Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Any advice for math options at a public school?

DS is 9 and will be going into the 5th grade next year. Age wise he should be going into 4th but we succeeded in getting a whole grade skip. He did school with a virtual public school for 1.5 years and was about to start 6th grade which is was pre-Alg. class. We had to put him back into a local public school for the last half of the year and they put him into 4th grade math. We tried to get him higher math but they wouldn't. Now, he will be switching to a new school and new principal next year. We just had a meeting with the new principal and he is willing to work with us. We requested that our Ds be placed into the adv. 6th grade math but the principal says b/c of scheduling that wouldn't work. He said that he would be willing to take Music and Art from ds so that he could do a 45 min 6th grade math enrichment but we don't like this option. I have suggested that instead of 5th grade math that Ds be allowed to do an online course during this period. The principal and said he would consider this but we have to present the information to him. I know there is EPGY but ds has tried this and didn't like it. He has done ALEKS and he liked this.

Can ya'll give me any more online math programs? Plus, the area where he would go to do this work he wouldn't have a math teacher so the program must provide really good instructions.

Thank you

www.mathletics.co.za
www.ixl.com

We use mathletics and I love that the teacher/parent can change the grade level as required. It's also great fun as it has a live feature for 60 - second rounds of mental maths against other kids all over the world.

What state are you in?

What exactly is Mathletics? I looked at the website and they don't show examples. How does it present the material? What does the child do?

There are the Edge products associated with the DOMA math assessments. I have used the DOMA assessment, but have not used the on-line courses. They look good, though, because they list out the state standards for each course and check as each standard is met. Here is the link
http://www.letsgolearn.com/lglsite/EDGE_prealgebra/educators/

within the grade level, the curriculum is broken into sections. each section is further broken into topics. Each section starts with a pre-test to see how much they know. Then they go through each topic - which has 10 questions to answer. It uses graphics and colour pictures and animations and and has a picture type help for each section that explains step by step what to do. They need to get at least 8 right to complete the topic successfully.

Once they finish each section there is a post test with more questions.

For example in the first grade, to introduce divide concepts, they have 3 or 4 pirates each on an island and the child has to divide the treasure between the pirates by dragging and dropping the coins onto the islands. they also use jars and marbles and the child has to put x number of marbles into each jar, with a max number per jar stipulated.

For each topic and test completed they get points - 1000 points in a week gives a bronze certificate, and 5 bronze equals a silver and so forth. They also get points from the live mathletics. In addition, they earn credits to jazz up their personal avatar from the activities.

Then there are games to play including cool songs on the times tables and other level type games using maths.

If he likes ALEKS and it works for him, I would use that. My DS8 did that last year in his public school. The school can get it for $40/year, where it would cost you $20/month at home. We offered to pay for it but they insisted on using GT money.