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ASDMommyASDKid
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24 Sep 2015, 8:30 am

My son does not enjoy workbooks, especially but needs some extra practice in algebra to get the steps to be more automatic. He will practice using Paint as a chalkboard, but I was wondering if anyone knew of a game that would do the trick.. I have found short games, but I was hoping there is something more like Timez Attack that he would really get into. Anyone know anything like that?



Adamantium
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24 Sep 2015, 10:05 am

I don't know about games, but I find graphing calculators very helpful when it comes to explaining certain concepts--as in 5 minutes with a graphing calculator is worth hours of lectures and drills.

https://www.desmos.com/calculator



ASDMommyASDKid
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24 Sep 2015, 12:47 pm

Funny you should mention calculators. My son loves calculators. He has a scientific one now. I am guessing we will get him a graphing one for X-mas.

He is not one for lectures, and he is not into drilling, but he needs practice. I also banned calculators for tests and homework because he hates tedious math and hates making careless errors and relies too much on them.



Adamantium
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24 Sep 2015, 1:11 pm

The online graphing calculator I linked to is better understood as a visualization tool for functions.

It should not be thought of as a cheat to bypass skill-building work, but rather a device that allows a learner to quickly and intuitively grasp key concepts that would otherwise come much more slowly. The key is to play with it, rapidly exploring the consequences of changing terms in various ways.

For example, a student will learn slope intercept form in a few minutes of experimenting with different coefficients for the slope and adding or subtracting values for the y intercept and they will grasp this in a completely intuitive way that hours of grindy table calculating and hand plotting will not achieve.



ASDMommyASDKid
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24 Sep 2015, 4:20 pm

Cool. I will show it to him. Thanks, Adamantium!

Edited to add: He already had it in the favorite list.

You knew what he likes! :)



zette
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24 Sep 2015, 6:35 pm

Have you tried Khan Academy? It's free and online, and people seem to rave about it. (My son didn't particularly like it, actually preferring worksheets, but it couldn't hurt to try...)



ASDMommyASDKid
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24 Sep 2015, 8:33 pm

We do Khan Academy as part of out curriculum. He likes it, but he needs something more fun in addition to that. Once he gets a skill mastered in Khan Academy he doesn't want to touch it b/c he is afraid of it going down.(There is a color system for levels of mastery and if you get something wrong it lowers your level. I tell him it is b/c Sal (Sal Khan) wants him to practice it when he gets something worng, but the idea of dropping a level upsets him. I don't want him to have to get soemthing wrong in order to get him more practice, if that makes sense.

We also have manipulatives where we can do a version of Hands on Equations kind of stuff, but he tends to make up his own games. I really want him to practice manipulating expressions and equations. He has issues getting the terms isolated efficiently, and knowing what to switch to what side, and he could use the practice.



Adamantium
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25 Sep 2015, 8:28 am

ASDMommyASDKid wrote:
Cool. I will show it to him. Thanks, Adamantium!

Edited to add: He already had it in the favorite list.

You knew what he likes! :)

:D 8)



Adamantium
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30 Sep 2015, 10:17 am

A next step could be something more robust.

I am sure he already has Wolfram Alpha in his favorites--if not, then it should be: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=plot+x%5E3+-+6x%5E2+%2B+4x+%2B+12&lk=3

Beyond that, the big guns:
Mathematica
http://www.wolfram.com/mathematica/?source=nav
Potentially bewilderingly complex, but amazingly powerful

Maple
http://www.maplesoft.com/products/maple/

Maybe something like
Maxima:
http://maxima.sourceforge.net/

or R, with the right packages:
https://www.r-project.org/
This could also be a bit daunting in apparent complexity, but there are many tutorials out there.

The world is full of free or very low cost options for learning and entertainment if mathematics is your thing.