Saxon Math DIVE CD Review

The Saxon Math DIVE CDs are excellent for teaching students the math lessons in the Saxon Math textbooks. Most students need more than just the lesson explanations and examples provided in the textbooks. The teaching provided for each lesson on the DIVE CDs can take students from struggling through math and needing lots of help to understanding the concepts being taught and being much more independent in their math class.

Setting Up and Using a DIVE CD. The DIVE CDs for Saxon Math are very easy to use. There are instructions on the disc telling you how to get started. When you put the disc in your computer, a window will open up with all of the lessons and a file that says "Open Me First". This file has the instructions on how to use the disc, a syllabus of the yearly course, information about the Quicktime player the CD uses, a full Quicktime installation, and a getting started lesson.

If you have Quicktime on your computer, but it won't play the disc, there are instructions for uninstalling your current version of Quicktime and installing the Quicktime player provided on the disc. If you don't have Quicktime on your computer, all you need to do is install the version provided on the disc. This version plays all of the lessons that are on the disc.

The getting started lesson in the file is for the teacher and student to watch. It explains how to use the player to watch the lessons, what the lessons will be like, what the student should do while the lesson is being taught, information about the DIVE teacher, how to contact him, and how the student can get the most out of using the Saxon Math DIVE CD.

The DIVE CD Lessons. The lessons on the Saxon Math Dive CDs are clearly taught with plenty of practice problems provided. Each lesson is labeled by number in the window that opens when you put the DIVE CD in your computer, making it easy for students to know which one to watch. When a lesson is clicked on, the Quicktime player will open as a blue window. The player has volume control, a play/pause button, fast forward and rewind buttons, and a navigation bar along the bottom of the screen with an arrow you can click on and drag to where you want to be in the lesson.

When the student clicks play, you will hear the teacher's voice telling the student the lesson number and what math concepts will be taught in the lesson. He will then proceed to explain and write out practice problems step-by-step, which will appear on the blue screen as white writing.

The student is encouraged to be actively involved in the lesson being taught by pausing the player and doing some of the practice problems and then continuing to watch the lesson to see if they did the problems correctly. If they didn't do the practice problems correctly or struggled through them, this is when they can click on the arrow on the navigation bar and drag it back to where the teacher was explaining how to do the problems and watch that section again.

The teacher will clearly state when the lesson is over. The student then moves on to the coordinating lesson in the book. The lessons on the disc are very student friendly and are far from time consuming with an average run time of seven to ten minutes.


DIVE CD Shortcomings. I noticed one time that a concept wasn't covered in a lesson that was teaching two concepts and one time that the teacher taught a concept differently than the book in a way that seemed more difficult than how the book taught it. In both situations, we simply used the lesson in the book to teach the concept.

The DIVE CD can be rather costly, but is well worth the extra expense.

My Recommendation. The Saxon Math DIVE CDs took my daughter from being one of the students that needed help and struggled to understand concepts being taught to being mostly independent in her math class. Each morning, she grabs the disc, watches the lesson, and moves on to do the problems in the book. Like any student, she needs help at times, but is now much more equipped to learn and understand her math class.

I tell fellow homeschoolers all the time that the DIVE CDs have made a world of difference in math for my daughter. Having a teacher explain and write out the problems step-by-step is just what she needed. I highly recommend the Saxon Math DIVE CDs to anyone who has a student that needs a little more foundation for each math lesson than the explanations and examples that are provided in the Saxon Math textbooks.

Sources:
DIVE Math
Apple Quicktime
Saxon Math