Warming Up for Back to School

Hannah finally, reluctantly agreed to do lesson 1 in Algebra I for me so I could get a feel for how this textbook is set up. Cate was a great big sister and played along as co-student and co-teacher. We are using Prentice Hall Algebra I and after lesson 1, I really like it so far. This algebra course from Calvert comes with the textbook, solutions manual, lesson manual, a download for a graphing calculator, and a lesson manual to learn how to use a graphing calculator. I am pretty sure graphing calculators did not exist back in the early eighties during my high school math career. So I will be refreshing my knowledge of algebra and learning how to use a graphing calculator for the first time. Isn't that beautiful? I will be learning right along with my daughter.

This textbook comes with an online copy of the same textbook. On the Chapter title page is a list of vocabulary. The online text has an audio pronunciation of each vocabulary word. At the top of the page for each lesson is Check Skills You'll Need. You need to be able to perform these skills to complete the lesson. If you can't, you are referred to the Skills Handbook for practice. In teaching the lesson, the text includes a Quick Check to make sure you understand. This helps you pinpoint where in the problem the breakdown in communications occurred. Then we have practice for each section where something is explained and finally, a practice section where you put it all together. If you are still having trouble, some pages have a Homework Video Tutor. If all else fails, this is a Calvert course and you the teacher or you the student can call Calvert Education Services and talk to an Education Counselor. I am beginning to feel like there is no way to mess up with this course!

Hannah still had some time where she was staring off into space, but trying to compete with Cate kept her focused most of the time. Because Cate did Algebra more than ten years ago, she challenged Hannah to finish her assigned odd problems while Cate, having finished the odds, sped on through the evens. This kept Hannah from being too discouraged that Cate finished so quickly.

Lesson 2 includes a lesson from the Graphing Calculator lesson manual, and I'm hoping Hannah lets us work through this lesson, too, to see how that all plays out. Also, we are not actually working ahead because Hannah wants the lesson numbers from Algebra and seventh grade to match. I told her on the first day of school, we would skip math to "ease into" school without doing all the subjects the first day.

We are hoping Caitlin can be here often for Algebra and we have our eyes on Jabari Lyles as well.