Aops Vienna - prealgebra and up

[Anonymous]

How effective are AoPS online classes for older grades? The teacher does not speak, and entire instruction is through chat. Are all of their online classes in this chat format?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And in response to one of the posters re BA, fyi the AOPS Pre-Algebra text is a single tome — no more Grog and other monsters. My kid is enjoying the class, but feels a little nostalgic about not having the monsters anymore

I felt there was a lot of overlap between BA 5A/5B and 6A/6B. My kid had done 5A/5B in 4th grade and 6A in 5th but skipped into Algebra instead of taking 6b. It was never an issue for them, but it may not have been optimal.

The risk there is that Intro Algebra ("7") is a bit too much, which means Intermediate Algebra 2 ("9") will be a bunch too much. This is a common complaint among AOPS students who get through Intro Algebra early. This is fine for students who only want equal or better than the regular school curriculum, but not great for students who want to do all of the AOPS curriculum into Olympiad depth.

How far has your kid gone since Algebra?

They took Algebra in 6th, so that was 2 years ago. They just turned 13 and are about halfway through the AoPS Intermediate Algebra course. It's a challenging class compared to Geometry or Algebra 1. The course covers about a chapter a week. This involves a bit more work than we'd like, given their other ECs, but we still manage it.

Oh, you were saying your kid did only 6A (Prealgebra A) in 5th, and then Algebra AB in 6th?
That's less intense then going right into Algebra in spring of 5th.

Going through Intermediate Algebra "9" lightly is plenty, if all the challenge work is too much. If they continue next year, Precalculus is a mini course like Intro Geometry (I don't know why they didn't make Intermediate Algebra smaller and Precalc bigger), which affords time to review and do the challenge work from Intermediate Algebra.
(Or branch into Intermediate Number Theory or Counting and Probability, but those might not be meaningful to a student who took their foot off the gas in Intermediate Algerba)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And in response to one of the posters re BA, fyi the AOPS Pre-Algebra text is a single tome — no more Grog and other monsters. My kid is enjoying the class, but feels a little nostalgic about not having the monsters anymore

I felt there was a lot of overlap between BA 5A/5B and 6A/6B. My kid had done 5A/5B in 4th grade and 6A in 5th but skipped into Algebra instead of taking 6b. It was never an issue for them, but it may not have been optimal.

The risk there is that Intro Algebra ("7") is a bit too much, which means Intermediate Algebra 2 ("9") will be a bunch too much. This is a common complaint among AOPS students who get through Intro Algebra early. This is fine for students who only want equal or better than the regular school curriculum, but not great for students who want to do all of the AOPS curriculum into Olympiad depth.

How far has your kid gone since Algebra?

They took Algebra in 6th, so that was 2 years ago. They just turned 13 and are about halfway through the AoPS Intermediate Algebra course. It's a challenging class compared to Geometry or Algebra 1. The course covers about a chapter a week. This involves a bit more work than we'd like, given their other ECs, but we still manage it.

Oh, you were saying your kid did only 6A (Prealgebra A) in 5th, and then Algebra AB in 6th?
That's less intense then going right into Algebra in spring of 5th.

Going through Intermediate Algebra "9" lightly is plenty, if all the challenge work is too much. If they continue next year, Precalculus is a mini course like Intro Geometry (I don't know why they didn't make Intermediate Algebra smaller and Precalc bigger), which affords time to review and do the challenge work from Intermediate Algebra.
(Or branch into Intermediate Number Theory or Counting and Probability, but those might not be meaningful to a student who took their foot off the gas in Intermediate Algerba)

Or just stop in high school after Algebra 2, Recslc, or Calc. Regular school gets more intense in MS and again in HS, so unless your kid is a very focused on math kid, HS is a good time to let go of AoPS and put energy into advanced STE non-M classes, having achieved a strong foundation in core math.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And in response to one of the posters re BA, fyi the AOPS Pre-Algebra text is a single tome — no more Grog and other monsters. My kid is enjoying the class, but feels a little nostalgic about not having the monsters anymore

I felt there was a lot of overlap between BA 5A/5B and 6A/6B. My kid had done 5A/5B in 4th grade and 6A in 5th but skipped into Algebra instead of taking 6b. It was never an issue for them, but it may not have been optimal.

The risk there is that Intro Algebra ("7") is a bit too much, which means Intermediate Algebra 2 ("9") will be a bunch too much. This is a common complaint among AOPS students who get through Intro Algebra early. This is fine for students who only want equal or better than the regular school curriculum, but not great for students who want to do all of the AOPS curriculum into Olympiad depth.

How far has your kid gone since Algebra?

They took Algebra in 6th, so that was 2 years ago. They just turned 13 and are about halfway through the AoPS Intermediate Algebra course. It's a challenging class compared to Geometry or Algebra 1. The course covers about a chapter a week. This involves a bit more work than we'd like, given their other ECs, but we still manage it.

Oh, you were saying your kid did only 6A (Prealgebra A) in 5th, and then Algebra AB in 6th?
That's less intense then going right into Algebra in spring of 5th.

Going through Intermediate Algebra "9" lightly is plenty, if all the challenge work is too much. If they continue next year, Precalculus is a mini course like Intro Geometry (I don't know why they didn't make Intermediate Algebra smaller and Precalc bigger), which affords time to review and do the challenge work from Intermediate Algebra.
(Or branch into Intermediate Number Theory or Counting and Probability, but those might not be meaningful to a student who took their foot off the gas in Intermediate Algerba)

Yes, though I often wondered if it was all necessary or if there wasn't a better way to go about this. The kid didn't struggle at all, but I wondered if they needed 6A. I just wanted them to enjoy math and occasionally be challenged.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How effective are AoPS online classes for older grades? The teacher does not speak, and entire instruction is through chat. Are all of their online classes in this chat format?

All of the AoPS online courses are text-based, but AoPS Virtual is more traditional digital face-to-face. There are also third party providers like WTMA and royal fireworks press that also do live classes.