I last wrote about Miya's maths nine months ago.
Since then Miya has been steadily working on Khan Academy US 6th Grade maths.
Miya has now completed 6th Grade, and yesterday started on 7th Grade (if she was living in the US she'd be starting as a very young 7th Grade in half a year).
One of the sticking points for Miya is her accuracy. Khan is a mastery-style course, and so it requires students to get everything correct before moving on. That's great in many ways, as it means that students have a solid foundation before attempting the next level. Mastery-style reasons that if a student is still not quite sure about one thing, then it is going to get even less clear if they move on before getting that sorted.
However, a downside of mastery-style is that some students may make occasional mistakes because they jump into it and try to do it speedily all at once and forget to carefully think through each step. They mostly know it, and could probably get it all correct with the occasional suggestion. But it may be hard for them to get 100% entirely independently, and so it will be hard for them to move on to the next level.
I think Miya has been a bit like this, and this is why she has taken longer to get through 6th Grade (she started 6th Grade one year and 10 months ago). Miya also strongly prefers to do it entirely on her own, and doesn't like me to teach/correct her. She doesn't even like me giving her hints/pointers to remind her how to start a problem.
We'll see how 7th Grade progresses, but if it is as slow as 6th Grade we may need to change the way we are doing things.
Our tentative thought for now is that Miya will start school (Westlake Girls) at the beginning of Year 9 in two years. It would be great if Miya could complete (or near complete) US 8th Grade before she starts.
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