On Saxon Math and How to Start Using It for Home School

    

On Saxon Math . I've been using it for 6 years in a home school environment. It's usually great, but CHILDREN DO NOT NEED TO DO THE SAME SORT OF QUESTION 100 TIMES TO GET IT.

Enforced redundancy of effort implies that they don't get it! It invalidates what they DO know! Who wants to do the same type of problem 40 times, when they got it right the first five times? Not me, that's one reason I HATED math as a student.

We often go to every other problem! We never do their warm-ups, by the way, we just get to the subject of each lesson.

FOR THOSE OF YOU THINKING OF STARTING SAXON'S PROGRAM, I suggest you go to their site and have your student do their test, to determine which home school book to buy. MAKE SURE you get the home school program with an answer and test guide and workbook! (You don't really need the workbook, generally. We never used it.) THEN, here's what I always recommend...DO NOT START AT LESSON 1! Instead, have your student do TEST # 1, which covers the 1st 5 lessons in the book, and ex - always consists of 20 questions. If they miss 1-2, just correct those. If they miss more than 2, start on lesson one, and begin the book. If they miss 2 or less, after correction, DO TEST # 2, which generally covers lessons 6-10. Apply the same standard to determine if they should start on Lesson 6, or move on to Test # 3. Keep going through tests until you hit one in which they miss (really miss because THEY DON'T KNOW HOW TO DO THE PROBLEMS) more than two questions. Start their studies on the first lesson that test covers, which can be found on a table in Saxon's test/answer guide book, before the tests.

Trust me, this works, and the student usually starts out math VALIDATED...look at all the book they got to "skip"! They KNOW something about math! And you're not wasting their time or grinding them down, forcing them to re-study stuff they already know.

Also, on Saxon, MAKE LIBERAL USE of the following great tools:

UNDER EVERY QUESTION IN EACH LESSON IS A SMALL NUMBER IN PARENTHESIS example - (37) THIS IS THE NUMBER OF THE LESSON PLAN WHERE SAXON TEACHES THE STUDENT IN THAT BOOK, HOW TO DO THAT EXACT SORT OF PROBLEM! If a student gets stuck, rather than you trying to explain, send the student back to that chapter and let them re-read how to do the problem. Let the student solve their own problem whenever possible. Saxon is set up to be very helpful with this, which is one reason I recommend their program.



EACH BOOK HAS A GOOD INDEX, very useful when TESTING. A student misses a certain kind of problem on a test - look up that sort of problem in the index and in way of correction, send the student back to THAT lesson where the skill was first taught. Simple!

This is not to say that Saxon is perfect. Among other minor problems, sometimes their ANSWER GUIDES offer incorrect answers...rare, but still, if a student insists they're right, you should double check. (Break out the calculator!) There will be times you may need to help, after the student has re-studied. There may be ideas or words your student doesn't fully get in the lesson which need some timely defining and examples. Sometimes (rare again), Saxon doesn't explain a concept quite thoroughly enough. But usually, Saxon (up to 8/7, which is a vast review of earlier Saxon courses) is pretty great. We've had considerable success with it! (I have nothing to gain, here, we're not affiliated in any way with Saxon at this time, though I wouldn't mind it.)

     Steven Horwich
     Connect The Thoughts