I had good intentions to keep blogging weekly progress, but August had entirely different plans for us.
Overall Progress Report
I decided the school couldn't realistically expect proficiency in Common Core standards which haven't been taught yet, so we spent a half hour together today reviewing the existing 7th grade State standards and clicking through to the performance expectations under each content area.
It ended up being a really great and rewarding discussion that showed that we didn't cover every single detail between our homeschooling summer and the end of 6th grade math, but enough that he has a very strong base to build on for the year of 8th grade math ahead. We both are feeling a lot more prepared and confident as a result and are celebrating with chocolate chip cookie ice cream sundaes tonight!
DragonBox app
I don't think he ever got to Chapter 5 and that's ok. I'll keep an eye with his algebra progress in the year ahead to support/practice these concepts.
Khan Academy
In the middle of August they introduced the Learning Dashboard with Practice, Level 1, Level 2 & Mastery levels for the skill areas.
This is very helpful and appreciated, but it also resulted in my previous method of tracking math progress being thrown out the window. After about a week or so of flailing around trying to figure out what changed and understanding new results we got the hang of things, and currently he has 13 skills Practiced, 21 at Level 1, 24 at Level 2, and 76 Mastered - 134 total with 371 new skills to go including high school/college math concepts.
9 days ago he got another Earth badge which is now earned for mastery of 50 skills alongside his retired Earth badge which was earned for proficiency in 50 skills. He'll earn a Magellan Sun badge when he has 100 skills mastered.
Key to Algebra + Key to Fractions by Curriculum Press
In book 3 of algebra, he worked through page 16 covering the addition principle for equations (also known as the 'if a=b, then a+c=b+c' concept). Per Khan he has already mastered one-step equations but hasn't touched the other skills with linear equations, so I think this is the result of the new Math Pretest that the Learning Dashboard originally presents with - and affirmation that he understands them!
In book 4 of fractions he worked through page 25 which covers a variety of whole or mixed numbers problems. Per Khan he's got this area and most other areas of fractions down well now.
McDougal Littell Pre-Algebra textbook (2005)
We still haven't been using this all that often, although it will be a very helpful resource for the rest of middle school.
Reading
If you have an opportunity and if your kids will benefit from it (you know them best) I highly recommend checking out the Institute for Reading Development's summer classes. I'm really glad I jumped at the chance to get him in the middle school class because he received the highest book level recommendation there from the start - by next summer I think he'd be bored - and ended up with an average 570 words per minute speed, better comprehension, and he particularly enjoyed learning the textbook study skills. He also never once complained about the 5 Fridays of 2.5 hour classes or the 4 1-hour homework assignments each week. I know the same will not be said for middle school, which starts tomorrow.
