WPM, even silently.

 

There are many signs, but I had a feeling that he'd have problems when he was a young as 18 mo and had terrible figure-ground discrimination for his age. A huge discrepancy between reading speed (measured in WCPM) and reading level is a big sign; so are severe problems in going from left to right and an inability to distinguish left from right. (This continues into adulthood for most dyslexics. My mother is a PhD candidate and still much check a birthmark to tell left from right. I must pretend to write, and I really have to think about it before I can address a letter, even!) You CAN be above grade level and dyslexic--it depends on where you would be WITHOUT the dyslexia. As it was, though, he was reading at maybe 45 WCPM on a good day.

 

Neurological dyslexia is a complex condition, and in my family, it occurs in the familiar ADD/CAPD/AS/SI cluster, particularly with boys. I'm incredibly grateful that we dodged autism--my brother is autistic and I have an Asperger's uncle and grandfather--but we got hit with the others pretty hard. (My only male cousin on that side has ADD/SI/dyslexia, too. He goes to a special school for the disabled but is as smart as anything. :-/ It's discouraging to see so much potential wasted.) If I have more kids, I hope they're girls for just that reason. Less chance of the nasty disabilities!

 

Taking a dyslexia remediation approach improved DS's reading so phenomenally well in a mere four months that he almost isn't the same kid anymore. He still has certain problems that he has to "check" himself on differently from a normal reader, and his reading level, because of his language deficits, still doesn't reflect his IQ, but now that he CAN read, he's making up lost ground at a breakneck pace. I think by the time he's in 3rd grade, he'll be almost where he was with reading if didn't have dyslexia.

 

The dysgraphia will take longer. I never overcame mine and actually switched MAJORS because I could not do lab reports by hand--I wasn't physically capable of it. I'm hoping I can get him past where I got stuck. Sadly, his handwriting is at times indistinguishable from mine. And I cannot justly say that his handwriting is very good for his age at all.

Edited March 21, 2009 by Reya

[Reya]

And before you ask how I know he has CAPD problems...

 

First, I could tell. :-) Second, to confirm that the problems were where I tohught they were, I had him evaluated. There was a 4-5 standard deviation difference between most of his functioning and his few areas that he struggles in.

[Storm Bay]

He does now. With either excellent OR 0 comprehension. :-)

 

 

The dysgraphia will take longer. I never overcame mine and actually switched MAJORS because I could not do lab reports by hand--I wasn't physically capable of it. I'm hoping I can get him past where I got stuck. Sadly, his handwriting is at times indistinguishable from mine. And I cannot justly say that his handwriting is very good for his age at all.

 

 

Reya,

 

You've got me thinking. When ds was 5, I did some simple tests to rule out dyslexia because he just wasn't ready to read. He passed them (he could hear phemones, his eye tracking was fine according to his opthomologist, and whatever else we checked on our own was fine. However, my mother, to this day, cannot tell her right from her left, and ds, who is 8.75 stilll writes 3's and C's backward at least half the time. Do you think he could have some mild form of dyslexia we missed? His reading improved 3-4 grade levels within a month or two last fall when we started patching his strong eye, and his comprehension is great. In fact, his comprehension, etc, has always far exceeded his ability to read. He had trouble decoding stories but would be discussing them at length far beyond what he was supposed to be doing at that age.

 

I should add that my mother was speaking prolifically by 12 months (she thought her mother was making it up, but she wasn't--my mother is linguistically brilliant, and that's not her only area of giftedness). She reads like a house on fire, but she does have that right/left problem. Actually, she has ways of remembering--but when we were kids we always had to remember where she was parked. She's developed strategies now because she got tired of being teased (not that I blame her). My dad never has trobule with those things, but gets hopelessly lost in the bush (aka woods) and his hunting buddies used to joke about it.

