My daughter will be going into the 8th grade next year and right now she is doing Horizon Pre-Algebra and she is doing OK with it. But I'm afraid to do full Algebra with her next year because she may not still understand it. Need some advice and was wondering what math book to use. I have been checking into Math-U-See or even Teaching Textbooks. Any suggestions will be great. I don't want her to go on if she is having trouble with pre-algebra.
Does she do well with the spiral approach and does constant review help her? If so I really like Saxon for the high school years. There is constant review and reinforcement of earlier studied concepts. You could have her do the Saxon placement test and that will tell you where she would fit in the program, either at a pre-algebra or an algebra book.
I LOVE teaching textbooks too, especially for the higher grades. Math used to be a huge fight every day when they had math books. Now, they love math and they rarely, if ever, argue about doing math now. Plus, there aren't any lessons to teach or papers to grade. It is great.
Let her continue with Horizon if that is working for her. You can also add some online math. Free online math http://interactmath.com/ChapterContents.aspx This program does the grading for you.
Is she really struggling or are you worried about it? The Horizons Algebra looks pretty straight forward and if Horizons is working for her - I would stick with it.
Yes, she really struggles with Horizon Math. I need something that I know she is going to understand and that I can teach her. I see alot of your comments was Teaching Textbooks, so maybe I will check into them and see.
We are currently using TT and my daughter is a struggling math student. Next year she will be using their Pre Algebra course. I like the program and she's understanding what is being taught. The game plan is to use TT until the end of it's courses.
Help! 8th grade math Homeschooler6, thanks for your imput. May I ask what grade your daughter is in. I have been searching the teaching textbooks today and I do like what I see. I think she will like them because they seem like they explain the problems to you.
Thanks homeschooler06. I did some searching today in TT and I do believe my daughter will understand that better. I like they way they explain the problems and you can see how to get the problems done. Any other suggestion will be taken.
She is in 7th grade. We used MUS prior and it my husband said it took too long per book. Long division was a nightmare for her. Now that we are doing spiral it pushes her more to learn it even it we sometimes take an extra day for a lesson or extra self work on the board to help understand it. If she gets under 90% she has to repeat the lesson but now I have I started to just let her redo the problem in the workbook and we do the problems together instead of redoing the whole lessons again. This summer I am taking her Pre Algebra with me and complete the program myself. I may be doing that for future math as well.
TT is AWESOME for a struggler. They do a great job explaining the hows and whys of math... which is what I think is the most important part of math. My oldest didn't struggle with math, but he didn't like it either. We switched him to TT in gosh 4th or 5th grade and he began to love math. Now that he is in a public school, and not using TT any longer he once again hates math... he has even began to struggle with it because it's not being explained as clearly as TT did.
Ah. So Horizons ISN'T working. Then do look into TT. One advantage is that the teacher doesn't need to know ANYTHING about the subject; it's written on the assumption that no one around is able to help the student. And that's VERY important in my house, considering Rachael went all the way through Calculus, and I've only had through Geometry, lol! TT is designed for a student to read the text and/or listen to the lecture. This allows for children with different learning styles. Rachael would read the book exclusively, but if she was still having a hard time at the end of the chapter, she would re-do the chapter, this time listening to the lectures, before taking the test. Also, EVERY SINGLE PROBLEM is explained step by step on the Answers CD. So if you have trouble with problem 17 in lesson12, you can go directly to that problem and they will tell exactly how to do it.
