I think I may have diagnosed part of my daughter's difficulties

[Michelle in MO]

with math. My oldest has been using Chalkdust Geometry, and had been doing well until Chapter 8, which we repeated twice and she still wasn't able to pass the test.

I sat down this morning to watch the first lecture of Chapter 9.1. (We continued on, thanks to Dana Mosely's advice; we'll come back to Chapter 8 later.) His notes on the chalkboard are excellent, and instinctively I reached for her geometry notebook and began taking notes. Immediately I noticed, for the first time, that she had not been taking notes! I was shocked! (She is finally doing better with notes for Omnibus, thanks to her dear father talking with her about the subject.) I have found that the Larson book is insufficient for me, as a mom, to teach from; I guess I like more "verbose" explanations and examples, although I understand from the more "math" types that they like the Larson books because they're more succinct. At any rate, the beauty of the Chalkdust program is in the thoroughness of the lectures and the notes on Mr. Moseley's chalkboard.

So, I had a talk with my dear daughter that she needs to take notes on this subject, as well.

(Sigh). I wish kids would learn to connect all the dots. When does that level of maturity and initiative start to kick in????

Anyway, I'm hoping that taking notes on this chapter and succeeding chapters will help her.

[Lori D.]

One thought... your daughter may be a highly auditory learner -- in other words, she may most easily take in information by listening. Definitely NOT suggesting that she not take notes -- but -- if she's auditory, maybe have her listen to the lesson *twice* -- first time for content, second time to figure out how to take notes. Writing things down *while* listening can be very difficult for an auditory learner.


Funny aside story on learning styles:
DH and older son are both auditory learners, while I am a very visual learner (and really *need* lots of notes to help me focus my listening at the time of the lecture, and to have something visual to look at later to remember the material). DH and I met in a college course -- I would take pages of notes; he would listen and summarize the lecture into a few words or sentence fragments to later jog his memory of the whole lecture. Needless to say, when we went to study for a test together, I could not believe it -- *he had no notes!* At least, for me it was nothing worth studying from. LOL! Anyways, we each reviewed our own material, and we each did well on the test, having taken in the material in very different ways. : )

Best of luck with Chalkdust! Warmest regards, Lori D.

[Michelle in MO]

an indication of learning style. In general, she seems like a visual learner, but I could be wrong. I'm definitely a visual learner; I have to see something in order to remember it and understand it.

I also think your suggestion is very helpful of first listening to the lecture, strictly concentrating on that, and then taking notes the second time through. I tend to be like that myself. I actually listened to the lecture for 9.1 yesterday without taking any notes, but when I listened to it again today, my first instinct, like I said, was to reach for her notebook, and that's when I realized, "She hasn't been taking notes!" I need to give her some latitude here; maybe for her, your idea of first listening, then taking notes the second time through, is a better route.

Thanks for the suggestion and the encouragement!