Mt. Pleasant Classical Academy

Background:
MilitaryKid is entering 6th grade, has used Singapore Math from the beginning, along with R&S and Calculadders and Math Worksheet Factory. I LOVE math, it is my favorite subject and enjoy teaching it, and do math for fun, but realize I MUST be doing something WRONG. Why do I feel this way you ask? DS’s has learned his math facts but he is SLOOOOOOOOOOW, really SLOOOOOOOOW and I know this. His IOWA test results confirmed my thoughts last year so we focused on speed drills this past year in addition to his normal math work. We did speed drills most everyday, and his speed did improve tremendously but there are those results.

I was SO SURE that his math computation would improve but his IOWA test results just came in the door today. Math Computation at 33% or a grade equivalent of 5.2. I just pulled out last year’s to compare —- he had a GE of 5.8 last year. It wasn’t that he just missed the questions, but he ran out of time on this section too. He didn’t work fast enough, compute fast enough, and accurately. What’s a math-loving-mom to do?

On the positive side his spelling, capitalization, punctuation, and thus his Language area was a full grade level low on his 3rd grade IOWA test. Last year it inched up to just a bit below grade level, and this year it jumped to grade 10.5 (We used Spelling Power for 4th and 5th grade, along with R&S LA program) . Nice to see such improvement. His Reading Comprehension and Vocabulary, including all the individual scores in those areas are whopping great, actually surprising how high they are, and improving every year. But then there’s the math computation……

What do I do? The math computation scores are really just confirming what I had thought but I was hoping it would be better than last year. And it wasn’t. While I knew we had improved, gotten faster, MK still struggles both with working quickly and accurately.

Time? Is that the answer? Just continue with what we are doing and give it more time? Or is there some other approach? No, we will not drop math computation or stop working on improving his math computational speed. I see it as an important foundational stone to working successfully through Algebra, Trig, Calc,….. But what else should we do to improve the speed and accuracy??