Saxon Math

The teaching of math at the classroom level is often a challenge. Most of us remember being in a middle school or high school math class in which the teacher was a math wiz with a virtual obsession with the inner workings of the world of math lecturing with passion to a classroom of clueless students who did not share the teacher's passion about the subject. Many math teachers are in that classification of people who are deeply committed to math as a area of study and they just want to convert the world, one class at a time to their religious devotion to mathematics. Sadly, most public school kids made poor converts.

The world of classroom math instruction was due for a major overhaul and it came along a few years ago courtesy of a educator and mathematician by the name of John Saxon. The "Saxon" approach to math teaching has made all the difference in how well many students do in their academics when it comes to math and the sciences in general. While Saxon's method did not turn learning math into a game, it took a lot of the anxiety out of the process and introduced a system that teachers and students found much more workable.

One of the problems with conventional math instructional methods is that students become discouraged and confused because in many curriculum, a new math concept is introduced virtually every week. Each builds on the last so developing and sustaining a proficiency in topics that the students have only had a few days to conquer is a challenge. After a few weeks, they student's find themselves swimming in new concepts but not totally proficient in any of them.

The Saxon method seeks to reinforce each math concept many times rather than just once. So as the semester unfolds, each week there are brief reviews, lectures and classroom exercises that go back and give to the students additional instruction and help in math concepts they already learned. Each quiz or test covers new and old material.

The outcome is that students develop a firmer grasp of the math ideas they must learn. They confidence and comfort level remains high because the teaching approach helps them both learn and retain complex math principles. By the end of the semester, students find themselves scoring much higher on their final tests and in their semester grade. That is a win for the teacher, for the Saxon method of teaching math, for parents and above all for students who come out of school stronger in their math academics which is a skill and knowledge that wills serve them well for life.