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tovlo4801
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| Posted: March 16 2005 at 10:30am | IP Logged
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I'm nearing the end of my 2nd year of hs my 11 yo ds. When we began he was very behind in math. I gave him a standardized test in the fall when we began, just to see where he was at. He was doing well above grade level in every subject except Math. He was in the 30th percentile in math. We used a curriculuum provider who recommended MUS. They suggested that we go back to the very beginning and start over with math. So we did and I agree that it was a wise decision because he did not know even simple addition and subtraction facts well. We've added Calculadder and Learning Wrap-ups as well as regular flashcard drills to our math day to improve his math fact mastery, but he still is quite slow with his facts even after two years of working on it. He is nearing the end of 5th grade and we are still in the multiplication sections of the program. We have not even begun to cover division or fractions or decimals. He's taking standardized tests again this week and I'm certain they will be bad because they cover many subjects he's never even been exposed to. My question is should I continue on this course of slowly working through the levels until he has mastery even if he is constantly 2-3 grade levels behind or should I be seeking outside help to bring him up to grade level? I talked with someone I know who has her child in a tutoring situation. Her daughter goes to the tutor for 6 hours a week. When I heard that I wondered if it even made sense to spend the money on a tutor (money we don't have BTW). If I spent an extra 6 hours a week with my son could I accomplish the same thing? The concern I have with that is that we already spend an hour + at the beginning of each day on math and I worry that I'll burn him out if we add on even more hours of math each week. What do you guys suggest?
God Bless,
Richelle
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Leonie
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| Posted: March 27 2005 at 6:29pm | IP Logged
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Rochelle,
I, personally, would not spend any more time on formal maths each day. There is a danger of over saturation, iykwim?
Can you work on maths facts for a short time each day, alongside progressing onto other maths topics? Perhaps spend a short time with maths facts and then work on new topics - so you are covering topics while keeping up with learning basic facts.
Also, be aware of maths opportunities throughout the day and use these to build maths knowledge/skills and for retention of maths facts.
One thing I do is do my own maths thinking out loud - when I am at the grocery store or cooking or doing the budget. The dc hear my maths thinking and processes.
Cook together, perhaps, or play board or card games, work on estimation of prices at the grocery store, do origami ( good for fractions) - iow, look for maths opportunities in your every day life. Your ds will be gaining extra maths time and more mathematical experiences via these other, casual activites.
The maths links I posted earlier, at the start of this section on the board, has some links that may help.
I think that working on daily maths facts alongside new topics and integrating maths into other areas may be of help in "catching up".
HTH!
Leonie in Sydney, Australia
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lilac hill
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| Posted: March 28 2005 at 9:39am | IP Logged
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All three of our girls have been slow to learn their math facts. With DD#2 we did go back a level in MUS and then moved forward to catch her up to grade level. DD#3 was younger so we did start with Foundations and moved quickly to make sure we had all the MUS concepts.
Because I was worried about not covering the new math concepts I split math into 2 subjects, almost. The girls did calculations with drill sheets and calculadders, and then they did MUS with a calculator. DD#1 is now a senior and has done fine in high school. I believe she finally learned those facts! DD#3 seems to be much stronger in her multiplication facts now that we are doing division.
I know that this is not the standard way of doing things but I did want them to move forward. It was boring to only do fact practice.
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Viv
Wife to Rick (7/83), Mom to dd#1(6/87), dd#2(1/90), and dd#3(6/94) in central PA.
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tovlo4801
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| Posted: March 28 2005 at 10:06am | IP Logged
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Leonie wrote:
Can you work on maths facts for a short time each day, alongside progressing onto other maths topics? Perhaps spend a short time with maths facts and then work on new topics - so you are covering topics while keeping up with learning basic facts. |
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Leonie,
Thank you for your words! I had given up on getting any advice for this one. 
I think that I might not have been very clear in my original post. Our math time is already structured like this. We spend 5-10 minutes at the beginning of our time going through a Calculadder exercise. Then we spend the bulk of the lesson moving through new subjects from MUS and we finish up with a speed drill of learning wrap-ups or flashcards of facts that he's familiar with, but needs to improve his mastery of. We are in multi-digit multiplication in the MUS program, but we're still slogging through simple addition and subtraction in calculadder for fact mastery. So we're behind not only in mastering math facts, but also in new material. His limited fact mastery is keeping down his ability to move more quickly through the MUS program, I think. He spends a great deal of time trying to work through the problems and generally it isn't that he can't perform the math or doesn't understand it. It's generally that it takes him so long to get the facts in the problem worked through.
I think he's progressing at a comfortable rate through the MUS program now, but not at a fast enough pace to "make up" the ground that we've missed by needing to start all over in 4th grade. I expect that we'll continue to move through the material at about this pace. I certainly don't want to push him through material, since I suspect that approach in school is part of what got us into this mess.
I guess I'm looking for reassurance that it's just fine if he's consistently behind grade level as long as he's moving forward at a comfortable pace. On the other hand, if consistently being behind grade level in math for an otherwise intelligent child isn't normal, then I'm looking for someone to bluntly tell me this and guide me in the direction needed to improve the situation. I guess I'm just insecure as a teacher assessing what is best for him right now. I know one of the benefits of homeschooling is that you can work at your child's pace, but frankly it's a lot more pleasant to think of that pace as being ahead of the game, not significantly behind! I don't want to be ignorantly plugging along when he really needs help that I'm not giving to him.
Your advice about including him in my own mental math activities is excellent. I'd been advised at one point to create a more math-rich environment, but honestly I just didn't know how to go about that! Your advice is very simple (almost a duh!!), but a perfect way to work on creating that environment with little effort. I'm going to try working on doing this. I also dug up that math link you referred to. I think it's a wonderful place to begin to play with math. Thank you so much for taking the time to offer some advice.
