Saxon
Math Homeschool Curriculum
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Math Curriculum
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There
are a number of mathematics curriculums that are available
today for homeschooling children. There are formal
programs that base upon theory, there are practice-based
programs that tend to teach the concepts of mathematics
through problem solving and examples, and there are
other approaches that try to implement scale-based
mathematics learning.
Saxon Math has established
its presence firmly as one of the best curriculums
among the different learning approaches that are being
practiced today.
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What is Saxon Math?
Saxon Math is a teaching
method for incremental learning of mathematics. It
was developed by John Saxon - an electrical engineer
from the U.S. Military Academy - as a sequence of
nine mathematical textbooks suitable right from kindergarten
to high school levels. Saxon Math is one of the few
major math programs available today that makes a systematic
approach towards instruction, practice and assessment
right through the academic year.
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Saxon Math is not about amassing
a number of concepts in a short period of time with concentration
on one topic at a time as in a chapter of a book. It is
more about incremental learning that makes the students
revise and revisit the previously gained concepts and then
move ahead to the next piece of new concept every day. The
very nature of the curriculum makes it one of the hot favorites
among many homeschooling parents.
What is the basic approach?
Saxon Math is based upon learning
pieces of information and concept in a small amount at one
time, and then repeating the concepts gathered frequently
in one's mind so that the concepts remain fresh in memory
of the student. This iterative approach has been applauded
by many homeschooling parents and conventional private and
public schools, and experts and scholars have also expressed
their approval of this approach.
The Saxon Math program contains
a specific set of products that are designed in particular
for homeschoolers. This includes ready-made tests and their
solutions, which is extremely handy among families taking
to homeschooling. One of the biggest advantages of taking
the Saxon Math approach is the familiarity - Saxon uses
familiar terminology and algorithms to carry out the process
of teaching. As a result, parents find it easy to relate
to their knowledge and their job of teaching their child
gets a lot easier.
What are the strengths
and weaknesses?
The biggest strengths of Saxon
Math are its popularity among homeschoolers and familiarity
of the teaching techniques. If you are a homeschooling parent,
then you would find this approach convenient due to the
above reasons. The popularity plays a critical role in making
Saxon Math a choice for your child. The reason is that the
popularity makes getting support from other sources is easier
with Saxon Math compared to most other math curriculums.
Also, the curriculum receives sufficient traction from the
current support teams at the publisher's side.
The familiarity of the teaching
techniques is the other advantage of Saxon Math. This approach
to math builds upon familiar algorithms, terminologies and
fundamental techniques. So as a parent, you shall rarely
face any real challenge to understand any concept that you
may have forgotten and pass the concept on to your child.
Homeschooling with Saxon Math thus is a pleasing experience
in most of the cases.
The exception to this is for
the highly gifted children. While some of the parents of
gifted children claim that they are fine with this approach,
some others do not agree. They feel that the fact that the
child is encouraged to repeat the concept that they have
learned earlier does not let the gifted child move forward
as fast as s/e would otherwise have moved. While there is
no clear reason to decide in favor of supportive or complaining
parents of gifted children, it is easy to circumvent the
apparently challenges that gifted children face with this
curriculum by simply not making them repeat the older lessons
too many times. That way, the gifted child takes away all
the great positives of Saxon Math without facing the apparently
boring task.
For the more ordinary child
who is not in the class of childhood prodigy, Saxon Math
is undisputedly one of the best approaches of learning math
today, and the same applies for homeschoolers.
The final word
It is interesting to note
that several experiments have been conducted on different
learning approaches. By mid-2000s many school districts
had been considering to abandon experiments with reform
approaches that had failed to produce acceptable test scores.
For example, a school board member in Tacoma had been found
claiming that non-traditional Interactive Mathematics Program
(IMP) had been a dismal failure. The same Tacoma district
had introduced Saxon books district-wide in 2006 and had
rejected the previous IMP textbooks. That speaks volumes
on how well-rated Saxon Math has been. The same board member
had also been found saying that Saxon Math programs give
the students plenty of chances to conduct review of their
study material and as a result retain all the skills that
they would have picked up for a long duration.
Saxon Math has deeply established
its root among schools and homeschoolers because of its
familiar and iterative approach towards learning and retaining
the knowledge acquired. If you are wondering what is the
best way to go about for teaching mathematics to your homeschooling
child, then this is definitely one of the approaches that
you would not want to miss considering.
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