DO YOU REALLY HAVE TO DO THE DAILY “WARM-UP” BOX AND “PRACTICE PROBLEMS”?
(For the Math 54 through Math 87 Textbooks)
I receive several emails each week about the excessive amount of time some home school students spend on their math assignments each day. In almost every case, the students have spent between thirty minutes and an hour on the “Warm-Up” box and the six to eight “Practice Problems” before they even get started on the thirty problems of the Daily Assignment.
It has been a little more than a decade since I have been in a public classroom, and I am not sure if public school middle school math teachers still lean on what they used to call a math “Warm-Up” at the start of each class. The purpose of the “Warm-Up” was to settle their students down and get them ready for the math regimen of the day.
Using the “Warm-Up” box at the beginning of each lesson in the Saxon Math 54 through Math 87 textbooks can become quite frustrating to students who do not have the advantage of a seasoned classroom math teacher gently guiding them in the direction of the correct solution for the problem of the day – knowing that problem might come from a concept not yet introduced to the students.
But what about the “Daily Math Facts Practice” and the “Mental Math”; how will students receive training in those areas? While these two areas are essential to the student becoming well-grounded in the old pen and pencil format of adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing, graded by the teacher, that format has been improved with a computer model. Using the computer format allows the students to instantly know whether their answers are right or wrong. Additionally, while the home educators can easily spot the results tallied on the computer as the student moves along, it saves them the time spent manually grading the documents. I have placed a link to a wonderful Math Facts site on my website. Readers can find it by going to my home page, and from the list on the left side of the home page, click on “Useful Links.” When the new window appears, select the second link from the top labeled “On-Line Math Facts Practice.”
That link takes you to a math facts practice site that allows the student to select from seven different levels of difficulty in adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing. Five to ten minutes on this site every day at the appropriate level for the student to be challenged without being frustrated is just as good as the mental math or facts practice found in the “Warm-Up” box. While the Math 87 book still reflects the same “Warm-Up” box that the previous three math textbooks do, a student should have mastered the facts practice by this time. If this is the case, skipping the entire box is acceptable – unless – the student particularly enjoys the challenge of the “Problem Solving” exercise.
Now let’s see if I can explain why I am recommending you stop having the student take time to do the six to eight practice problems at the front of each of the mixed practices (the daily assignments). The original purpose of these practice problems was for the classroom teacher to use all or some of them in explaining the concept on the board so that the teacher did not have to make up their own or use the homework problems. Sometimes teachers would use some of them to have students come to the board to show their understanding of the new concept.
My experience in teaching John’s method of mastering math has shown me that there are basically two possibilities that can exist after the student has read and/or had the concept of the daily lesson explained to them.
Possibility 1: The student understands the concept and after doing the two homework problems dealing with that new concept, completely understands what to do and has no trouble doing them. Mastery of this concept will occur over the next five to six days as the student does several more each of these for the next few days. If this is a critical concept linked to other steps in the math sequence, they will keep seeing this concept periodically throughout the rest of the book.
Possibility 2: When students encounter the two homework problems that deal with the new concept, they have difficulty doing them. So, on their own, should they go back to these practice problems and get another six to eight more problems wrong? If they did the practice problems before they started their daily work, would anything have changed? If they cannot do the two homework problems because they do not understand the new concept, why give them another six to eight problems dealing with the new concept to also get wrong? This approach ultimately leads to more frustration on the part of the student. Students will have spent thirty minutes or more on these additional six to eight practice problems and still not understand the new concept. Not every student completely grasps a new concept on the day it is introduced which is why John’s books do not test a new concept until the student has had five to ten days to practice that concept.
Those practice problems were not placed there to give the student more problems to do in addition to the thirty they are assigned every day. They were placed there for the classroom teacher to use on the blackboard to teach the new concept so they did not have to develop their own or use the student’s homework problems. There is nothing wrong with a home school educator asking a student to do one or two of them to show them the student does understand the new concept; however, doing more than that could be a waste of time and effort in either possibility.
Not every child is the same and I realize that because of a particular child’s temperament, there may be some instances where the parent has to go over more than one or two of the practice problems with the child – and this is okay – but for most students this is not necessary. If the student really enjoys the challenge of the daily “Problem Solving:” that is okay – except parents should make sure that the student does not spend an excessive amount of time on that individual challenge and allow the real goal of completing the thirty problems of the Daily Assignment to become a secondary goal – and later a bother to the student.