God Bless,
Richelle
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tovlo4801
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| Posted: March 28 2005 at 10:12am | IP Logged
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lilac hill wrote:
| The girls did calculations with drill sheets and calculadders, and then they did MUS with a calculator. |
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Weird!! As I was writing my reply to Leonie, I was thinking about the fact that ds struggles with the math facts in our learning of new material and it just popped into my head that maybe I could move him through new material more quickly if I allowed him to use a calculator on the facts of the problem. Then I saw your post. Perhaps God is talking to me? 
How did you actually implement this? I haven't thought this through very clearly yet, but my instinct is that he'd just punch in the problem and not actually work it? Can you fill me in on the details of how you did this?
God Bless,
Richelle
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lilac hill
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| Posted: March 28 2005 at 12:15pm | IP Logged
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The beginning of math was 10 minutes of drill work. Calculadders, homemade sheets, or something I found on the internet.
For the bookwork the girls just had a calculator to work with as they pleased.Maggie and Laurea were in middle school when we did this,so it was beyond the initial fact learning phase.
Since Laurea is an especially visual learner, the calculator reinforced her facts. She still needed to know how to solve word problems, area, volume and others and as we moved to Algebra she needed to know how to solve for the unknown.The girls did just punch in some problems but since I wanted to see the work they had to break down each problem. For example;23x35. They needed to show the 5x23 then the 30x23. I expected the regroupiong to be show too so it was more than plugging in the numbers. Maggie and Laurea, came to homeschooling in 7th and 4th grades and they both had many troubles in the subject so we were reteaching and building confidence for years.
Brigid, my present 4th grader does not use the calculator but without absolute mastery she has moved onto the division book.
I worried about their speed in testing situations too but somehow Maggie has had enough speed on the SAT's and other standardized tests. Did you know they use a calculator on the SAT's? When I found that out I felt less frantic.
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Viv
Wife to Rick (7/83), Mom to dd#1(6/87), dd#2(1/90), and dd#3(6/94) in central PA.
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cathhomeschool
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| Posted: March 28 2005 at 3:50pm | IP Logged
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My son is also very "behind" in memorizing his facts. It does slow him down when working the MUS problems, but we continue to move along in the book anyway. If the page or test has a lot of problems on it and I think it will be too much, I just give him half the page. He has a separate drill time every day (using TurboTwist Math) to practice addition and mult. facts. Using a calculator had never occurred to me either!
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Janette (4 boys - 22, 21, 15, 14)
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Leonie
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| Posted: March 28 2005 at 8:08pm | IP Logged
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I think using a calculator is a great idea - I was going to suggestit, then was glad to see someone else already had!
While your ds is learning his maths fact, it is a pity to hold back his other mathematical concepts, or to make it more hard slog. The calculator should help a lot!
Leonie in Sydney
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julia s.
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| Posted: March 28 2005 at 11:11pm | IP Logged
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You might want to check out the book Upside-down Brilliance by Linda Kreger Silverman, Ph.D. She talks about the visual-spacial learner and why learning the basic math facts are so difficult for some people. And that actually the more complicated math would be easier for these people then the math computation part. I'm sorry it is late and I can't remember more about this, but you can go to www.visualspatial.org (sorry do not know how to do links) to get more info.
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julia
married to love of her life
with ds12 ds8 ds3 and ds1
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tovlo4801
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julia s. wrote:
| You might want to check out the book Upside-down Brilliance by Linda Kreger Silverman, Ph.D. She talks about the visual-spacial learner and why learning the basic math facts are so difficult for some people. And that actually the more complicated math would be easier for these people then the math computation part. |
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That sounds very interesting! I'm going check into that. It would make sense because my husband and I were both that way. We both struggled with math until upper level grades. I did well with the higher level ideas in a math saturated field (accounting), but still can't add up a row of numbers correctly more than 1/2 of the time.  Knowing this gives my son a lot of hope that he'll spring into math brilliance at some later date. Sounds like this book might reinforce this idea. Thanks for the suggestion.
God Bless,
Richelle
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julia s.
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It really helped me with my son and now I don't sweat the small stuff in math with him. I just have him do more challenging problems that will use more of his brain (her theory is that if the problem is too simple then only the left side of the brain is stimulated and since visual spatial learners [vsl] use the right side they need more complicated work to engage the right side -- everyone has this to some degree and everyone's degree is different)and he excels at learning this way. The math facts just happen because he needs to use them to figure out what he needs. Now having said this I'm not into multiplication or division -- so time will tell with that  .
Actully, CM's way of learning is right for these vsl's because of the use of narration which forces the child to picture what is being read to them (they think in pictures) and tell it back; and also by the use of ideas as the motivating force behind the choice of books, etc...
HTH.
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julia
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momtomany
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| Posted: March 31 2005 at 5:22pm | IP Logged
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Wow, God must have guided me to this thread! I've hardly ever looked here, but just randomly surfing after a very frustrating day with my son and his math work has me feeling much better. My son is special needs with some short term memory issues. He is very bad on his math facts too, though some days he suprises me. I've always thought that down the road he would be using a calculator, but somehow thought it would be cheating right now. He does have a calculator and uses it for certain lessons,(MCP Math) and loves it. I think that I will try it more often. Good point about being allowed to use it for the SAT's!! I will also be checking out the Visual Spatial info!
Thanks everyone!
I'm feeling better.
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Mary Ann in PA
wife to MIchael, mom to Elizabeth, Becca, Tim, Peter, Andrew, Sarah, Matthew, John, Leah and Joseph
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4Real Forums : Living and Loving Numbers
Topic: how to handle being behind grade level
