Math-u-See, we need more review OR Teaching Textbooks, we need more practice

This may sound odd, but I have had my son go back through whole lessons/chapters at times (TTPreA) because of gaps from earlier math programs.  He likes the TT set up and it works well for him.  It’s “usually” more to do with his concentration than actually not understanding/remembering how to work a problem.  That said, I had him run through xtramath.org on multiplication/division facts a few chapters into PreA because he was complaining that it was taking so long.  That helped.  Fractions slowed him down as he hadn’t had enough practice prior to TT (read long 3 month summer break….WHY!?!?)  So, he worked the problems over and over.  Listened to a couple of lessons over and over.  “Taught” to me a few times and had an “AHA” moment one afternoon when Dad taught him some trick that, of course, I don’t understand.  Heh.

Our older kids used Saxon with the Robinson Curriculum for quite a while.  Our family learned about oral self-teaching.  It works great (when you remember to have them do it).  This is where they find a quiet spot and pretend to teach a class the lesson at hand.  It forces them to say things out loud and concentrate on steps.  Might be worth a shot.  Son using TTPreA has done that, too, but mainly by “teaching” me. 

Maybe some help, I hope.

We really like TT! My dh is a math professor, and he likes the spiral approach. He says too many public school students do not get enough review! You were asking about what do you do for more practice. Since TT is a spiral approach, there’s lots of practice, albeit it may come in later lessons. So if you didn’t quite understand it in previous lessons, it appears again! You can also go back and redo lessons. And in the lessons themselves, lots of problems are given. There is also a workbook that corresponds w/ the lessons. Other than that, if they are having a problem with understanding something, then I will come in beside them and work the problems through. We have also used Khan as well as online games.  

Christie, the title of your post was bang-on for me just about 1 year ago, with DS10 and DS9.  Then I read your details and started nodding even more!  I will share my experience….we are an enthusiastic TT family now and life has NEVER been better!

What you are saying about your MUS experience is exactly what I was going through.  In theory I LOVED (still love) the idea of a mastery based program; I had heard such wonderful things about MUS and yet just couldn’t get over the fact that we had several instances of stuff not “sticking”, particularly for my DS9.  I don’t know if it was due to lack of review or just the lack of ability to connect with the way the concept was being taught, but it was frustrating to depart for a little while from something we’d “mastered” only to come back a month or two later with a deer-in-the-headlights look.  I also loathed the fact that I was having to watch the DVD several times myself in order to “get” the way Mr. Demme was teaching in order to offer support.  I often had an “ah ha” moment once I got it, but it was an extra step that really began to weigh on my time and patience.

We moved to TT almost a year ago and we could not be happier with the change.  The tutor approach is fantastic.  Math concepts are explained to make things VERY clear and simple.  We have gone through TT3 through TT5 and I have not heard “but I don’t get it” even ONCE.  Even if your child happens to have a moment of blanking out during the 5 minute lecture, it’s as simple as pulling back the scroll button to hear/see it again on the computer screen.  And of course, the most brilliant part of all is the fact that the student gets the “see how it’s done” mini-tutorial right at the very moment he’s made the mistake; when the child makes an error they don’t get to just throw it aside…the issue or the gap they have on that concept is dealt with immediately.  I think this feature has made all the difference for my kids.  The gaps have completely disappeared.

Okay, now to address your question above on new concepts….that there may not be enough practise on new concepts once they are introduced.  I worried about this at first, too.  If you are watching the produce demo’s I can see where you may have this concern as it would be appear that when a new concept is introduced the child gets only 5 practise questions (A through E) before the main lesson begins.  You can’t really look at the practise of the new concept as being limited to this first set of practise questions though.  This program REALLY spirals.  The child continues the practise of the new concept again the next day and the next, though it might be appearing in the “main lesson” (numbered) section of the lesson.  So, while a new concept is introduced, let’s say, in lesson 10 lecture, and is practised in lesson 10 questions A through E, that same skill/concept is put to the student again in lesson 11 questions 1-5, lesson 12 questions 1-5, lesson 13 questions 1-4, lesson 14 question 1-4, lesson 15 question 1-3… you get the idea.  The amount of practise depends on the complexity of the concept … it varies, but I can assure you the student IS getting a lot of practise, sometimes for weeks of even months at a time.  My testimony on this is pretty enthusiastic because while my DS10 is naturally stronger in math, DS9 is less so, and this program is working brilliantly for both of them.  Even DS9 is retaining, has no gaps, and has been scoring in the 90s almost daily for the past year!  This tells me that despite what I might worry about in terms of practise, or amount of drill – clearly the program has been designed well, and has the bases covered for long term retention and true understanding of concepts.

All this said, I am kind of a cover-all-bases TWICE sort of person.  (leftover trauma from my own childhood math struggles!!)  We have used a few resources for extra practise, but in truth this is more for my own piece of mind versus any evidence of a gap or serious need.  We have used xtramath for math facts drill, along with cardboard flashcards and most recently the Flashmaster handheld gizmo which covers addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.  We also use a series called Focus on Problem Solving (a Cathy Duffy recommendation).  I went ahead with this series (short booklets, 1 page 2-3x per week) because I liked the fact that although it’s just a workbook, every page has a little teaching section/commentary explaining HOW to break down word problems into a set-by-set process.  I do own another short booklet series called Key to Fractions, Key to Decimals, Key to Percentages which I’ve not yet had to use but have in my back pocket so to speak in case we run into “but-I-don’t-get-it” for any of these areas, or if I really feel we need the extra practise.  (I stumbled onto the books through a strong recommendation and had a chance to get them easily with no shipping, so jumped on it…but haven’t needed this yet)