Edited March 21, 2009 by Karin

[Reya]

Reya,

 

You've got me thinking. When ds was 5, I did some simple tests to rule out dyslexia because he just wasn't ready to read. He passed them (he could hear phemones, his eye tracking was fine according to his opthomologist, and whatever else we checked on our own was fine. However, my mother, to this day, cannot tell her right from her left, and ds, who is 8.75 stilll writes 3's and C's backward at least half the time. Do you think he could have some mild form of dyslexia we missed? His reading improved 3-4 grade levels within a month or two last fall when we started patching his strong eye, and his comprehension is great. In fact, his comprehension, etc, has always far exceeded his ability to read. He had trouble decoding stories but would be discussing them at length far beyond what he was supposed to be doing at that age.

 

I should add that my mother was speaking prolifically by 12 months (she thought her mother was making it up, but she wasn't--my mother is linguistically brilliant, and that's not her only area of giftedness). She reads like a house on fire, but she does have that right/left problem. Actually, she has ways of remembering--but when we were kids we always had to remember where she was parked. She's developed strategies now because she got tired of being teased (not that I blame her). My dad never has trobule with those things, but gets hopelessly lost in the bush (aka woods) and his hunting buddies used to joke about it.

 

Reversals themselves aren't an issue of concern at that age, but the dramatic change with the patching is extremely suggestive! (Dev. opthalmology is somewhat controversial, but the studies seem pretty darned solid to me. I understand the controversy, though; it does resemble some made-up therapies in certain ways. But I still think it's solid.)

 

This goes against the mainstream of dyslexia research, but I really believe that there are two possible types of dyslexia--one is a language processing problem and the other a strictly visual processing problem. We had the second, too--despite the CAPD, it didn't affect that very powerfully. The language processing is more typical of the induced dyslexic, I think, and so there are more of the with today's "balanced literacy" methods.

 

This is, of course, just my hunch. :-)

[Storm Bay]

Reversals themselves aren't an issue of concern at that age, but the dramatic change with the patching is extremely suggestive! (Dev. opthalmology is somewhat controversial, but the studies seem pretty darned solid to me. I understand the controversy, though; it does resemble some made-up therapies in certain ways. But I still think it's solid.)

 

This goes against the mainstream of dyslexia research, but I really believe that there are two possible types of dyslexia--one is a language processing problem and the other a strictly visual processing problem. We had the second, too--despite the CAPD, it didn't affect that very powerfully. The language processing is more typical of the induced dyslexic, I think, and so there are more of the with today's "balanced literacy" methods.

 

This is, of course, just my hunch. :-)

 

 

 

Ds has poor vision, and needs glasses to read. In 2 months his weak eye improved 3-4 lines on his vision test, which is significant, particularly since he needs it most for close work such aas reading.

 

For some reason, I thought reversals were done by 8, but I'm not extremely worried about them since it's only one digit and one letter now, and he is left-handed, which means it's less natural for his hand to do it the correct way.

[Reya]

Ds has poor vision, and needs glasses to read. In 2 months his weak eye improved 3-4 lines on his vision test, which is significant, particularly since he needs it most for close work such aas reading.

 

For some reason, I thought reversals were done by 8, but I'm not extremely worried about them since it's only one digit and one letter now, and he is left-handed, which means it's less natural for his hand to do it the correct way.

I'd worry at 10 for that. But a lot depends also on handwriting program! I'd worry sooner w/some and later with others.

 

Whatever you're doing, though, sounds like it's working great!

[Reya]

This was a weekend, so no "school work," of course. DS discovered a game DD loved ("racing" her across the kitchen in the high chair), so I let them play it a little later than I should have. The change in DD these past few days with her discovery that her brother is actually pretty interesting has been enormously welcome! I no longer feel half so stressed. And now that her fluke of forward creeping seems to be REALLY developing into some real forward locomotion, I feel the end is in sight.

 

DS asked for both "snuggle math" and Latin, but he was in no fit state to listen to anything. He was exhausted and wired. His brain and ears had gotten largely unhooked--the brain still spins, but the cogs don't engage. (This is part of his CAPD.)

