Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Hitting a brick wall with algebra

Ultramarina, I would not make your DD repeat CC8 based on relative weakness in the Algebra sections, especially if she is strong in the Pre-algebra and Geometry sections. It is very likely that 2nd time around, when she takes Algebra I next year, that the material will be more accessible to her.

I observed DD's Pre-Algebra class and DS's Geometry class last year and have maintained a dialogue with DD regarding her Algebra class this year as well. At our school, the GT classes are over-inclusive, which may be skewing the results. Anyhow, it seems that about 1/3 of the kids really get the materials and can be going faster/deeper, about 1/3 of the kids are getting the materials with effort, and about 1/3 are struggling and probably shouldn't be in those classes. Those kids in the 3rd category either repeat the course the following year or get lots of extra individual or small group tutoring help (in school or privately) to improve their performance. Some kids also do migrate from one category to the next based on the particular topics. In your DD's case, it appears that she is mostly in the first category and sometimes in the second. That is actually not a bad place to be as it can be excruciatingly slow when you are consistently in the first category. Just my two cents.

Quantum, I think that's an accurate assessment--it's just that when she's struggled, it's exclusively been with algebra. The geometry units are no problem for her; she actually loves them.

And now they have moved back down to 7th grade math for a long unit and she's getting 100% on everything. That makes me feel really doubtful about moving her down a track. So, where do we place a child who is underchallenged by a math curriculum 1 year ahead but struggling in a curriculum 2 years ahead?

Hire a competent tutor to get her ramped up for the curriculum 2 years ahead.

But then do I have to keep a tutor for the next 5 years? Oy.

Well, she can't be in a place where she gets 100% in everything.

That's a complete waste of time.

I'm guessing here, but I would suspect she'll only need a tutor off and on when she can't figure things out herself.

I have a mental block regarding tutoring for this. To me, a tutor is something you get when you have an LD (DD does not) or when you are not able to keep up with work at grade level (not the case). You might also get one if the teacher is very bad (not the case--I think she's good, but stuck with this curriculum). It seems tigermom-ish to get a tutor to stay on track in an advanced class you could opt out of, no? Hothouse-y. Do people here really get tutors for their non-LD kids?

Well, I don't know whether getting a tutor for her is the right thing to do for this subject. But parents do this for other areas of life all the time. Sports, music. It does sound like that she is stuck somewhere in algebra. It may not be a bad idea. Dropping her off to less advanced track seems to be more drastic than getting her up to speed when she is only in trouble for a quarter of the time in a class. She may very well only need to have a breakthrough this one time than do fine without extra help afterwards.

FWIW, our DYS son needed extra help to fully understand a few math concepts he missed (my guess is he was distracted by something and didn't listen, but maybe he didn't understand due to how it was explained the first time). He spent a few weeks after school with the math teacher and voila, no more problems in that area. So, not technically a tutor, but extra help 1:1. No LDs.

I would reframe it as what we are suggesting is far from full-time tutoring and instead, is about giving her tools to fully understand a concept or techniques that didn't "catch" the first time.

I really wish someone had caught on that I didn't understand some algebraic techniques and instead kept just going along with the classes (I was too proud to say anything until I nearly failed a college algebra class). A few days or weeks of 1:1 help would have completely changed things in regard to math for me.