DD already stuggling with 8th grade Geometry Honors

[Anonymous]

So the kid got a 75% on the first quiz. That is not horrible plus a quiz does not weigh as much as a unit test. Make sure she is doing her homework(They get credit and it counts if just done) Tell her to participate in class, they get credit for that too. Teacher will most likely have after school office hours for extra help. Teach your child to self advocate and reach out to the teacher for help. If you feel that by the end of the first quarter nothing is helping the school will let your daughter move to regular Geometry( it just moved a tad slower to get the fundamentals down). And actively look into a tutor now, if you want to go down that route. They will be hard to find the longer you wait.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hated Geometry because of the proofs but I am not a math person, it never came easy for me. I managed a B and was proud of that grade but it was hard. I also took geometry in 11th grade. Because of my math issues, I took Algebra in 9th, Algebra II in 10th, and ended with Geometry in 11th.

I can easily see where Geometry would trip a kid who has been solid in math up to that point because it is very different.

That's because they didn't learn anything close to what passes for math. Math is about proofs, logic, and reasoning. It is not about memorizing algorithms and doing endless calculations without understanding.

Geometry is the first time (in US schools) where a kid actually gets to try to reason deductively, from A to B to C. Think about that... not being exposed to this until high school!

DP. Yes that’s a good point. American students don’t do logic and reasoning work until a formal geometry class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My 8th grader is also taking Geometry and most of the kids are challenged by it, including my own. The teacher goes through the material quickly. There are quizzes every week. No hand holding. The teacher got exasperated with how many parents were calling him asking why their kids got low grades yada yada.

It’s a 10th grade class. It takes maturity, high level thinking and determination.

Cmon, it's not a 10th grade class, be reasonable.

Schools consider algebra a 9th grade class, and frequently give high school credit if you take it in middle school.
Geometry is 10th grade with advanced kids taking it in 9th grade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thank you for all the responses. Even the ones that just called me a troll and told me I needed help. I see I jumped the gun but this is new for me. This is my only child. She has always excelled and seeing such a low score freaked her out and it freaked me out. I did not know what my options were and it was disappointing to learn office hours can't start until a certain date, even if a child needs help. We will look at daily Khan Academy as a tool (great suggestion) as well as finding a tutor. She seems to struggle with planes when there are multiple ones involved and intersecting. She got the "always" "sometimes" "never" questions wrong. One question was "Two intersecting lines are ______ coplanar" and she put "sometimes." Stuff like that she got wrong. I don't know if that is a vocabulary issue, an issue understanding planes, or what but we will figure it out and help her.

what kind of garbage test is this

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hated Geometry because of the proofs but I am not a math person, it never came easy for me. I managed a B and was proud of that grade but it was hard. I also took geometry in 11th grade. Because of my math issues, I took Algebra in 9th, Algebra II in 10th, and ended with Geometry in 11th.

I can easily see where Geometry would trip a kid who has been solid in math up to that point because it is very different.

That's because they didn't learn anything close to what passes for math. Math is about proofs, logic, and reasoning. It is not about memorizing algorithms and doing endless calculations without understanding.

Geometry is the first time (in US schools) where a kid actually gets to try to reason deductively, from A to B to C. Think about that... not being exposed to this until high school!

DP. Yes that’s a good point. American students don’t do logic and reasoning work until a formal geometry class.

It was a regular part of my kids AAP math course in FCPS. Was that not part of the regular curriculum?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
DP. Yes that’s a good point. American students don’t do logic and reasoning work until a formal geometry class.

It was a regular part of my kids AAP math course in FCPS. Was that not part of the regular curriculum?

It depends on the school. At my kids' AAP center, AAP 5th and 6th grade math were exactly identical to gen ed 6th and 7th grade math. There were no extra extensions and no use of gifted materials like M^3. It was the same shallow curriculum, just given one year earlier.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thank you for all the responses. Even the ones that just called me a troll and told me I needed help. I see I jumped the gun but this is new for me. This is my only child. She has always excelled and seeing such a low score freaked her out and it freaked me out. I did not know what my options were and it was disappointing to learn office hours can't start until a certain date, even if a child needs help. We will look at daily Khan Academy as a tool (great suggestion) as well as finding a tutor. She seems to struggle with planes when there are multiple ones involved and intersecting. She got the "always" "sometimes" "never" questions wrong. One question was "Two intersecting lines are ______ coplanar" and she put "sometimes." Stuff like that she got wrong. I don't know if that is a vocabulary issue, an issue understanding planes, or what but we will figure it out and help her.

