My older son probably spent ten minutes on math homework, my younger son more like half an hour. Even when they were in AP courses I don’t think they ever spent more two or three hours on all of their courses combined.
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i've never seen him look through math notes before a test, so why even write them down in the first place.<<<<<<<<<
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So he doesn’t revise for tests?
“i even told him (not sure this is the best strategy) to STOP taking notes in class, and try to hyper focus on the lecture/lesson/sample problems that the teacher does…do the parents think this is a good idea???”
Does he have a textbook or no? DD’s class does not have one. She asked me to buy her one at a nearby used book store. It acts as a reference for her, but she is also hoping to study ahead, not so much for the class but so she can be a stronger participant on her math team. There are online resources aplenty too, but she said she’d rather have the book. That kind of thing may help your son. Also, as I mentioned in Post #1, do encourage him to make use out of whatever resources your school offers. Best of all, they’re usually free.
"At our school Algebra 2 Honors covers a bit more material which allows PreCalc Honors to cover enough to lead straight to AP Calc BC. "
Our HS is similar. Honors Algebra 2 also covers precalculus, the next year trigonometry and Calc A are covered, and kids go on to Calc BC after that. It seems to be a bit different than a lot of the high school plans discussed on these boards, and it requires students to keep up in class due to the amount of material covered. Thus 1.5 hours of math homework happens as often as not.
He does practice problems and usually a teacher will give a set of review problems before a quiz/test. He does not look at notes before a test.
yes he does have a textbook
You could buy a copy of his textbook and tutor him daily on the parts he finds difficult and prep him for tests. I did this to help one of my sons with Algebra I and ended up helping a few other kids in the class too. He and the others who needed help were all ‘A’ students in honors, but they needed some extra tutoring to keep getting A’s.
In our experience…in the accelerated classes, there is an assumption that the students either know, or can quickly grasp new concepts presented. In regular classes, there is much more time allotted for explanation and questions…and answers.
It is very important to have a good math foundation…or the higher up you go, the more difficult it will be.
We did not allow our kid to be accelerated in math and yes, she got A grades in 6th and 7th grade. My husband (an engineer, and a very fine mathematician) said a good math foundation was far more important than acceleration.
I would suggest you take @mathmom suggestions. Have your student go to the teacher with specific questions. BUT I would also ask that teacher about the pace of this class, and see if the teacher feels this option is right.
Does he like math? If he does, is there a math club at school? Just a shot in the dark here, but if he does like it, and there is a club, I’d recommend joining and doing the informal competitions and challenge problems that most of these clubs undertake.
The standard curriculum is boring, REALLY BORING. It offers little more than disjointed algorithms, and nothing of the unifying problem solving techniques that tie together the various topics. Problem solving in math clubs can help teach an approach, a way of thinking, rather than just templates as in normal classes. Armed with that new tool, many students are surprised at how quickly they can absorb the class material.
That doesn’t sound all that unreasonable to me. Honors math is hard, the pace is fast, and some teachers don’t know the material well enough themselves to teach it effectively. Also, in our district teachers often skip a lot of review and foundational material because many kids are now tutored extensively outside of school or take during the summer the same course they will take in the fall in order to ensure they get A’s. Another factor potentially affecting math learning in our district is block scheduling. There are only so many new math concepts a student can learn in one period, and in my opinion a 90 minute math class is not as effective as a 50 minute class for many students. If you don’t grasp something in the first 10 minutes, you probably won’t understand most of the next 80 minutes either. That means the student will need to catch himself up at home.
My honors math kids were considered very bright (high SAT scores, accepted to top 10 schools) and definitely spent a lot of time on ALL their homework–especially math. They would often need to go over the examples in the textbook and/or ask their father for help understanding the concepts taught that day in class. In other words, they didn’t always fully understand the lesson in school and needed to learn it at home before even starting the homework. For that reason, I wouldn’t be overly concerned if I were you. Also, struggle is good for the soul.
Finally, I think there’s a lot of variation in high school difficulty and workload (even for the same class, same textbook) so our experiences aren’t all that relevant to you. You might gain some perspective by talking to other parents of kids in the same class to see if their kids are also taking that long to do the homework. That said, I have learned time and time again that many parents will not be honest about how hard their children work or how much they suffer with schoolwork. They love to portray them as naturally brilliant–kids for whom everything comes quickly easily. You know, “My son never studies and gets straight A’s!” “My son always finishes all his homework on the bus.” At our high school, the top students worked their butts off and were up all hours of the night.
I would seriously consider having your son move to the non-accelerated Algebra 2 class. The head of the math department at our school said that if it was regularly taking longer than 30-40 minutes for your child to get through their homework for any individual class (unless they were also studying for an upcoming test) - that was one of the best indications that your child was not appropriately placed.
Call the teacher and talk with them, I am sure they have a pretty good feel for whether the class placement is appropriate. I will say that my oldest (good at math, but not a favorite subject by any means) was not accelerated at the beginning of high school but was placed in the accelerated track after freshman year due to teacher recommendation. I’ve never seen oldest take longer than 20-30 minutes completing math homework…even this year in AP Calc.
Remind your son (if he does end up staying in his current class) that there are many ways to get extra help. I am assuming the math department offers extra help, he could set up a meeting with the teacher before or after school, many schools offer peer tutoring, he can sign up for Khan Academy to work on concepts outside of school. There are lots of resources and learning how to be proactive in taking advantage of those resources is one of the biggest lessons to learn - a great lesson to master freshman year.
My daughter is a math teacher…and she wants the kids to ask questions. Most likely other kids have questions. Does the teacher have extra help hours? Can your son form a study group with other kids?
bopper…yes the teacher does have before school study hours…i will have him attend those if his understanding doesn’t improve in the coming days…if that doesn’t work, i will have him switch to alg 2 reg
"So all this leads me to the question “How long should it take a 14 year old boy to do 15-20 algebra 2 problems?”
That’s really not an easy question to answer since it depends on a lot of individual factors, the teacher, the topic being worked on, your son’s adjustment to a high school honors class etc… Graphing may be one of the topics that could be longer especially if you’re using a graphing calculator for the first time. 1.5 hours does seem a lot for 15 problems, you may want to check with your teacher what the typical h/w expectations are.
I would encourage him to keep taking notes, writing what’s on the board, what the teacher says as well as his questions if he can’t ask them in class for ant reason . Then he can go ask the teacher and his tutor the questions in his notebook.
Writing helps people focus (that’s why even on the phone people doodled) and the gesture of writing helps in memorizing. It’s even better to handwrite than to type because handwriting helps processing.
Have him read his notes every evening before he does any problem. He may take so long because he doesn’t recall the day’s lesson and has to recreate it in order to answer the problems…
@bjkmom : suggestions?
Our high school accelerated classes expect the students to figure out how to do the problems with guidance from the teacher rather than be taught how to figure out the problems. The alternate Algebra 2 classes has the teacher explain how to do the problems. Our high school also has online math lectures that students can watch at home if they missed something. There is also time to work on problems in class and get help. In fact, the majority of time is spent working on problems with less time spent on the lecture.