Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy ALEKS question

Based on popularity in this forum,we started DD6 ALEKS LV4 and after her initial assessment she had mastered 48%. It looks like she mastered half of 4th grade! Looking at the problems most of them covered in 3rd grade and I think initial 1/4 - 1/2 of new grade is basically a revision of previous year.

(thanks for whoever provided the 2m free link of ALEKS)

in her school gifted program ALEKS is used from 3rd grade onwards as online supplement. I am in two minds to send the scores to DD's gifted teacher. want to hear your experience

we are not planning to accelerate DD any time soon, maybe think about it in 4th grade

Yes, don't panic about her being 48% into Lv 4, there are, as you suspect, a lot of topics that are revisiting the supposed prerequisites for the grade. I don't have a note of DS's initial assessment for Lv 4, but I do have a note that he was 70% of the way through it a week after finishing Lv 3, and he was only doing ALEKS at home after school, so most of that must have been what he assessed out of!

Your DD is currently accelerated into 2nd grade, is that right? I think if you plan to have her continue with ALEKS then given that they use it at school later it would be a good idea to keep them up to date with what she's doing at home. One would hope that they'll have no problem with it and can just bump her onto a higher ALEKS course, but you might find that they're not happy as you've "messed up their plans"!

Our experience is that for a child who finds ALEKS motivating, it can become a problem to let them get too far out of the level where they are working at school. Our DS was 5 years/grades out of sync with age peers; we recently pulled the plug and stopped giving him ALEKS math, but in the meantime there is no sensible class to put him into, because he knows most (but not all) of what's covered in several different grades.

I think it's fine as a supplement, but it's not a replacement for math instruction, and I've seen a real downside in letting a kid work as far ahead as he can.

DeeDee

I think there are two different potential problems, and it's worth separating them.

a) ALEKS questions are very formulaic. It's quite possible for a child to do well at a certain level in ALEKS and yet be completely flummoxed by a differently posed question using the same material. This hasn't been a problem for us as DS is very keen on maths (and so) is doing lots of other maths, insists on understanding everything, and is motivated more by learning cool maths than by completing his pie, but if all these elements weren't in place I think it could be a major problem.

b) Allowing your child to get ahead of their age peers creates a problem for class placement. If you have a decent alternative - if going broad rather than ahead is feasible, e.g. if you can satisfy your child's needs using problem-solving based on grade level material rather than advancing through the grades - you probably want to take it. In our case, it was clear very early that class placement for maths was going to be a problem whatever we did. Once you're already in a situation where there's no suitable class for your child and they need completely special treatment, there's nothing more to be lost by letting them get further ahead, and you can ignore this aspect. This is as much personality and school attitude as maths - DS took the first two years of school to complete the maths syllabuses offered by his school, and at the end of the first year, when he was several years ahead but still within the school's syllabus, we did discuss putting him in a higher class. He didn't have the social and emotional maturity for that to have worked then, though, and the opportunity passed quickly.

DeeDee,
I know there's been discussion about this elsewhere (math acceleration and social issues); I'm sure you've considered everything, but I was just curious--is it a possibility for your DS to do independent study in math? We're thinking about this for our DD8 (3rd grade) in the longer term and are currently doing IMACS and EPGY. IMACS is available as a "live" course in our area (and other places in the Southeast as well as online), and of course EPGY is online. The IMACS kids are about her age (although she is the only girl in the class of ~5) and the teacher has been great with all the kids--very patient. Since DD likes this stuff so much, we're planning on continuing but of course then the issue would be do we ever try to have her attend classes at her 'regular' school? But at least for now accelerated classes in the 'regular' school aren't an option for us (just don't exist here), which in a way makes our choices easier.

To get back to the original question, all elementary (and middle school) Aleks levels seem to pile up the new stuff on top of everything else that was included in the previous level.

Because I have slightly obsessive tendencies...

LV3 has 127 subjects.
LV4 has 198 subjects, 71 are new, 127 repeated from LV3 (64% repeated material, yes, all of LV3 is in there)
LV5 has 267 subjects, 69 are new (74% repeated material, ditto)
LV6 has 325 subjects, 58 are new (82% repeated material, ditto)

Yannan, if your daughter is at 48% of LV4 she is 1) appropriately placed (>25%, <85%) per Aleks suggestions but 2) probably not halfway through 4th grade math but more likely 2/3rd of the way through 3rd grade math (give or take a few things).

+1 everything DeeDee and ColinsMum said. Aleks per se is *not* a complete math program, and having kids zoom ahead can create issues. Not enough instruction, questions too narrow/similar to teach and test deep comprehension of concepts.

We still like it, but you have to understand the flaws.

ColinsMum, suggestions for "using problem-solving based on grade level material"? Materials, curriculum... anything?

DeeDee, suggestions on ways to go broader that run along rather against the grain of the AS? His therapist keeps pushing word problems as the be all and end all of what spectrum kids should work on (rather than zooming ahead on conpects) but he hates them. I would love to find something that moves him up gently to the word problems at his conceptual level.

http://bedtimemathproblem.org/

Scroll to the bottom and sign up for the email they'll send you a new word problem in the email everyday.

This is frustrating; I'm sure I've typed out lists of resources more than once but now I can't find any of my posts! Mostly we've used past papers for maths competitions at various levels, e.g., Mathematics Association Primary Mathematics Challenge, UKMT Junior Mathematics Challenge, Scottish Primary (and Junior) Mathematics Challenge, etc.; there are others in the US e.g. AMC8/10/12, AIME, MOEMS, and of course apart from the odd money question these are totally international, but I haven't internalised which of those is at which level. Alcumus is great too.

We've had quite a few threads on similar issues; here are a few in case there are more useful suggestions there:
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/49569/1.html
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/45283/1.html
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/82679/4.html

It's possible, but not preferred. Because DS has Asperger's, we are spending so much time working on social participation at school (by which I mean: paying attention to what's being discussed and contributing to the class discussion, volunteering information appropriately, being able to work collaboratively). Math is the class where this goes best, where his give and take with classmates is really good, where they respect his contributions and he has learned to respect theirs (especially since his subject acceleration to a compacted class that did three years of math in two years).

If he were more typical and just "ahead," I think we'd welcome other options. But we have needed to prioritize his social development, and math with peers is an opportunity too good to pass up. He also loves math class; it has been a happy, successful part of school, even during times when not much else was. All that is pretty important.

It would be nice if he were simpler to educate. As it is, he won't stop learning math no matter what, but we'll do our best to keep him balanced.

DeeDee