what kind of garbage test is this

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thank you for all the responses. Even the ones that just called me a troll and told me I needed help. I see I jumped the gun but this is new for me. This is my only child. She has always excelled and seeing such a low score freaked her out and it freaked me out. I did not know what my options were and it was disappointing to learn office hours can't start until a certain date, even if a child needs help. We will look at daily Khan Academy as a tool (great suggestion) as well as finding a tutor. She seems to struggle with planes when there are multiple ones involved and intersecting. She got the "always" "sometimes" "never" questions wrong. One question was "Two intersecting lines are ______ coplanar" and she put "sometimes." Stuff like that she got wrong. I don't know if that is a vocabulary issue, an issue understanding planes, or what but we will figure it out and help her.

what kind of garbage test is this

+1

Huh? It is a fundamental question on understanding geometry. Intersecting lines always have to be coplanar. Think of a box with one edge that is the length of the box on the bottom (let's say one of the edges that touches the ground if the box is on the ground) as one line. In order the edge of the width of the box to intersect it has to be one of the edges on the ground as well. If it is the width that is on the top of the box they wouldn't intersect. They would be skew lines and NOT coplanar.

If you can't understand that concept honor geometry is going to be really hard.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thank you for all the responses. Even the ones that just called me a troll and told me I needed help. I see I jumped the gun but this is new for me. This is my only child. She has always excelled and seeing such a low score freaked her out and it freaked me out. I did not know what my options were and it was disappointing to learn office hours can't start until a certain date, even if a child needs help. We will look at daily Khan Academy as a tool (great suggestion) as well as finding a tutor. She seems to struggle with planes when there are multiple ones involved and intersecting. She got the "always" "sometimes" "never" questions wrong. One question was "Two intersecting lines are ______ coplanar" and she put "sometimes." Stuff like that she got wrong. I don't know if that is a vocabulary issue, an issue understanding planes, or what but we will figure it out and help her.

what kind of garbage test is this

+1

Huh? It is a fundamental question on understanding geometry. Intersecting lines always have to be coplanar. Think of a box with one edge that is the length of the box on the bottom (let's say one of the edges that touches the ground if the box is on the ground) as one line. In order the edge of the width of the box to intersect it has to be one of the edges on the ground as well. If it is the width that is on the top of the box they wouldn't intersect. They would be skew lines and NOT coplanar.

If you can't understand that concept honor geometry is going to be really hard.

um, the problem is not that this is too hard but that is too easy. a person who merely learned this by rote can answer it correctly without knowing anything.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thank you for all the responses. Even the ones that just called me a troll and told me I needed help. I see I jumped the gun but this is new for me. This is my only child. She has always excelled and seeing such a low score freaked her out and it freaked me out. I did not know what my options were and it was disappointing to learn office hours can't start until a certain date, even if a child needs help. We will look at daily Khan Academy as a tool (great suggestion) as well as finding a tutor. She seems to struggle with planes when there are multiple ones involved and intersecting. She got the "always" "sometimes" "never" questions wrong. One question was "Two intersecting lines are ______ coplanar" and she put "sometimes." Stuff like that she got wrong. I don't know if that is a vocabulary issue, an issue understanding planes, or what but we will figure it out and help her.

what kind of garbage test is this

+1

Huh? It is a fundamental question on understanding geometry. Intersecting lines always have to be coplanar. Think of a box with one edge that is the length of the box on the bottom (let's say one of the edges that touches the ground if the box is on the ground) as one line. In order the edge of the width of the box to intersect it has to be one of the edges on the ground as well. If it is the width that is on the top of the box they wouldn't intersect. They would be skew lines and NOT coplanar.

If you can't understand that concept honor geometry is going to be really hard.

um, the problem is not that this is too hard but that is too easy. a person who merely learned this by rote can answer it correctly without knowing anything.

