Five Reasons Saxon Math Works for Bios Christian Academy

We use Saxon as our textbook for teaching math beginning in grade four and continuing through to calculus. I have used it for over fourteen years at both private schools I have headed with very consistent and impressive results. Often I am asked for my opinion on the best materials for homeschooling and why we use certain materials to educate our students. Here are some thoughts on Saxon.

But first, a little about our teaching methods at Bios Christian Academy. Like it says on the front page of our website, if you were to observe our classrooms K-12 you would observe classrooms that look like homeschool instruction with a few more students, years of experience, and very focused learning objectives. Our goal is to train your child(ren) to be highly-skilled, independent learners who know a lot about the God of the Bible. Recently a parent, who after checking out our website and then observing the students in the classrooms commented “You don’t spoon feed your students, but are actually developing independent learners for the future.” Another name for our approach is Differentiated Instruction.

Back to Saxon. Here are the five reasons for using Saxon.

1. “Spiraling” is used in Saxon. Spiraling is a superior method of presentation for learning. It is the idea of presenting a concept, learning it, and practicing previously learned concepts on a daily basis, in other words continual practice and review. Our students develop mastery of math because Saxon does just that – teach a concept, provide adequate practice (two to ten problems), and then spend the rest of their math period maintaining previously learned skills with two to four problems of each skill in their lesson of thirty problems. One major advantage of this concept, and it is big, is that you can’t fake your way on understanding a skill because it keeps showing up day after day. Our teachers can then focus on assisting students as they master the concept if it was not fully understood at first. The type of text book used in most lecture based classrooms involves a text that teaches a concept one day and leaves it, not to been seen until the test. Usually the assignment for the day is 25 to 35 problems of the same type of problem introduced that day. Five problems are all that is really needed to understand a concept, the other 20 to 30 problems are there just to provide busy work for the students.

2. One-on-one Instruction Our teachers rarely lecture, but instead discuss with each student 3-5 times in a period their understanding of the lesson being worked on. This is possible because the Saxon daily lessons are so well written by Mr. Kake. Clear explanations and supportive examples allow our students to read the lesson which builds upon previously learned skills and explain to their instructor what their understanding of the lesson is. The teacher is then able to decide if the student understands the material presented or if there is need by the teacher for further explanation, examples, and/or additional materials.

3. Mental Math Or work that doesn’t involve pencil and paper. Oral review of basic facts and concepts - what an idea! Every day that our students work a lesson, in the fourth through eighth grades our students work through the six to ten mental math exercises which involve all four operations of money, square roots, fractions, decimals, and so on. Over the days, weeks, months, and years our students become very proficient in their math skills by daily working through and reciting these mental math problems.

4. Frequent Testing Tests occur every five lessons. Testing is good. Frequent testing is better. Saxon tests only the material learned up to five lessons prior to the test. Before a test happens it is well practiced day after day. By the time they get to a test the material has been practiced a lot. If the student does not pass the test, you as the teacher should be surprised because you have had plenty of opportunities to observe the student working all the problems on the test. Frequent testing allows a teacher to ascertain whether a student understands the material in a different format outside of the daily lessons.

5. Math Facts Saxon daily reinforces the learning and mastery of basic math facts in the fourth through the pre-algebra book. Students begin learning and mastering basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division facts in kindergarten. Saxon reinforces these skills with time tests every day. Our expectation is forty-eight facts in less than one minute.

Saxon is not perfect. But so far they best meet our needs in instructing our students towards mastery in math.