Math Scope and Sequence

[Danestress]

What resources have you used to determine what scope and sequence to follow for math study? My children are in 4th grade and are finishing Right Start E in May. I have supplemented a lot, though, with work on fractions, percents and decimals. They are reaosnably strong math students. I know more or less what high school math will look like, but I am unsure about those middle years.

I'd like general advice about what resources you might have used to decide how to approach math as a subject, and of course any specific advice about curriculum to consider is also welcome.

[Beth in Central TX]

Because of the completeness of the scope and sequence followed by Rod & Staff for grammar, math, spelling, and reading/Bible, I decided to use their programs for these subjects from 1st to 8th grade, if applicable. You can call them for a scope & sequence booklet, catalog, and free graded curriculum samples at 606-522-4348.

Any math program you are interested in follows a scope and sequence. I know I had one for Saxon at one point in time. You should be able to see a s&s on-line or contact the publishers for that information.

[OhElizabeth]

I went from RightStart to BJU and have been VERY happy with it. My intention is to go through BJU 6 and then do VideoText algebra, which is what Dr. Cotter recommends. I freely admit I'm plagarizing from Heather in VA, who did BJU6 then went into VT with her oldest quite happily. As for the level of BJU, look at the scope and sequence for the 5th and 6th. Several people here have gone from RS E into BJU6, especially with an older student. Others have gone into BJU5 quite happily. Conceptually RS is SO close to BJU, so similar, it's a really good transition.

[Myrtle]

I'd like general advice about what resources you might have used to decide how to approach math as a subject, and of course any specific advice about curriculum to consider is also welcome.

The best resource on how to approach math as a subject is a content expert--a research mathematician.

Before I found any "support" groups online, before I came across Well-Trained Mind, I was emailing unversity mathematicians and asking questions.

In general, I will say that my big enlightenment was that it is one thing to train a student to use math as a tool for his future vocation and for daily use--say engineering and accounting-- but it's an entirely different thing to study math as a subject.

Many parents imagine the study of music, art, or literature is done simply for the sake of those fields and not for any specific vocational or utilitarian needs. For example, when a kid studies biology, while there are utilitarian needs addressed in the curriculum, the curriculum includes a sampling of the major areas of biology that a professional biologist is involved in. The same is true for psychology, your psychology 101 class gives you a sampling of all the areas of psychology. History and philosophy give you overviews of those fields but the traditional math sequence of high school does not give the student a sampling of what the subject area of math is: topology, analysis, algebra, number theory, etc. nor the methodology used in those fields.

It has been of great interest to me to see that PhD mathematicians do want their kids to have a math education that has nothing to do with future vocational training and everything to do with studying the subject for its own sake--no surprise there really. So, I have noted that people like Mark Solomonovich (http://www.solomonovich.com/)wrote a book specifically for teaching his daughter, that Alexander Givental (http://math.berkeley.edu/~giventh/) did a marvelous translation of Kielev's Geometry, that Robert Talbert (http://castingoutnines.wordpress.com/2008/02/19/what-is-a-classical-education-approach-to-mathematics/) is considering an old 1960s text that he thinks gives a broad overview of math to liberal arts majors rather than keeping them plugging away on the path to engineering calculus, I watched videos of university mathematicians involved in the direct education of high school students (http://www.msri.org/calendar/workshops/WorkshopInfo/295/show_workshop)and paid attention to what content they were emphasizing.

Having a husband with an advanced degree in math and a father in law who is a retired mathematician has made getting opinions of curricula a bit easier for me. Their first and foremost concern is that a book be correct and lead the student further down the path towards the study of math for its own sake. They really do not care at all if the presentation is in and of itself entertaining and are occassionaly privately derisive about claims that, "the students love math now since we changed to XYZ program" responding with, "the kids don't like the math, they like the video, the personality, the cartoon characters," etc and it is their most earnestly held belief that the way to get a kid like math is to give him interesting problems to work on. In fact, they will not infrequently propose a problem for the kids (and even to me!) to think about and it's all done orally while driving down the road with no video game, no worksheet, no time limit, just the kid turning over an idea in his head.

[Danestress]

I went from RightStart to BJU and have been VERY happy with it. My intention is to go through BJU 6 and then do VideoText algebra, which is what Dr. Cotter recommends. I freely admit I'm plagarizing from Heather in VA, who did BJU6 then went into VT with her oldest quite happily. As for the level of BJU, look at the scope and sequence for the 5th and 6th. Several people here have gone from RS E into BJU6, especially with an older student. Others have gone into BJU5 quite happily. Conceptually RS is SO close to BJU, so similar, it's a really good transition.

Thank you! I will look at that.

Dana

[angela in ohio]

The S&S I use for math is:

Mathematically Correct Mathematics Standards (http://mathematicallycorrect.com/kprea.htm)

[Blossom'sGirl]

I have been going around in circles over what I want to do for math next as my oldest is also finishing up RS E. Originally, I thought I would use CLE which seems to be straight up, fairly independent math, most of which would be stuff he already touched on but needs to do more of. I am also still seriously considering Singapore because it seems more to be applied math and not just pages and pages of laid out plug and chug problems. I have also looked at BJU several times but the materials just seem distracting and more classroom orientated. I also have not totally ruled out doing the RS Geometry because my oldest really liked the drawing portion of the earlier levels.

I have not done any fraction or decimal supplementing but I have been using Challenging Word Problems from Singapore Math. These have been great and were what turned me back to considering their math. (We used Sing math very early on but switched to RS).

So, I'm not much help. Let us know what you decide.

[Mrs Mungo]

Myrtle-That was a very interesting post, thank you for the different perspective. That gives me a lot to think about.