Our children used Saxon from 54 to 87, then moved on to advanced math, calculus and physics and they have excelled with this method. Although my background doesn't include an emphasis in math, my husband's education and professional life is steeped in mathematics. He's enthusiastic about Saxon because it creates a strong foundation in the subject.

Admittedly, solving 30+ problems a lesson can be a challenge, however, this process increases one's speed and accuracy over time and as my daughter said, it helped her "to make peace with math." Math is like learning how to play a musical instrument; it takes practice and self-discipline, but it's well worth the effort. Understanding math, like being proficient at reading and writing, is one of those practical skills that make life so much easier.

Using this incremental method of learning made homeschooling through high school a breeze and our college-age children sailed through their college math courses as well. In hindsight, it would be easy to choose it again

In my experience teaching in the high school classroom, I discovered that most students can quickly learn a new skill, but if they're using a curriculum that doesn't require them to use that skill for more than a few days, they can just as quickly forget it. Saxon math books do what few others do -- through the continual review implemented in the problem sets, students are able to retain skills for the long term. Isn't that the whole point of studying Algebra 1, assuming that students plan to move on to Algebra 2 and beyond? Problems get more difficult over time, because with mastery of a skill, the student is ready to take it to the next level. Higher level math and science courses require a student to think through complex problems, not to simply "plug and chug" through a formula, and Saxon is sufficiently rigorous to prepare a student to analyze and reason his/her way to a solution. I should add that I have two children who have completed this course and have blown the doors off standardized tests. (Their mother made certain they completed their assignments, however, and I suspect that contributed to their success.)

I have homeschooled my five children using this series. They consistently get high math grades on the standardized California Achievement Tests. My three eldest have each scored in the upper 600's on the SAT tests for math. Even my right-brained, artist, writer daughter who HATES math scored 670 on her SAT. Review, review, review is key! It maybe boring, but it is very effective. As I said, the proof is in the pudding.

Ahhhhhh!

Attack of the large, hardcover, algebraical, mathematical and downright wicked text book! If you happen to see this book in person, I suggest you turn and run as positively fast as you can... AWAY! If you don't, it will open up and suck you into it's very pages, bombarding you with polynomials and rectagular coordinate systems, not to mention the villianous cronies known as fractions, and their wicked counterparts, the simple geometric solids!

I have warned you! Beware!

My mother is a Ph.D. in mathematics and taught Jr. and Sr. High math for several years before moving up to teach college math. She has been pretty vocal that the only math text that will result in imparting a poor understanding of mathematical concepts--a false sense of mastery while using it, but poor retention after--is Saxon. She says that every time she has a home schooled student who is really struggling at the college level and they say "But I did so well in math before!" and they are traumatized at the level of tutoring help they need to make it in college, they all have in common the fact that they learned math using Saxon texts in high school.



After she impressed this on me, I was really leery about choosing jr. & sr. high school curriculum a couple years ago and asked her to go to me with convention to help me pick something out. She said, "You are good at math and a good teacher. Just pick something you like that is NOT SAXON!" I'm not exaggerating. It's the spiral learning method that they use. It doesn't give enough thorough practice of all the variations of a particular concept before moving on and too heavily relies on review throughout. That seems to impedes long-term retention. She thinks the fact that it is so dull and methodical is also ridiculous in this day and age of fabulous graphics and the trend to make math more interesting and multi-modal for the average student who doesn't love math.



I find it interesting that on their website, of the 6 research studies of their curriculum, only one includes high school; the other five utilized k-8 or 6-8 curriculum. Maybe all that dry rote learning makes a student test better. But the sad part is when it comes to taking that learning and building on it, they don't really understand the concepts behind it and can't apply future learning to what they simply practiced over and over but don't really know. Kind of like cramming for a test by going over everything you've learned right beforehand and blocking everything else out until you take the test and then POOF! everything you repeated over and over in your head beforehand just seems "gone" once you go back to normal habits of thinking/doing and you stop all that repetition.

My mother is a Ph.D. in mathematics and taught Jr. and Sr. High math for several years before moving up to teach college math. She has been pretty vocal that the only math text that will result in imparting a poor understanding of mathematical concepts--a false sense of mastery while using it, but poor retention after--is Saxon. She says that every time she has a home schooled student who is really struggling at the college level and they say "But I did so well in math before!" and they are traumatized at the level of tutoring help they need to make it in college, they all have in common the fact that they learned math using Saxon texts in high school.

After she impressed this on me, I was really leery about choosing jr. & sr. high school curriculum a couple years ago and asked her to go to me with convention to help me pick something out. She said, "You are good at math and a good teacher. Just pick something you like that is NOT SAXON!" I'm not exaggerating. It's the spiral learning method that they use. It doesn't give enough thorough practice of all the variations of a particular concept before moving on and too heavily relies on review throughout. That seems to impedes long-term retention. She thinks the fact that it is so dull and methodical is also ridiculous in this day and age of fabulous graphics and the trend to make math more interesting and multi-modal for the average student who doesn't love math.

