Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments EPGY math courses; advice needed

Looking for feedback on EPGY.

DS11 finished half of a geometry course last year at a small private school and ended up with the math award in June. Unfortunately, the school moved (way) out of town, and we had to enroll him in a new school. The new one put him in a slow-moving beginning geometry course and he's been unhappy.

On Friday, they finally decided to let him do independent study, and I'm thinking of EPGY. But EPGY seems to require intermediate algebra before geometry. I'm pretty sure that DS's school won't let him do this. They've given permission for second-semester geometry and that seems to be that. After he finishes geometry, they'd probably let him do the algebra course, but not before.

Does anyone know if EPGY will let him start partway through a course? I know that they'll give him a math aptitude test, and/or placement test, but don't know how fine-grained it is.

Advice and insights on EPGY welcome.

I wish I knew, but I encourage you to call EPGY, they seem to be very understanding.

Let us know, ok?
Grinity

DS10 did EPGY math grades 5,6 & 7 this summer and we were vey impressed with the rigor of the program and the tutor DS worked with. I believe because geometry is a second-tier, honors class, they will do the placement test. I have heard of kids at the lower levels being placed mid-way through the course after taking a placement test, but I would check with EPGY before registering. They have been very responsive to us with calls & emails about ques and the tutor even wrote a letter of recommendation for acceleration for my DS.

Know what you mean about the sequence of classes - it appears that they list them as Mo11 Honors Beg Alg, Mo12 Honors Int Alg and Mo15 Geo, with Int Alg being recommended before Geo, although I always thought it was supposed to be the other way around.

Congrats on DS being so strong in math that he is half way throught Geometry at 11. Wow!!

This is encouraging; thanks for replying! I've written to them (just got word about the independent study on Friday), and will probably hear from them next week. I was hoping to get some inside information from people here who've used EPGY, so thanks very much.

Also, the school my other two kids attend is thinking of adding EPGY; has anyone here used it with young children (my DD is 7)?

I WISH the schools here would add EPGY. Have to admit a little bias toward all things Stanford, though, since I worked at the Med Center and lived in the area for 15 years!

I am VERY interested in finding out how others have gotten this into the schools.

We are "trying" to get EPGY or Aleks in the school for ds5 (kinder). Not so sure if we will get it. He is currently working on singapore 2a (3rd grade math) as enrichment at home.

Thank you!

How do your kids like EPGY? Is it engaging for younger kids?

My DD hated EPGY - particularly "that boring man saying blah blah blah." We also had real issues with a particular type of problem needing to be set up and solved in a weird and specific way. (I know enough algebra that I could sort of see that it the setup they wanted did work, but the explanation was "set it up like this and you'll get the right answer.") I finally just did those problems for her - she couldn't memorize the setup by rote, and didn't know enough algebra to learn it by understanding.

We like Khan Academy better.

My DS7 didn't do well enough on the EPGY screening to get in without other test results and since our WISC-IV from last year was spike-y (too much scatter for FSIQ *and* GAI) and since the nice lady wouldn't give me any hint about how high the scores have to be... I didn't send in anything.

I had found about Aleks here and signed him for that (it is cheaper too!). My son hates having to read the explanations, so if I don't keep a close eye on him he tends to try and figure out the lesson by trial and error. Alexsmom, does the boring man saying blablabla mean that they have verbal instructions in EPGY?

Val, if you only need enough to get him up to speed to Stanford's standards for geometry maybe doing a short session of Aleks as afterschooling for those subjects he is missing might be enough? They have a free 2-months trial for homeschoolers (yes, I am cheap ).

Yes. We did Open Enrollment (which doesn't require anything beyond ability to pay), and started DD at 2nd grade. She was doing EPGY as a way of preparing for her skip to third.

The boring man gives you a little lecture when a new topic is introduced. DD is not a hugely mathy kid, but the material she was covering was generally not new to her (hence the skip!), and she disenjoyed having to sit through the explanation. Plus, it was obvious she wasn't paying attention to the explanation, because often she'd have no clue how they wanted her to show her work on the following problems.