It isn’t too easy since OP daughter missed it. It is a different way if thinking about objects in space.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thank you for all the responses. Even the ones that just called me a troll and told me I needed help. I see I jumped the gun but this is new for me. This is my only child. She has always excelled and seeing such a low score freaked her out and it freaked me out. I did not know what my options were and it was disappointing to learn office hours can't start until a certain date, even if a child needs help. We will look at daily Khan Academy as a tool (great suggestion) as well as finding a tutor. She seems to struggle with planes when there are multiple ones involved and intersecting. She got the "always" "sometimes" "never" questions wrong. One question was "Two intersecting lines are ______ coplanar" and she put "sometimes." Stuff like that she got wrong. I don't know if that is a vocabulary issue, an issue understanding planes, or what but we will figure it out and help her.

what kind of garbage test is this

+1

Huh? It is a fundamental question on understanding geometry. Intersecting lines always have to be coplanar. Think of a box with one edge that is the length of the box on the bottom (let's say one of the edges that touches the ground if the box is on the ground) as one line. In order the edge of the width of the box to intersect it has to be one of the edges on the ground as well. If it is the width that is on the top of the box they wouldn't intersect. They would be skew lines and NOT coplanar.

If you can't understand that concept honor geometry is going to be really hard.

um, the problem is not that this is too hard but that is too easy. a person who merely learned this by rote can answer it correctly without knowing anything.

It isn’t too easy since OP daughter missed it. It is a different way if thinking about objects in space.

The issue is these types of questions (always, sometimes, never) are terrible test questions especially this early in a class. For both reasons, on one level it requires complex thinking that I don't think should come week 1-3 but on the other hand, it is a thing someone can memorize and not even grasp. I have no idea what OP's daughter should do. Soumds like she has a bad teacher but such is life. This may be a class she has to retake in 9th or the teacher stops giving stupid quizzes and the child knocks it out the park.

[Anonymous]

When my Dd took Algebra I in 7th the teacher was constantly telling kids to drop the course. OP - is your DD's teacher telling her to do so. The teacher has a sense of whether your child will do well in the class or not. What types of grades did your DD get in 7th grade? Not just in math but in all classes. Is your child the type who will work hard or has she never had to so now she wouldn't even know how? All things to consider.

If she has to retake in 9th it won't be the end of the world and hopefully she gets a better teacher. Those questions seem ridiculous to me.

[pettifogger]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thank you for all the responses. Even the ones that just called me a troll and told me I needed help. I see I jumped the gun but this is new for me. This is my only child. She has always excelled and seeing such a low score freaked her out and it freaked me out. I did not know what my options were and it was disappointing to learn office hours can't start until a certain date, even if a child needs help. We will look at daily Khan Academy as a tool (great suggestion) as well as finding a tutor. She seems to struggle with planes when there are multiple ones involved and intersecting. She got the "always" "sometimes" "never" questions wrong. One question was "Two intersecting lines are ______ coplanar" and she put "sometimes." Stuff like that she got wrong. I don't know if that is a vocabulary issue, an issue understanding planes, or what but we will figure it out and help her.

what kind of garbage test is this

+1

Huh? It is a fundamental question on understanding geometry. Intersecting lines always have to be coplanar. Think of a box with one edge that is the length of the box on the bottom (let's say one of the edges that touches the ground if the box is on the ground) as one line. In order the edge of the width of the box to intersect it has to be one of the edges on the ground as well. If it is the width that is on the top of the box they wouldn't intersect. They would be skew lines and NOT coplanar.

If you can't understand that concept honor geometry is going to be really hard.

um, the problem is not that this is too hard but that is too easy. a person who merely learned this by rote can answer it correctly without knowing anything.

It isn’t too easy since OP daughter missed it. It is a different way if thinking about objects in space.

The issue is these types of questions (always, sometimes, never) are terrible test questions especially this early in a class. For both reasons, on one level it requires complex thinking that I don't think should come week 1-3 but on the other hand, it is a thing someone can memorize and not even grasp. I have no idea what OP's daughter should do. Soumds like she has a bad teacher but such is life. This may be a class she has to retake in 9th or the teacher stops giving stupid quizzes and the child knocks it out the park.

I agree that this is definitely not a good question to pose this early in the class, especially if the students have not discussed planes in space, namely the axiom that three non-collinear points in space uniquely determine a plane (this is the 3D analogy to the axiom in 2D which says 2 points uniquely determine a line passing through them). Normally geometry starts with 2D, builds up angles and triangles, then much later moves to 3D.

