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Integers

Some middle school topics.

Hello everyone,

Recently, I was surfing the Internet and encountered an article written by professors of Mathematics that were sharing their experience with the middle school math curriculum. The article is called, “Why is it your job to teach your kid math?” The authors of the article were helping their children understand various alternative method offered by school teachers such as using grids, blocks, counters, or strips of paper to perform operations on fractions. The professors realized that children can not untangle themselves from the confusion created by these variety of methods without their parents and ended up organizing a Math club at home to help their neighbors’ and friends’ children to understand Math topics better. If you are interested in reading this article here is the link: “Why is it your job to teach your kid math?”

I understand that the developers of the school curriculum wanted to appeal to all psychological types of learners by creating all these alternative methods. But, I do not understand why children are tested on understanding and using these methods. For any math student it is important to be able to perform arithmetical operations quickly, correctly and with ease. Which method a student is using is supposed to be a matter of his or her choice, - whatever makes more sense for him or her. My tutoring experience proved that classical, “old fashioned” methods are more easily understood by children.

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Case study.

Case #1.

Student R. is a highly intelligent boy who is motivated to learn math. Moreover, he has an interest in and enjoys the challenge of the course. When a new topic is explained by the teacher in class he listens attentively and understands the algebra of the steps. But when it comes to apply the same steps to a different situation he gets stuck in the middle of the problem, which reveals that he does not have a deep understanding of the logic behind each step.

My analisis.

The problem with R. is that he does not know how to listen to the explanations of Math topics. He did not develop the “Math listening” skill which tells the mathematician to “think about the logical reasons of the steps not the algebraic simplifications”. Student R needs to understand the theoretical, abstract part of the concepts first. Then he has to solve a few more questions with different variations of the same concept applying his knowledge by himself.

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November. Two months of “Math torture” are over.

Hello, everyone!

Two months of “Math torture” are over and some of you realized that marks are lower than you expected and aimed to get. You can improve your test performance by changing your studying routine. Here are some tips that, I am sure, will help you to do better.

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