Regarding Notes - Jacobs Algebra

[womenfly]

My son is in 7th grade. I certainly feel that we are entering a new era of academics with Jacobs Algebra and Apologia General Science.
Needless to say, the post discussing Algebra notes caught my attention! Ds has been independently reading the lessons in Jacobs, then working Sets I, III, and sometimes IV. He has not been taking notes on the lessons.

Do you have your students take notes so that they have material to study before a test?
Do you sit with them to teach them how to do this?

Does anyone NOT require notes?
Does this seem fine at the beginning of the book when concepts are relatively simple? - - then backfire when the level of difficulty increases? (clearly, my hypothesis)

Thanks for the words of wisdom.

[periwinkle]

I do NOT require notes in math. My oldest sailed through (until we hit calculus, anyway) and notes would have killed any enthusiasm he had for the subject.

My middle ds struggles more with the subject, but I'm not sure notes are the answer. Instead, lots of practice and review of problems (and applications)seem to gel the concepts for him.

[Nan in Mass]

Math books do a really nice job of boxing the important stuff. It is easy to go back through the book looking at the boxes to study. I did have my sons write some of the geometry equivalencies (angle laws, etc.) on the inside cover of their math notebook to make doing geometry problems easier, but that's about it. My oldest is taking notes in CC pre-calc, but it is mostly writing down the examples the prof works on the board. (He found that if he didn't read the chapter first, he couldn't both write and pay attention to the example problems at the same time; he just had to blindly copy and hope he could figure it out when he got home. By the end of the first week of a non-mum math class, he had that figured out.)

I'm no expert, though, and I'm actually teaching mine their math, rather than letting them learn it by reading the book on their own. If they were working on their own and they were using one of those texts that teaches with lots of words, they might find they needed to take notes in order to keep track of what all those words meant or summarize so they could reread the whole thing in their own words and dope out the meaning that way.

Nan

[Myra]

This is my second time around with Jacob's Algebra with a seventh grader - no expert, but feeling a bit more comfortable than the 1st time around! I go over the lesson and work the example problems together on a white board. Then we do set II together.... well, sort of. If you notice that Jacob's has problems like number 1 then a, b,c,etc for that. Well, we do a and maybe b together and then he does the rest for that problem independently. We check it, correct it if needed, then continue on. As the year goes on, I do less helping with the Set II and more hovering! I really think it's important that he learns the basic concepts of ALgebra I so I, too, teach it rather than giving him a math book on his own.

Myra