Math 7 honors or Algebra?

[Anonymous]

I know some very smart kids who are literally failing Algebra this year in 7th. It's a hard, high school course and they expect you to move fast and be extremely organized. I truly don't see the point. Many of them wish they had chosen Math 7 honors this year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know some very smart kids who are literally failing Algebra this year in 7th. It's a hard, high school course and they expect you to move fast and be extremely organized. I truly don't see the point. Many of them wish they had chosen Math 7 honors this year.

My 6th grader is smart, not supers art and doing great with algebra.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know some very smart kids who are literally failing Algebra this year in 7th. It's a hard, high school course and they expect you to move fast and be extremely organized. I truly don't see the point. Many of them wish they had chosen Math 7 honors this year.

My 6th grader is smart, not supers art and doing great with algebra.

I’m sure that’s true. It’s not about the math content/smartness. It’s the self motivated, self organization skills for a 12 year old. My oldest was great at Algebra in 7th. Straight As without a word from me. But....there are other kids with other, very negative experiences.

[Anonymous]

My AAP 8th grader took it in 7th and she did fine. Math doesn’t come natural to her and it’s not her strength. We don’t send her to prep or tutoring but she studies for math more than other subjects. She is from AAP center school and most of her AAP classmates took it in 7th grade. She also said there were a handful of non-AAP kids that were in her Algebra class. But she has good organizational and time management skills do maybe that’s something u want to consider.

[Anonymous]

My ADHD daughter is in Algebra I Honors in 7th. It's A LOT but she loves math and wants to study computer science. She scored 98% on IAAT. We planned to have her only take Math 7 Honors due to her executive function deficits but her 6th grade AAP teacher talked us out of it. She has no tutor and has a 114% as we enter Q3. Seems we would have done her a huge disservice had we not let her take it. It's really the only class she loves.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know some very smart kids who are literally failing Algebra this year in 7th. It's a hard, high school course and they expect you to move fast and be extremely organized. I truly don't see the point. Many of them wish they had chosen Math 7 honors this year.

My 6th grader is smart, not supers art and doing great with algebra.

I’m sure that’s true. It’s not about the math content/smartness. It’s the self motivated, self organization skills for a 12 year old. My oldest was great at Algebra in 7th. Straight As without a word from me. But....there are other kids with other, very negative experiences.

No, not really. I am surprised at all these kids in APP given the posts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My ADHD daughter is in Algebra I Honors in 7th. It's A LOT but she loves math and wants to study computer science. She scored 98% on IAAT. We planned to have her only take Math 7 Honors due to her executive function deficits but her 6th grade AAP teacher talked us out of it. She has no tutor and has a 114% as we enter Q3. Seems we would have done her a huge disservice had we not let her take it. It's really the only class she loves.

This is a lot to do with your kid’s teacher’s grading. Ours allows for nothing over 100, no test retakes, and is a really harsh grader. There are infrequent grades, as well, so brining up a lower grade is much harder. A teacher allowing extra credit and grades to inflate above 100, means that those kids will very likely get an A because bringing them down to an a- will be much harder. My niece had a similar experience. She was given weekly quizzes, tests, quizzes - even homework - could be retaken, there was homework that was graded 2x a week, etc. If an answer was -3 and my niece put 3, she was given partial credit. Extra credit was offered and having a grade over 100 was easy. My kid’s teacher gave one test each quarter. There were 12 questions on it. No extra credit ever and no partial credit on any problems. There was homework but it only counted with your participation grade which was 5% of the grade total. Quizzes could be retaken but only if under an 80 and the new grade could no be higher than an 80. This was several years ago, and my kid did get an A, but I know that my kid’s and niece’s experiences were very different.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

This is a lot to do with your kid’s teacher’s grading. Ours allows for nothing over 100, no test retakes, and is a really harsh grader. There are infrequent grades, as well, so brining up a lower grade is much harder. A teacher allowing extra credit and grades to inflate above 100, means that those kids will very likely get an A because bringing them down to an a- will be much harder. My niece had a similar experience. She was given weekly quizzes, tests, quizzes - even homework - could be retaken, there was homework that was graded 2x a week, etc. If an answer was -3 and my niece put 3, she was given partial credit. Extra credit was offered and having a grade over 100 was easy. My kid’s teacher gave one test each quarter. There were 12 questions on it. No extra credit ever and no partial credit on any problems. There was homework but it only counted with your participation grade which was 5% of the grade total. Quizzes could be retaken but only if under an 80 and the new grade could no be higher than an 80. This was several years ago, and my kid did get an A, but I know that my kid’s and niece’s experiences were very different.

