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Math retention
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We are going through a major math struggle, well it has been ongoing for a while. The difference is that now we are behind (yes there is such a thing as being behind!) and need to get ready for high school. We decided to send my son to a private school for high school in the fall. It is a small school, it will be much like homeschooling. He is really ready to be with other kids. He technically would need to be done with Pre-Algebra (well the math teacher said we should get to lesson 14 with MUS) and we didn’t even start. We are still in the Decimals. We are doing 6 pages/day. It is pretty long and tedious. The main problem is that he does not retain barely anything. He keeps telling me “you never explained this to me before” for things we went over already 20 times. Sometimes it is really hard to keep my patience. We completed all the fractions book and I always make sure he doesn’t have too many mistakes before moving on (hence the reason we are so behind) and he already forgot all about how to use them. I need to remind him all the time how to do practically everything. He doesn’t retain how to find the area or perimeter of anything. He seems to have his math facts down, rarely makes mistakes because of that but everything else does not seem to stick. Now I am hoping that with a different teacher things will be better and we will be working with a tutor this summer also. I am just wondering if anyone has tricks to share that would help with his memory. Is it worth trying things like Gotu Kola or essential oils, maybe homeopathy ? Or he just needs to have a break through?
While I do not have a son that age or at that level, my son age 11 has always had his share of math struggles. What I have found to work best for him is a program with lots of review problems, so they are seeing stuff from their prior lessons daily or at least every other day in their math work. I have found CLE Sunrise light units have this daily review he needs. It is a spiral program. I am not saying you should switch to that, but maybe he needs something with lots of daily review problems – of various types – not all one page of the same kind of problems. If my son does not see it regularly enough, he tends to forget it and we have to go back and cover that again.
It is a little late to change program. That is actually part of what put us behind, we switched to LOF for a while and it did not help at all, that is when I realized he really needed the reps. Maybe going back something with more reps would have been better but I do really like MUS. I think the problem is w/him, there is some kind of block, just hoping for a way to unlock it! Maybe I just need to pray!
What about having him reteach the concept to you (or to someone) the next day? That works to cement things in the brain. You have to KNOW the concept to be able to teach it. If he has an issue reteaching it to you, then you know you did not get through to him.
You could also do a review sheet on your own. Pull a problem or two from the last several concepts and see how well he does with them. If he has an issue with something, give him a couple review problems (in addition to his regular worksheet) until he seems to have that concept down.
Something that helps my daughter is keeping a math journal. Sometimes I ask her to copy one of the new types of problems in it.
Or to make up her own quiz- she must create the problems and work them to find the correct answer and to come up w/ multiple choice answers (so she has to figure out possible mistakes and what answers would result). That’s actually really hard to do, so I only ask her to make upt 5 problems or so….and I use that sparingly, like every 2 or 3 weeks or so, depending on the trouble she’s having.
I did not mean for you to switch programs now. My point was that he may need some kind of regular review added in to what you are using. I like the math journal idea, too.
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