I find it interesting that on their website, of the 6 research studies of their curriculum, only one includes high school; the other five utilized k-8 or 6-8 curriculum. Maybe all that dry rote learning makes a student test better. But the sad part is when it comes to taking that learning and building on it, they don't really understand the concepts behind it and can't apply future learning to what they simply practiced over and over but don't really know. Kind of like cramming for a test by going over everything you've learned right beforehand and blocking everything else out until you take the test and then POOF! everything you repeated over and over in your head beforehand just seems "gone" once you go back to normal habits of thinking/doing and you stop all that repetition.

I haven't studied it carefully, but from what I've seen this is a good book--though in a few places the language did seem odd--perhaps that's "New Math".

As homeschooling parents, we needed a direction in math that allowed our son to be slightly independent, as neither of us progressed beyond college algebra for our careers. Admittedly, our son has a high aptitude for math, which greatly increases the success based on a book in Saxon's curriculum.

The format of Algebra I is very straightforward. In each section, a few pages are spent explaning the lesson, with examples and solutions. New terms are introduced as needed and constantly referred back to in later lessons. The problem sets (30 in each lesson - 120 lessons in all) spend a handful of questions on the current lesson, and constantly rehash previous lessons. For example, lesson 10 may include about 5-8 problems from lesson 10, then 5 from lesson 9, 5 from lesson 8, and maybe 10 from previous others, especially from important or milestone lessons where something new was introduced.

The tests follow the same format. Yes, there is a lot of overlap, but what we found was that since the same concepts were quizzed on every lesson, our son became very quick to solve them. He began to skip steps and do much of the work in his head after a while. For strong math students, this is common, and may not be related to the book itself.

I was concerned about homeschooling math largely because I never took advanced courses in college. I was able to "re-learn" Algebra by following along in this book and occasionally doing some of the problem sets. Our son enjoys the format and is eager to start Algebra 2, using the Saxon book.

Overall, especially for teachers that are not math wizards, the Saxon format works well. Our son said that although the problem sets get tedious, he thought that by going over the material over and over again, he was able to do well on the tests.

As homeschooling parents, we needed a direction in math that allowed our son to be slightly independent, as neither of us progressed beyond college algebra for our careers. Admittedly, our son has a high aptitude for math, which greatly increases the success based on a book in Saxon's curriculum.

The format of Algebra I is very straightforward. In each section, a few pages are spent explaning the lesson, with examples and solutions. New terms are introduced as needed and constantly referred back to in later lessons. The problem sets (30 in each lesson - 120 lessons in all) spend a handful of questions on the current lesson, and constantly rehash previous lessons. For example, lesson 10 may include about 5-8 problems from lesson 10, then 5 from lesson 9, 5 from lesson 8, and maybe 10 from previous others, especially from important or milestone lessons where something new was introduced.

The tests follow the same format. Yes, there is a lot of overlap, but what we found was that since the same concepts were quizzed on every lesson, our son became very quick to solve them. He began to skip steps and do much of the work in his head after a while. For strong math students, this is common, and may not be related to the book itself.

I was concerned about homeschooling math largely because I never took advanced courses in college. I was able to "re-learn" Algebra by following along in this book and occasionally doing some of the problem sets. Our son enjoys the format and is eager to start Algebra 2, using the Saxon book.

Overall, especially for teachers that are not math wizards, the Saxon format works well. Our son said that although the problem sets get tedious, he thought that by going over the material over and over again, he was able to do well on the tests.

This is avaluable resource if your are checking your child's homework. I was checking my 8th grader's homework each night and having him to redo the problems that he missed. However, in order to check it, I was having to work each one of the problems! It was taking 30-45 minutes just to check a lesson. Now that I have the solutions manual, I can check the homework and see what he did wrong. The manual not only lists the answers, it has the solutions for each problem. This has saved me valuable time in getting homework checked each evening. If your child is using Saxon math - get one! I have the Algebra 1/2 manual as well.

Just like anything else there are many factors to everything as a school teacher that uses this book I believe it is one of the most comprehensible texts out there. Other factors should include a willing student, and involved parents.

This Algebra 1 Book could have been written in many ways better. It doesn't seem to explain things well enough. The practice problems are easy, but when you get into the real homework, the problems are very hard. The answers in the back of the book aren't always right and don't show you how they got to the answer. And, as far as i am concerned, the people who wrote this book just looked the information up and copied it down, not really knowing how to teach the subject.

John Saxon, former Air Force test pilot, published an article in the May 29, 1981 issue of National Review titled "al-ge-bra MADE UNDERSTANDABLE." It was a screed against mathematics textbooks that "...confuse and frighten students by belaboring concepts that are trivial and by giving insufficient emphasis to concepts that are fundamental." Saxon condemned mastery learning and advocated teaching mathematics using "... an incremental development with a continuous review." In the mathematics textbooks he wrote himself, Saxon used an innovation he called "general repetition" -- presenting lots of problems so that students practiced doing what they learned over and over again so that they mastered necessary skills. Saxon's books, Algebra 1/2 - Algebra 1 - Algebra 2 - Advanced Mathematics - and Calculus, are an excellent way to learn mathematics. You can teach yourself by using them. I worked through the Algebra 1 and Algebra 2 books by myself when my son was in school, quite an accomplishment for a 40+ year old math dummy, and my son finished the entire sequence of books as supplemental work while using other textbooks in his school classes. The Saxon books helped make him a great mathematics student.