Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments ALEKS-which course to choose

If he has 70% on pre-alg assessment with gaps, you might want to call them and ask what they suggest. I talked to a higher level(?) person I think, who recommended that DD actually finish the pie completely before I moved her up. Something to consider.

However, she was bored so I did not take the advice and moved her up manually myself, she was at about 95% finished with pie. I then manually sent her an assessment before she even started to make sure she picked up anything she may have missed.

Just for giggles I manually moved up ANOTHER level and delivered her an assessment and discovered there is a ton of overlap between levels. I'm pretty sure pre-alg starts at level 4, but for SURE there is pre-alg at level 5.

I do LOVE that the program is extrememly thorough with regard to material included. I do NOT believe they cover as much at school, no matter what they like to tell me.

One tip I discovered late. DD loves to master things, she's a little pathological about it. I asked her to NOT go on to master, that way it does come up later for review. Otherwise, it doesn't. I find this helpful(not sure she does!) because then when I see her correctly do the problem weeks later, I feel more confident that she does have it down concretely.

I also use the Singapore workbooks to go back and for review and make sure she can correctly complete problems on paper since this is how most testing is still delivered.

HTH
Neato

Thks for sharing everyone!

I have emailed Aleks and still waiting for their reply. Meanwhile, DS8 went ahead eagerly to try to complete the rest of this Pie. Unfortunately, our trial session ran out! I can see why Aleks is popular because it does motivate the kid to want to move along without making them do and re-do topics which they already know. I am hoping that they will extend the trial... still waiting.
Will update here if I hear from them.

Just an update...

We received the email for the one-month extension. Ya! (Thank you to the mom who has shared about it in another thread). However, I made a mistake for waiting too long to register (over a day) and I could not sign in using my 3-hr guest ID anymore to continue with where DS8 has stopped. We are not complaining though. Since he was almost done with Pre-Algebra, I signed him up for Middle School Course I. He breezed through them except for Functions/Graphs under Geometry. This gives me an idea of where he stands. So far, we are very happy with Aleks.