Tuesday, April 05, 2005

The New Saxon

This article about the Saxon Math curriculum after the purchase of Saxon by a large, multinational conglomerate reflects one woman's concerns about changes being made to the curriculum.

What do you think?

Have any of you had experience with both the old and new Saxon?

Read her column here about Saxon Math.

1 comment:

Catherine Johnson said...

I've used the entire paperback Saxon 6/5 and didn't find it to be constructivist at all.

I did find that it taught 'conceptually,' by which I mean that my son is certainly gaining as much conceptual understanding of elementary mathematics as any other child I know. I was actually surprised by how 'conceptual' it was----

The book has to be quite different from the Saxon texts used in CA, I assume, because I just gave my son a practice version of the CA 5th grade test, and there were quite a number of subjects we hadn't covered.

Last but not least, I began homeschooling my son in math at the end of 4th grade, after he flunked two Unit tests out of 6 using SRA Math.

I used Saxon, and in 6 months' time he had made up all the lost ground, was earning As in 5th grade math and had advanced to the accelerated class, which uses a 6th grade text. He's getting As and high Bs there.

"Paperback Saxon" has been a miracle around here.