Friday, January 23, 2009

Teaching Textbooks & Saxon Math



Teaching Textbooks Algebra has been a good change for us from Saxon. I like Saxon for it's thoroughness and repetition, but as we've gotten into higher math I've really appreciated that TT has answer cds which work out EVERY problem, if you need the help.

There are D.I.V.E. cds for Saxon which are very helpful, but they do not work out every problem. Some say that students who have used Saxon receive consistently high scores on standardized math tests. Teaching Textbooks hasn't been around long enough to have data prove the same for them, but for us it was a good switch.

If you are using Saxon for middle to upper grades and you see that your child IS "getting it", don't be afraid to pare down the work to every other problem. Just make sure they are consistantly answering each type of problem correctly. On the other hand, if you see that they aren't understanding you can go back through a lesson, do extra practices in the back of the book, or find extra practice problem sheets online.

3 comments:

Christopher Engelsma said...

Saxon has answers too.
http://saxonhomeschool.harcourtachieve.com/en-US/saxonteacher_demo

Life at the Lake said...

This year we changed to TT Algebra I for DD. It has been a HUGE blessing. She actually likes math this year!! Last year in Saxon Alg. 1/2 - it was a HUGE struggle because of the way it was explained and the randomness of problems in the assignments. There were lots of tears - sometimes from both of us.

Christopher Engelsma said...

Glad you found something that works! Happy number crunching.