My oldest switched in the middle of 5th grade. Started in 4B. Within a calendar year she had actually finished 6B. I guess she worked about 45 minutes or maybe 55 minutes most days in math for a while and did some summer stuff too? It's all a blur now that she's in 7th grade. But she had finished the elementary sequence of another program in the middle of 5th grade and I didn't think she needed pre-algebra that young. So I was always interested in Singapore and seemed like a great time to try it.Michele in WA wrote:Has anyone used a different math program then switched to Singapore in either 6th or 7th?
I looked at the placement tests, and my ds would be at least 2 grades "below" his grade level, which I understand is okay, but how would he ever catch up? Or does it really matter?
Any thoughts from those who have switched in later elementary years would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!
Michele
Placement: It's quite common to have a child place about 1.5-2 book numbers below US grade level.
MFW is recommending that the ending point at end of 6th grade would be book 5B. And then in 7th grade, MFW recommends to switch to Saxon. So if you switched at 4A, you'd set a goal of doing 4A, 4B, 5A, 5B this year. The "hard part" would be learning a little bit using bar diagrams to think about the "algebra" problems in the Singapore way. But Julie in MN was very kind to help catch me up quickly to the Singapore way of thinking. And it was fantastic to solve problems that way at that level in the book!!!!!
I think MFW suggests (on their main website) that if your 6th grader starts in Singapore, he should spend at least 75 minutes a day on math. Once your child has progressed sufficiently so that he is on track to finish 5B by end of 6th grade, he can complete one lesson per day as scheduled in MFW plans.
To help you get a feel for how much, how long, etc.
4A about 62 lesson days.
4B has about 66 lesson days
5A has about 53 lesson days
5B has about 58 lesson days
So, you've have to do more than one lesson per most school day and probably do math 5 days per week instead of 4. The lessons are usually short, so it won't be too bad.
I liked switching to Singapore for the word problems and approaches to solving them, and my dd really like how they do Ratio problems.
oh.. .I just remembered a nice chime in by David Hazell a few months back about some of this
http://board.mfwbooks.com/viewtopic.php ... ght=#36291
-crystal