Jon liked our Khan Academy plan to venture through their program, however, the software doesn’t seem to put you on a clear path. If he passed through quickly, I had to come every 5-10 minutes to let him know where to go next. Not fun for either of us. After two weeks he was quite sure that he does not like entering his math answers on line. He’s held this line for a couple of years of reviewing online math programs. I think I’ll take his word for it now as solid.
I am going to use the order of Teaching Textbooks – with the videos of Saxon 7/6. Writing down the groups of skills, I have grouped all of the exercises together in a more Masterly based approach.
For Fractions and Primes, for instance, We’ll start back track to lesson 55 and 56. Complete the mental math at the beginning of the lesson, and the really focus in on the DIVE video and Lesson introduction in the book. We’ll be doing the practice problem set, looking for 100 percent correct. If time is allowed in the 40ish minute time frame, we’ll work on 5 or so practice problems from the lesson.
Like Khan, and America’s Math Teacher and many others we’ll focus the day on building the skills in a mastery approach with less focus on spending 40 minutes practicing a spiral of the year’s worth of information. Really, when else do we do this? With History? Do we spend 5 minutes on Greek Studies and then 45 minutes alone reviewing every history fact from the year? Biology? 5 minutes in a video lesson and then 45 minutes reviewing all of the points for the year? Anything else? If I learn to make a new cookie recipe do I spend 45 minutes researching hams, breads, candies, and vegetables? No. If I need to make bread, I can quickly look at that recipe and tips. Such is life. Why is it different in math?
I have the plans pulled out, will spend a little time making lesson plans typed out so Jon can know each day what is expected, and we’ll journey on through the rest of the year.
Maybe now y’all won’t have to skim your reader and email hearing me chat about math struggles. Ha!
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We use Khan Academy to help with basic understanding and reviews of things we work on in the book. I printed out a list of the things we would be working on from allinonehomeschool.wordpress.com and then I grouped them so that they flowed with our textbook.
Which Textbook do you use Carie? I just pulled out all of the saxon 7/6 topics for lessons 60-120, put them in a spread sheet, and put them in order of Teach Textbooks topics. For the first time since about November I feel like we have a plan. We may use Khan to cover those topics, or any number of our math resources, most likely the DIVE cd and saxon workbook.
Its a book called Fundamentals of Geometry and Algebra. We picked it up at a thrift store. It is a very good textbook. Because we started homeschooling part way through the year, we have been just picking up textbooks as we go. We will be attending the homeschool convention in March for the first time and I think we will find some good curriculum material for next year.