Getting Through Mathematics Structure And Method Course 2 Without Losing Your Mind
Most teachers treat Course 2 like it is just a gentle introduction. It is not. This book covers integers, rational numbers, equations, inequalities, coordinate graphing, and an introduction to proofs. The material moves fast and the explanations are thin. I learned that the hard way when a student came to me after three weeks of trying to work through the Chapter 1 problem set on their own. I used to recommend downloading the teacher edition PDFs from various education sites so you could see the worked solutions alongside the student problems. Some of those links rot pretty quickly though, so I keep a local folder of the scanned pages I pulled back in 2019. If you search for "Saxon Mathematics Structure and Method Course 2 PDF teacher edition" you will find mirrors. That said, I have moved on from relying on those because the official practice workbooks are usually more useful for drilling. The thing about this curriculum is that it expects a certain level of mathematical maturity. It assumes you already understand what variables are and how they behave before it starts throwing algebra at you. The first chapter reviews integers but the second chapter jumps into two-step equations with no hand-holding. Students who skip the integer review section will hit a wall by week three.
I remember one specific problem in Chapter 4, Section 4.3, that caused problems for half my class. It asked students to solve compound inequalities like -3 2x + 1 7 and graph the solution. The textbook presents the method as three separate steps, but it never explains why you have to perform the same operation on all three parts simultaneously. A lot of kids would just solve the left and right sides independently and then try to merge the answers, which gives you wrong intersection sets every time. My workaround was to reframe the compound inequality as a single object. I wrote each part on the board and drew a bracket around the entire expression, labeling it as one unit. Then I showed them how subtracting one from all three parts kept the relationships intact. It took ten minutes and cleared up about forty percent of the errors in that section. You can do the same thing with multi-step compound inequalities involving multiplication and division, though you need to be careful about flipping the inequality signs when you divide by negatives. The book mentions that rule once in a footnote and never references it again after that. Another area where this curriculum falls short is the treatment of rational numbers. Course 2 introduces fractions with variables and basic rational expressions, but it does not connect them to the algebraic manipulation students will need later. I found that supplementing with about five additional problems per section from a pre-algebra workbook bridged that gap effectively. Something like Larson's Pre-Algebra or even older Glencoe materials work fine for extra practice.
The coordinate graphing unit in Chapter 8 is probably the most useful part of the entire book. It covers ordered pairs, slope, and linear equations in a way that actually builds toward algebra. But here is the catch. The textbook introduces slope as rise over run using grid drawings, then suddenly switches to the formula m = (y - y) / (x - x) without explaining the connection. Students who rely only on the book end up memorizing two unrelated facts instead of understanding one concept. I started having students derive the slope formula themselves from the rise-over-run definition before showing them the equation form. That took one extra class period but reduced errors on graphing linear equations by roughly sixty percent going forward. The book does not have answer keys for all the odd-numbered problems in the back either. You need the teacher edition for that, which is why having access to the scanned PDFs is still worth it even years later. There are real limitations to this curriculum. The problem sets are sometimes repetitive without enough variation in application. A typical section might have twenty problems where fifteen are mechanically identical. That works for drill practice but it leaves gaps in deeper understanding. Also, the pacing is brutal if you are working through it alone without a teacher or tutor to clarify things when you get stuck. I would estimate that a self-studier should budget roughly twice the recommended time per chapter.
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If you want an alternative, Go Math Grade 7 or Pearson's Connected Math Project both cover similar ground with more pedagogical support. But if you are already committed to Mathematics Structure And Method Course 2, the best approach is to treat the textbook as a skeleton and add your own flesh to it with supplementary problems and explicit explanations for the skipped steps.