 

I gave Exercise 1.1 #4 a try, but he couldn't understand anything at all--as in, couldn't maintain enough focus to even repeat back three words in order. It was so bad that when DD spit up and I asked for "a cloth diaper in the basket on the bookshelf in her bedroom," he raided the dirty diaper bag and gave me a poopy disposable instead....and yes, he knows what the cloth diapers are and has gotten them before, and he's usually a very sensible child! So I tried to call it quits, and he burst into hysterical tears, and I threw up my hands and told him that I'd do a different section and we'd come back to the remaining problems in section 1 when he'd slept.

 

So we jumped to Section 1.2 and did thru Class Activity 2 and the lesson (but no examples) for Combined Operations.

 

I had to translate some of the phases ("exceed," "24 folds," etc.), and DS was more than a little slap happy, but he buzzed through the multidigit multiplication and got all the right answers except for one, which was, again, CAPD-related, so I'm not concerned. The division problem I stepped in on in the second part. I wanted to encourage him to do his work thoughtfully and knew he wasn't to that level yet and that he'd try trial and error. He'd gotten to 192/24.

 

Me: "What number that is easy to multiply is 24 close to?" He was stumped, so I added, "It's the value of a coin."

 

His face lit up, and he said "25!"

 

"And what is 192 close to?"

 

"I don't...200!" He started to laugh as he got it. "Do you know what? 200/25=8. Because it's 24, all you have to do is sutract the one, so that's 200-8, which is 192!" he said all in a rush.

 

I have literally never seen him so happy as when he makes discoveries like that.

 

I got him to forget about Latin by pretending I forgot. He WAS tired because I got away with it. I can't think of the last time that's happened, and I try it any time I think he's overtired. He was out cold within 30 seconds of his head hitting his pillow, his words about why he should be allowed to read in bed slurring as he sank down, fighting it all the way.

 

Exercise 1.2 ought to be great practice for his math facts. I hope I can cajole him into doing all of them, since they're pretty repetitive. (I refuse to force him to do any of this.) Dog and pony show, here we come...

 

I'm feeling more comfortable with this path now. DS loves it and seems to catch on faster than most of the high schoolers I've tutored. I've talked to a "math geek" type who, upon my presenting the problem, launched instantly into a lecture about what kind of solution I should have--which matched, in characteristics, exactly the one I'd already chosen! So he was tickled pink about the solution, and I was tickled pink that he was tickled pink, and I let out a big breath of air.

 

*whew*

 

My mother, another math geek, wanted to know where he already was. I read off some of the recent problems he'd worked, and she impressed and was for it, too. Math geek #1 tends to be antiauthoritarian just for the sake of it and could be guaranteed to take DS's side; my mother is getting her PhD in Ed Psych, "inside the system," so she's the institutional-thinking skeptic. With both of them backing the decision, I feel like I can r-e-l-a-x a bit more.

Edited March 22, 2009 by Reya

[Reya]

Another flaky, exhausted day! He played HARD Sun afternoon.

 

DS did problem 4 of 1.1--which he whipped through, like I thought he should. He got (b) wrong the first time and had to rethink it, which was pretty cool to watch.

 

Then he did problem 1 of Exercise 1.2, parts a & b. Trying to impress upon him the importance of showing your work is going to take a while--showing your work even for your own good, not even for someone else's benefit. He wants to do more steps than he can handle at once. :tongue_smilie:

 

After that, it was BEDTIME!

[Nan in Mass]

Showing work was THE hardest part of NEM1 for my children, and both mine struggled in lots of other places. Up until then, they could get away with doing most of the work in their head.

[Reya]

Showing work was THE hardest part of NEM1 for my children, and both mine struggled in lots of other places. Up until then, they could get away with doing most of the work in their head.

 

Yep, and I let him, since there is no grid on the 1-6th workbooks! :-) I know it'll take time, and I'm not freaking out about it or anything. But I am going, "See? That's why you should WRITE it!"

 

(I've fixed my sig line to reflect what I'm REALLY teaching, not what I was or wish I were....)

[Reya]

Today, we car- and grocery-cart-schooled. We started at Wal-mart for monthly shopping and Easter photos. Then we headed to the grocery store, and then DS' saved up money was burning a hole in his pocket so we his Best Buy (no luck...), and finally I picked up my new glasses--YAY!!!! We haven't gotten to "snuggle math" yet--will update when we do.