None of this has anything at all to do with readiness for Algebra. Kids at your child's school who took M7H in 7th could have had the same picky teacher in 8th and could have received low grades in 8th even after potentially wasting a year in M7H. I wouldn't hold back a child who is ready for Algebra out of fear that the teacher might be a harsh grader.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

This is a lot to do with your kid’s teacher’s grading. Ours allows for nothing over 100, no test retakes, and is a really harsh grader. There are infrequent grades, as well, so brining up a lower grade is much harder. A teacher allowing extra credit and grades to inflate above 100, means that those kids will very likely get an A because bringing them down to an a- will be much harder. My niece had a similar experience. She was given weekly quizzes, tests, quizzes - even homework - could be retaken, there was homework that was graded 2x a week, etc. If an answer was -3 and my niece put 3, she was given partial credit. Extra credit was offered and having a grade over 100 was easy. My kid’s teacher gave one test each quarter. There were 12 questions on it. No extra credit ever and no partial credit on any problems. There was homework but it only counted with your participation grade which was 5% of the grade total. Quizzes could be retaken but only if under an 80 and the new grade could no be higher than an 80. This was several years ago, and my kid did get an A, but I know that my kid’s and niece’s experiences were very different.

None of this has anything at all to do with readiness for Algebra. Kids at your child's school who took M7H in 7th could have had the same picky teacher in 8th and could have received low grades in 8th even after potentially wasting a year in M7H. I wouldn't hold back a child who is ready for Algebra out of fear that the teacher might be a harsh grader.

I replied to the woman saying her child has a 114%. My child had a 99% on the Iowa and a pass advanced on the Sol. He was on the math counts teams in elementary and middle school. He got an A in algebra in 7th, but grading was harsh. I don’t want people thinking it’s a walk in the park for all. Perhaps with COVID and the whole easier grading - that’s also helpful. I know there are no zeros, late work is liberally accepted without penalty and retakes are allowed. There is also a rolling grade book.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

My DS was an AAP student whose scores easily put him into Algebra I Honors in 7th grade, but we choose to have him take it in 8th grade because of a travel sport and some family issues (not him specifically). We didn't want him overwhelmed with all the honors classes and a high school math class. The only down side we are finding is that he wants to go into Engineering and won't take AP Calc until 12th grade, so he can't apply ED to any of the engineering schools. They all want to see a Calc grade. He'll have to apply RD which will be much tougher. I'm still 50/50 on whether we would do things differently if we had known, but it does narrow his options. FYI.

So you have to have AP Calc to apply ED to engineering schools? I have never heard this but my kids are not in HS yet and back in the day AP Calc senior year was the standard advanced path. Can you clarify?

I don't buy it. In many school systems/private schools there is no option to take Algebra in 7th grade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
So you have to have AP Calc to apply ED to engineering schools? I have never heard this but my kids are not in HS yet and back in the day AP Calc senior year was the standard advanced path. Can you clarify?

I don't buy it. In many school systems/private schools there is no option to take Algebra in 7th grade.

DP. At least for UVA, W&M, and VT engineering, you aren't competing against those kids from other school districts who may or may not have the opportunity to take Algebra. You're specifically competing against other NoVa kids for a limited number of NoVa slots. FCPS kids who don't take AP calc until Senior year will look worse in comparison to those who take it as juniors and already have Calc grades/AP scores for their transcripts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

The vast majority of SAT math is algebra. There is no SAT disadvantage to taking calculus in 12th. It may be a disadvantage in college applications, but not for the SAT.

+1. My DS got a 780 on SAT math a few weeks into honors pre-calc in junior year without prep.

At his MS, there were vast differences between honors Algebra classes depending on which teacher you got (different textbooks, differing amounts of actual instruction, huge differences in homework load) - basically, we didn't want our ADHD kid who was still 11 at the start of 7th to get the crazy math teacher who assigns 50 problems daily, so he waited.



The "crazy" math teacher would never assign 50 easy drill and kill questions, they would give just one proof problem for homework

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know some very smart kids who are literally failing Algebra this year in 7th. It's a hard, high school course and they expect you to move fast and be extremely organized. I truly don't see the point. Many of them wish they had chosen Math 7 honors this year.

My 6th grader is smart, not supers art and doing great with algebra.

I’m sure that’s true. It’s not about the math content/smartness. It’s the self motivated, self organization skills for a 12 year old. My oldest was great at Algebra in 7th. Straight As without a word from me. But....there are other kids with other, very negative experiences.

No, not really. I am surprised at all these kids in APP given the posts.

Not all AAP kids are math geniuses. My daughter's friend group is heavy on kids very advanced in language arts and writing who are fine doing in the standard AAP year-ahead math but are not planning to do Algebra in 7th. Or mine, who has the math aptitude but not interest enough to take a high school class the first year of middle school. She can take algebra and the first year of a language in 8th and still come out fine for HS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So is it 50-50 for AAP kids to take Algebra vs Honors 7?

I really hate how we don’t have textbooks. I am afraid there are a lot of learning gaps.

We got a textbook and just run a parallel program at home, starting in early elementary. This way we don't really have to play frantically play catch-up with whatever is happening in class, and can ensure there aren't learning gaps. Have heard too many horror stories of bright kids flaming out in Algebra because whoops, never really understood fractions.