How much time did your son put into the 4th grade Aleks? Did he work on it all summer?
He started back on July 8th, so today marked four full weeks.
Looking back at the "Attendance Report" ALEKS provides, he spent about 30 minutes/day, 5 days/week, and has covered about 4 or 5 items each time. ALEKS automatically requires review on items covered the previous day, so he does that plus the new topics.
He's got about a dozen topics left to review, which will add about 3 days (90 minutes) to his total time.
ALEKS also automatically requires an assessment after a given amount of time (or given number of topics), and I give him a pass on any new topics for those days.
Although his initial assessment showed approx 60% mastery, very few of the items were new to him -- they were just presented differently than the school OR (more often) he was heck-bent on doing stuff in his head and made careless errors as a result.
He's figured out that the best way to cut down on his time is to actually think about his answers & get 'em right the first time. This way he doesn't have to revisit stuff he already knows. (If he misses as item on the assessment, ALEKS will add that topic back to his "Pie" to force a review.)
If he had taken his time on the initial assessment, he would likely have cut the total of work in half -- lesson learned for him for certain.
Overall, this has been a great tool for review & filling any holes... plus has kept him thinking math in prep for this year.
Wonder if I should have him start with the 3rd Grade or 4th Grade Aleks.
You can see the entire course content with sample problems for each level at their website, which should help in this decision for you.
We are running out of time as school starts on Aug. 24th, The beggining of the year is a lot of review.
No joke - what the heck happened to the day after Labor Day for starting back? On the flip side for us though, I can't wait for school to resume.
Trying to be Mr. Nice Guy, I timed it so that he wouldn't have to do anything in June, but that he'd also have a week off before school started. The timing has worked out great... although it wouldn't have been the end of the world if he weren't through with it.
I would NOT have used this to "teach" him the whole 4th Grade curric, though -- my intention all along was for this to be simply a review.
I gotta reiterate my view of the QuickTables... they did a superb job in helping him to increase his speed & accuracy... which plain & simple makes everything else he does even easier.
One advantage I found in ALEKS over some of the on-line math games is that it keeps track of the student's progress and doesn't drill them on things he has already mastered. This cuts the time considerably. ALEKS does provide some basic "games" that the child can access after a parent-determined length of time. A reward of sorts provided the "games" are interesting to the child.
While not a proponent of Drill & Kill in general, I do favor the method for mastering math facts. As the math is quickly becoming more complicated, not getting bogged down by simple errors is a HUGE help.
And, no... I have no connection with ALEKS whatsoever.