 

Warm up: I taught him this out of order again. I knew we'd have more fractions in rthe "main course" so I waited until it was over, then I taught him about equivalent fractions, taking the case of what unit fractions are equivalent to. I will teach fractions that cannot be reduced to unit fractions (that is, 1/n) later. He got it, though it took 15 min or so until he was really comfortable.

Main course: Some measurement (volume and distance) and some fractions. Volume was new, everything else was challenge work. Whipped through, though distracted mightily by shopping.

 

EDIT:

Dessert: He did the rest of Exercise 1.2 1 (4 problems) and part of 2 (2 problems). Nothing of substance to report. Most things he did the short, correct way. But he did 8*32/16 the long way, and after he finished I showed him why you didn't have to calculate 256/32 and could know it was 16, instead. I may later teach him the modified order of operations, though I'd like him to figure it out himself--that is, you can always divide out of order, but you can't multiply something that's dividing into something else, and you can add and subtract any time you like as long as you don't touch anything that's multiplying or dividing something else. For once, though the excessive number of practice problems are worth something! They're just aobut the right number for him now.

Edited March 24, 2009 by Reya

[Reya]

Darn it. This should be Day 8, shouldn't it?

 

I'll edit this again tomorrow for dessert.

 

DS was good today except for spelling. He finds it boring but isn't very good at it, so he needs the practice. *makes face* We've tried two programs, and he likes this one better (SWO), so we're sticking with it for the foreseeable future, no matter how he whines.

Warm up: Repeat of yesterday.

 

Main course: He did fine. New volume work, some challenging area work, and time again. He tried to tell me he didn't remember how to do time today, and I'm starting to get the suspicion that he can do it fine and just doesn't want to, so I told him that I wasn't going to help and if he didn't figure it out, he'd have to sit there and stare at it instead of playing with his friend. Once he decided I really meant it, he whipped through fine.

 

Grrrrr.

 

Dessert: Rather than progress in NEM 1, I convinced him to let me do more fractions with him--the big thing he's missing before he's cool with algebra. Last time, we found fractions equivalent to unit fractions; this time, we took fractions and reduced them to unit fractions. It's finally clicked for him. I think, and we're going to take a break with this and go back to NEM, which I'll feel a LOT more comfortable with now.

 

Quote of the day: "I hate regular math."--that is, 3rd grade math that I'm still making him do. "I only like snuggle math"--what he calls algebra.

Edited March 25, 2009 by Reya

[Reya]

DS slept 12 hrs last night, lurched around like a zombie for an hour, then went back down for another hour. So I declared it a no-school day. He did some "fun math", and that was it:

 

NEM 1 Exercise 1.2 2 (c,d,e,f), 3, and part of 4.

 

He can now write all his work without reminding! Yay! (This is a brand new skill.) He's also double-underlining his answer.

 

For those who don't know, NEM numbers their problems by type, and each problem of that type is lettered. So he did 10 problems today. :-)

 

He's a lot faster when we do this when he's fresh, and I'm thinking that it might be a good wake-me-up to move it to first thing in the day. We're both not morning people (unlike DD).

 

This section's taking longer than anything else in chapter 1 will.

[Reya]

Day 10

 

Warm up: We did some talking about squares and exponents and square roots. I forget why this came up, but it was part of something else. We discussed irrational, rational, integer, whole, and natural numbers.

Main course: DS was a pain about his time worksheets again today. I lay down the law--NO HELP, and if he couldn't finish it by X time, no Latin tonight. He finished it in record time! Twerpy kid. He was doing badly because he didn't like it, and I was assigning more because he was doing badly...and...and...

Dessert: Too tired for math! I sent him to bed--he was up sick in the night, so I guess that's why he was a pain yesterday and so tired at bedtime.

Edited March 28, 2009 by Reya

[Reya]

Warm up: None

 

Main Course: Time and graphing. Did fine.

