Reply to Khan Academy to fill in gaps?

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[quote=Anonymous]Khan Academy is decent; certainly well organized and comprehensive. I often assigned it for background/practices. My only caveat - and many of my students agreed - is Sal Kahn is ... uh .... a tad boring.  Students, for instance, found the guys at math antics much more entertaining, and often retained more watching them. Unfortunately they don't have nearly as thorough a set of video explanations, nor much review/practice materials.
There channel is here, if you want to check it out:
https://mathantics.com/

Another poster mentioned Eureka Math, which is a well regarded curriculum. Indeed, the parts of MCPS old Curriculum 2.0 that WERE NOT a disaster were the parts they cribbed whole-heartedly from Eureka Math. Although MCPS says it has left C2.0 behind, you schools mileage may vary, LoL
 
What is interesting is that you can do both Khan Academy and Eureka Math (aka EngageNY), as dear Sal Khan has put together modules specifically for that curriculum. I mention because it is at least somewhat correlated with the order MCPS still teaches in. Not perfect, but given it's a free resource, hard to beat its value!

https://www.khanacademy.org/math/engageny-alg-1

Sometimes the weakness is much earlier mathematics, and all the work on current concepts is thwarted because basic, rote skills are lacking: it may not be glamorous but making sure addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, working with fractions, and having decent number sense are spot on is a far more useful and needed practice area. Knowing concrete facts such as one's squares (say up to 20 squared), for instance, also makes focusing on the abstract concepts of the pythagorean theorem, the quadratic formula, etc easier. If your child can't do these fundamentals with ZERO hesitancy, practice! Know your multiplication table as well as you know your own name!

Also, and many might not agree, I suggest that it is more helpful to deeply understand some math than to sort of know a wide amount of math background. So ... whatever you review, practice practice practice, especially the 'simpler' stuff until they can essentially "do it in their sleep". Makes the more abstract concepts easier to grasp in the future.

Finally, let me give two textbook suggestions. Remember textbooks, LoL? Their focus are in some ways opposite, so I mention both:

If your child needs extensive practice and smaller steps, then the old Saxon Math Algebra 1 text is still gold. For earlier materials, Saxon Math 7/6 
The older the addition the better; you literally want one from the 20th century (pre 2004), not the newer Saxon-in-name-only variants. Which is great, because with a bit of search you can find old beat up copies for twenty dollars or less

For a much more big picture top down good explanation and make you think about it: Harold Jacobs Elementary Algebra. 
Again, from last century. Where Saxon focuses on "drill baby drill", Jacobs tries hard to get the student to think through and understand the fundamental concepts that are behind the computations and algorithms introduced. It of course also has lots of problem sets, so is a good book to work through. It's a bit harder to find used, but may be worth the effort.

Neither book is necessarily aligned with modern "grand vision" national standards, which may be either a good thing or a bad thing!

Your mileage on these books may, of course, vary.

HTH
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