» Algebra 1: An Incremental Development

Algebra 1: An Incremental Development Reviews

Customer Rating:
Summary: An Easy Choice
Comment: Our children used Saxon from 54 to 87, then moved on to advanced math, calculus and physics and they have excelled with this method. Although my background doesn't include an emphasis in math, my husband's education and professional life is steeped in mathematics. He's enthusiastic about Saxon because it creates a strong foundation in the subject.

Admittedly, solving 30+ problems a lesson can be a challenge, however, this process increases one's speed and accuracy over time and as my daughter said, it helped her "to make peace with math." Math is like learning how to play a musical instrument; it takes practice and self-discipline, but it's well worth the effort. Understanding math, like being proficient at reading and writing, is one of those practical skills that make life so much easier.

Using this incremental method of learning made homeschooling through high school a breeze and our college-age children sailed through their college math courses as well. In hindsight, it would be easy to choose it again

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Math teacher loves Saxon
Comment: In my experience teaching in the high school classroom, I discovered that most students can quickly learn a new skill, but if they're using a curriculum that doesn't require them to use that skill for more than a few days, they can just as quickly forget it. Saxon math books do what few others do -- through the continual review implemented in the problem sets, students are able to retain skills for the long term. Isn't that the whole point of studying Algebra 1, assuming that students plan to move on to Algebra 2 and beyond? Problems get more difficult over time, because with mastery of a skill, the student is ready to take it to the next level. Higher level math and science courses require a student to think through complex problems, not to simply "plug and chug" through a formula, and Saxon is sufficiently rigorous to prepare a student to analyze and reason his/her way to a solution. I should add that I have two children who have completed this course and have blown the doors off standardized tests. (Their mother made certain they completed their assignments, however, and I suspect that contributed to their success.)

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Customer Rating:
Summary: The Proof is in the Pudding
Comment: I have homeschooled my five children using this series. They consistently get high math grades on the standardized California Achievement Tests. My three eldest have each scored in the upper 600's on the SAT tests for math. Even my right-brained, artist, writer daughter who HATES math scored 670 on her SAT. Review, review, review is key! It maybe boring, but it is very effective. As I said, the proof is in the pudding.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: A Students Review
Comment: Ahhhhhh!

Attack of the large, hardcover, algebraical, mathematical and downright wicked text book! If you happen to see this book in person, I suggest you turn and run as positively fast as you can... AWAY! If you don't, it will open up and suck you into it's very pages, bombarding you with polynomials and rectagular coordinate systems, not to mention the villianous cronies known as fractions, and their wicked counterparts, the simple geometric solids!

I have warned you! Beware!

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Learning to TEST or Learning to UNDERSTAND?
Comment: My mother is a Ph.D. in mathematics and taught Jr. and Sr. High math for several years before moving up to teach college math. She has been pretty vocal that the only math text that will result in imparting a poor understanding of mathematical concepts--a false sense of mastery while using it, but poor retention after--is Saxon. She says that every time she has a home schooled student who is really struggling at the college level and they say "But I did so well in math before!" and they are traumatized at the level of tutoring help they need to make it in college, they all have in common the fact that they learned math using Saxon texts in high school.

After she impressed this on me, I was really leery about choosing jr. & sr. high school curriculum a couple years ago and asked her to go to me with convention to help me pick something out. She said, "You are good at math and a good teacher. Just pick something you like that is NOT SAXON!" I'm not exaggerating. It's the spiral learning method that they use. It doesn't give enough thorough practice of all the variations of a particular concept before moving on and too heavily relies on review throughout. That seems to impedes long-term retention. She thinks the fact that it is so dull and methodical is also ridiculous in this day and age of fabulous graphics and the trend to make math more interesting and multi-modal for the average student who doesn't love math.

I find it interesting that on their website, of the 6 research studies of their curriculum, only one includes high school; the other five utilized k-8 or 6-8 curriculum. Maybe all that dry rote learning makes a student test better. But the sad part is when it comes to taking that learning and building on it, they don't really understand the concepts behind it and can't apply future learning to what they simply practiced over and over but don't really know. Kind of like cramming for a test by going over everything you've learned right beforehand and blocking everything else out until you take the test and then POOF! everything you repeated over and over in your head beforehand just seems "gone" once you go back to normal habits of thinking/doing and you stop all that repetition.

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