Dessert: We all went out to a ballroom dance, so we got home really late. Nevertheless, Latin and math were begged for. I spent only a very short time on it. He finished 4 and did part of 5. He's getting faster with long division and getting better strategies for multidigit multiplication.

[nmoira]

Reya, I've been following this thread with interest. I'm wondering why you're using two arithmetic programs -- Right Start and Primary Maths -- and if you've been allowing him to test out of topics or if you're covering everything? How much have you been compacting as opposed to working through at an accelerated pace? Are you using IP/CWP?

 

I'm in a place with DD the Elder that she's not getting enough new material per level in Singapore. She's loving LoF: Fractions (we've been down almost two weeks with the flu, and on all but her sickest days she was begging to do LoF and was not happy that I demurred), and I may or may not move her right into Decimals and Percents. I'm considering then compacting Primary Maths to give her bigger doses of new material because I'm not in a tremendous rush to get into Algebra. (Though on the other hand, after Algebra, the world opens up and she can do all sorts of cool things rather than just race to Calculus.) Much of it will duplicate material in LoF, but I'll have her do at least the Challenging Problems in those sections. The geometry should be interesting... though I'm also considering Right Start Geometry (I'll have to look closely at this though, because she did *not* like Right Start), in which case I'd probably jettison much of Primary Maths. Sorry, just musing "out loud."

[Reya]

Good questions! :-)

 

We WERE just straight accelerating RS and then compacting Sing's IP and CWP. Now, we're dramatically compacting both and will ditch CWP (since IP has these, too). We're not using the Sing textbook at all, either.

 

There are a number of things that he won't get again until later in science--and that will be to use, so it needs to be easy and automatic by that point. For example, weights, volumes, time, etc. This is his last chance for him to get it before he's supposed to have it down. Science shouldn't be made harder because he didn't get the math he should have in 4th grade.

 

DS also still needs speed with his facts and, more than anything he needs the "thinking" problems in both RS and Sing IP. He can find any calculation (x*7=x*5+x*2, or x*9=x*10-x, or x*5=x*10/2, etc.) but he's SLOW.

 

I probably sound overly anal in believing in the importance of being fast, but there really is a good reason! It's all about overhead. You have X amount of processing power, period. If you have to use 20% of it for basic calculations, that's fine...until you start doing something that you actually have to think about. And then you flounder.

 

This is what I ran into in DifEq--not basic calculations, but I didn't do more than the bare minimum and didn't come to class and just stepped through the problems because I hated the course. I understood everything, but I developed no reflexes or automaticity on the various strategies. Now, I got lucky--some genius had the bright idea of making a multiple choice final, and if you have taken DifEq, it should take about three seconds to realize why this is hilarious--BUT that could have disatrous, and more to the point, I didn't take away fromt he course what I should have. It could have happened at any point inmy math career if I'd taken the same "yeah, whatever" approach. If you THINK about what you're doing, really analyze it and develop automaticity, you never have that problem. That's why I don't want him plunging ahead at highest conceptual speed. I also believe strongly that I should never present an algorithm for a problem that a child hasn't developed his or her own strategy to solve. I insist on intuitive solutions first, because otherwise, you might as well be doing an incantation--and I want him tpo have practiced his own solution, too, so the goal gets ingrained.

 

Because of DS' ADD issues, LoF would probably be a very bad match. He'd get so distracted by the story that he couldn't pay attention to the meat of it. Sing., even IP, is repetitive from year to year, but with dramatic condensing, it doesn't have to be.

 

Right now, we've taken a pause to do some other challenge work, but we should be done with Grade 3 math in 8 weeks. Grade 4 should take a similar amount of time--a bit less--and 5 and 6 should take substantially less. (IP problems get repetitive, too, in type, with the numbers often just getting bigger after 2.)

 

DS, of course, thinks I'm a big party pooper. :-) I have NO idea why what he's doing now in NEM 1 is more fun than his other assignments, though!

 

Sorry to be so long.

 

LoF would prolly be a great alternative for many kids!

[Spy Car]

Did you ever look at MEP?