Placement coming out of MUS –  I’ve had some learning on this as well.  I tend to be cautious on placement whenever we try something new as I don’t want my boys to feel overwhelmed, or hit a gap early on.  I can tell you that with TT there is no need to be overly cautious.  I started with TT3 thinking that because we’d done MUS and hadn’t had any exposure to certain concepts it would be best to take a step back.  Now that I have seen all the lessons and lectures for TT3, TT4 and most of TT5, I know for certain there is no need for a new TT student to take a step back, because in each year there is review of the core concept teaching for most skills.  For example, multiplication is introduced in TT3 – conceptual teaching so that the child understands the concept that 3 x 4 is the same as 3 groups of 4 within each.  When TT4 comes to multiplication the core concept teaching is presented again before they begin practise.  I suppose some kids might be put off that that they’re being “re-taught” but my DC were not offended in the least…and the lecture format for TT4 varies somewhat from TT3, so even when a concept is “re-taught” it definitely looks fresh and different in the new level.  Again, my DC are NEVER tired of this program, so I’ve not heard a complaint about anything, and certainly not about re-visits on lectures.  All this said I certainly think you would be fine to put your DS9 into TT5.  I’m probably not qualified to make a guess on whether your DS12 should be TT7 or TT pre-algebra, but if it were me…for that level, I might be tempted to begin at TT7 (again, I am cautious by nature) and hopefully she sails through, nails down this “new” way of doing her math and gets herself into TT Pre-Algebra in no time anyway.  When I started my DS10 a level “lower” that he probably should have been he enjoyed it thoroughly anyway, and often just took it upon himself often to do two lectures a day sometimes.  He did an entire year in six months.  I plan to start DS6.5 in TT3 when he’s in second grade and I know he’ll do fine.

Last point on the logistics of how we do it.  You’ll see comments on the internet and even in the workbook about how to implement computer versus workbook or whether to combine them together.  Here’s what we do:  Child sits at computer with headphones on.  Child watches lecture (5-6 minutes), and works through all problems in the lesson – at the computer – typing in the correct answers.  Child has scratch paper to do rough work before typing in correct answer.  When child gets an answer wrong he MUST say yes to the offer to make the second attempt.  If answer is still wrong, he MUST watch the “see how to do it” (on my teacher account I am able to view whether he actually watched it).  An entire lesson on the computer is usually completed within 15 minutes, occasionally 20 minutes and we usually do it first thing in the morning.  From there, we move to spelling, or a reading/narration, or some other completely non-mathy subjects for the rest of the morning.  Then, first thing after break (or lunch) child does the lesson in the workbook.  I know that many parents have their kids fill in the workbook answers at the same time as they are doing the computer portion, but I liked the idea of two sit-downs per day with math, particularly as it forces them to use different senses, work their brain on math at different times of day, etc.  I mark the workbook using the answer key at the end of the day, or each evening, and so I get to see what they’re doing and how well they’re doing.  If, while I’m marking the workbook, I see more than 3 errors, I make them re-watch the lecture the next day before they begin the new lesson (and I will sit and watch it with them at that point and we’ll do the practise problems together on a whiteboard and do the corrections from the day prior).  Most often this step doesn’t even happen because I think my DC have only scored below 90% once or twice in the whole time we’ve been doing TT!

All the all, I can’t say enough (can you tell?) about this program.  My entire teaching day has changed thanks to our switch to TT:   my own stress level on teaching math has pretty much completely disappeared, my kids are thrilled with the independence and the variation, and because it’s just so EASY (for me) to assign math (I don’t have to prep anyway) we never have those missed days that we used to deal with if we had too much going on to do our MUS lessons.  Even when life is insane (holidays, co-op, company coming over, whatever) they’ll get up in the morning and just do their math – and I know it’s sounds too good to be true, but 99% of the time they do it happily and without even a raised eyebrow.   It is hands-down the best change I have ever made (no, I don’t work for the company!)

Good luck with thinking it through, Christie and hope I’ve helped!

Blessings,  Angie

Wow – thanks everyone, I really enjoyed reading about how TT works. I am going to look at this program again for my son.

My daughter has had such success with MUS that I thought I had found the perfect program but for my son, not so much…

As to review with MUS – we have started keeping a math journal. It is a composition book that she keeps at her desk, and whenever we get to a concept that she is not 100% solid on – say dividing fractions, for instance – we go to the computer, find out how to do it (doing a few practice problems), print out an explanation (you could have student write it out) and paste it in our book. We usually write out an example problem. We add it to the table of contents in our journal, and whenever she gets uncertain, she looks it up in the journal. This method seems to be helping her retention, also giving her the power and responsibility to learn what she needs to in order to progress. Often it seems that just the process of going through the explanation and adding the topic to the journal is enough to cement the concept.

She is 13 and doing MUS Algebra 1 right now – we have been using math journal technique for about a year.

Book problems and computer problems are identical for the new version of TT3. In fact, she has done the problems in the book and then entered them into the computer, but only did this for a few days and decided just to do them on the computer. I see where some people have said it is important for the student to write the problems and show their work and that it helps to retain the information and I’m sure they are right, but for now, TT3 works for my daughter. She does have scratch paper to work out the problems if she needs to, but she is mainly doing it mentally. 

Hope that answered your ? 

We use TT much like Angie. If they get a problem wrong they need to watch the ‘how to’. They do all their work on a Boogie Board which keeps the area uncluttered. We require a 90% on each lesson – I go in and delete the ones they got wrong and they do those over. If they get 85% or less they do the whole lesson over. If there is a type of problem they are struggling with we pull out the manual and work some problems together. One son was ‘dying’ with fractions. DYING. He kept watching the lectures, correcting his problems, and within a week or two he was a complete pro and laughs about how ‘easy’ they are now.