No-Nonsense Algebra: Part of the Mastering Essential Math Skills Series

I just went through this book to put together my 8th grade son's curriculum plan for the year. I went through the lessons/format etc and the reviews. This book is AMAZING. It really is basic algebra, the one-world language of math. LOVE IT. The crazy backwords crap they tried shoving down his throat (aka COMMON CORE NONSENSE) in our California public school system left him still confused and, though he passed the class with a B, he still feels like none of it is 'clear' in his head, and he gets re-confused when problems he hasn't done in a while are re-introduced (a problem he NEVER had before the common core movement). This is a GATE kid who knew his ABCs at 18 months old, and reads 3 grade levels ahead, and common core math confuses him (and me, I'm a college grade who LOVES algebra and even I don't get common core lol). So we are starting over, homeshooling this year, with good old fashioned regular old MATH, and this is PERFECT! Now he will remember it for life the way I do, and he'll do great in high school geometry & trig. UPDATE!!!! We are on to the second quarter, and he is doing so well. On units that are easy for him, we do one unit per day. On more difficult units, we spread it out to two days. Rarely, we'll spread it out to a third day. He's doing great. This book cannot be more simple, organized and straight-forward. It's not too easy, it is regular algebra, but there are no frills to distract or confuse. A couple of times we ran into their way looking different than our way, which we thought was easier (like greatest common factor, in unit one-review), so we did it our way. All the answers are in the back of the book so I can check his math work. They give you a website log-in with every book, so you can access their website for help or contact them, but we haven't had to use it. If you're a parent who doesn't know algebra, this will probably help a lot. :) If he comes to a section that's a new concept or difficult for him, I'll sit down with him and we'll do the problems together but on our own separate papers. I'll say, ok what do we do next? And if he doesn't know that step, I'll explain it as I do it, and he listens and works the math problem as I guide him, explaining each step and why we're doinf it, and on the next problem I'll ask "what do we do next?" And he quickly gets it and tells me as he goes. Then we'll check our answers to see if we are right. That way, if he gets stuck, I know exactly where and why, and I can help him before he has a chance to feel overwhelmed or get upset. This book could easily be spread out between two grade years. It would be perfect to start at 8th grade and go through 9th grade. Just count the number of total lessons in the book, divide the total school days (180 per year) by the number of lessons and you'll get how many school days you can spend on each lesson. Now that we're out of review and into straight algebra, one lesson per day is starting to look too rushed. They need lots of practice to get to know it like the back of their hand. Every unit has lessons. The lessons have a page that explains the concept in words, then gives several examples. It's best to write the examples and tell yourself what they're doing while working it our yourself as you read it. Then you're ready to practice! AND at the end of each lesson, there are 4 review problems at the bottom on past lessons so they don't get rusty on past concepts but it's not overwhelming. I JUST CANNOT SAY ENOUGH GREAT THINGS!

This book is extremely concise and straightforward. I taught school in both public and private sectors for over 20 years. I am now homeschooling my middle school and high school children. I am very familiar with algebra curricula from the pre-algebra to the algebra 2 levels. I have 4 kids that have used this book and I can tell you that 3 of them really benefited from this book, one of them did not. We did not have any problems accessing the online videos. It was a great tool. My oldest son is a bit of a stubborn punk, and basic know-it-all. He didn’t NEED to watch the videos because he already knew it and with using this just to review his math skills (in order to take the placement test at the local junior college so that he could dual enroll while still in high school). He flunked the the algebra portion of his placement test and learned that he is not what he thought he was. My 3 others middle school students used this as a 7th and 8th grade curriculum. They are now 8th and 9th graders and have completed a standard algebra one curriculum, that they sailed through. They are doing algebra 2 this year along with geometry. And as a plug for the geometry curriculum by the same author, we used that as well for seventh and eighth grade. They started a standard high school geometry curriculum for summer, and again are sailing. All to say that the three that really put the effort in and watch the videos and completed the assignments, really really benefited. Some of the poor reviews here are due to inability to access the videos. I can’t speak into that because we ordered here from Amazon and had no issues. But I can say we use this as a full seventh grade curriculum for two of our kids, a full eighth grade curriculum for one of our kids and all 3 of them had a very solid foundation to high school math. I truly believe you get out of it what you put into it. If you want to take advantage of the videos, it’s a solid curriculum.

We came from FLVS and there was so much new math and practical application it was confusing. I understand trying to get students to see how math is applied to everyday life, but there was so much of that and not enough review of concepts then you would get the whole summary at the end it did not work for my daughters shorter focus. We needed to get to the core formulas of math and practice. In choosing this curriculum, No nonsense Algebra, My daughter read the reviews and we watched the a few sample videos. She chose this curriculum over MUS and Saxon. For MUS , seeing the instructor was a visual distraction for her, where in this curriculum hearing the instructor's voice is fine for her. Also, the practice problems are not as long as Saxon. With FLVS each concept was in its own module, without daily review of concepts learned before. If the concepts weren't building or sequential, she would forget what was learned in the beginning modules.Review was up to the student. Or for final exam time, a big final review. This curriculum is a good "middle ground" for her. She likes the NO fluff, getting down to using the formulas , working problems, and just enough review to keep her remembering the concepts from one problem to the next. She watches the video each day and so far gets the concepts, and has liked being independent asking for help when needed. I am glad this curriculum was recommended to us by our tutor in Classical Conversations.

The perfect companion to mastering algerbra

The book was ok however it didn't help my understanding of algebra very much unfortunately.