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.
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.
Visitors
who read this article also read these:
-
Home
School Math - Math in Home School Teaching
-
Singapore
Math Curriculum
-
Singapore
Math Curriculum , Science Curriculum , Geography
Back
to Top
^