OP, in this situation I would argue that your child saying "sometimes" shows that she could be thinking more deeply than someone who correctly said "always". They may have been thinking of a specific example (e.g the xy plane in 2D), and just leaving it at that. One should in general try to have a good proof when distinguishing whether something is sometimes true vs always true, and I don't think it is easy or trivial for a student to find such a proof for this problem early in this class. Furthermore, posing questions such as these in multiple choice format without requiring a proof/explanation, also harms students because it can hide misunderstanding such as the example I mentioned of someone assuming the right answer from one specific example, for the wrong reason. Because she picked "sometimes" I would bet she at least tried to think about the question, may have also seen easy examples like the xy plane, but she was not satisfied it can always be true, thus guessing sometimes.

Here's one satisfactory proof that it should be "always true" (assuming they've been told that 3 non-collinear points determine a unique plane, as I mentioned earlier) would go as follows: Consider the point of intersection of the 2 lines, call it A. Now pick another point B on the first line, and another point C on the second line. A unique plane passes through A, B, C by the above axiom. Thus both lines are part of this plane.

Again, I don't expect someone new to geometry to already think along those lines, but they definitely can later in the year. I honestly wouldn't worry about it, as others said. If she enjoys thinking about how and why something works, she will do fine (hopefully the class it taught in a more logical fashion going forward and hopefully she finds geometry thought provoking and beautiful).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When my Dd took Algebra I in 7th the teacher was constantly telling kids to drop the course. OP - is your DD's teacher telling her to do so. The teacher has a sense of whether your child will do well in the class or not. What types of grades did your DD get in 7th grade? Not just in math but in all classes. Is your child the type who will work hard or has she never had to so now she wouldn't even know how? All things to consider.

If she has to retake in 9th it won't be the end of the world and hopefully she gets a better teacher. Those questions seem ridiculous to me.

OP here. I am not aware of DD's teacher telling her to drop. She has always gotten all 4s or All A's. She is a hard worker. She is autistic so things never come easy for her. I'm not sure if any of that helps us figure out what to do. Office hours begin next week. Hopefully it will help. We also scheduled a tutor who she meets with this week.

[Anonymous]

pettifogger wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thank you for all the responses. Even the ones that just called me a troll and told me I needed help. I see I jumped the gun but this is new for me. This is my only child. She has always excelled and seeing such a low score freaked her out and it freaked me out. I did not know what my options were and it was disappointing to learn office hours can't start until a certain date, even if a child needs help. We will look at daily Khan Academy as a tool (great suggestion) as well as finding a tutor. She seems to struggle with planes when there are multiple ones involved and intersecting. She got the "always" "sometimes" "never" questions wrong. One question was "Two intersecting lines are ______ coplanar" and she put "sometimes." Stuff like that she got wrong. I don't know if that is a vocabulary issue, an issue understanding planes, or what but we will figure it out and help her.

what kind of garbage test is this

+1

Huh? It is a fundamental question on understanding geometry. Intersecting lines always have to be coplanar. Think of a box with one edge that is the length of the box on the bottom (let's say one of the edges that touches the ground if the box is on the ground) as one line. In order the edge of the width of the box to intersect it has to be one of the edges on the ground as well. If it is the width that is on the top of the box they wouldn't intersect. They would be skew lines and NOT coplanar.

If you can't understand that concept honor geometry is going to be really hard.

um, the problem is not that this is too hard but that is too easy. a person who merely learned this by rote can answer it correctly without knowing anything.

It isn’t too easy since OP daughter missed it. It is a different way if thinking about objects in space.

The issue is these types of questions (always, sometimes, never) are terrible test questions especially this early in a class. For both reasons, on one level it requires complex thinking that I don't think should come week 1-3 but on the other hand, it is a thing someone can memorize and not even grasp. I have no idea what OP's daughter should do. Soumds like she has a bad teacher but such is life. This may be a class she has to retake in 9th or the teacher stops giving stupid quizzes and the child knocks it out the park.

I agree that this is definitely not a good question to pose this early in the class, especially if the students have not discussed planes in space, namely the axiom that three non-collinear points in space uniquely determine a plane (this is the 3D analogy to the axiom in 2D which says 2 points uniquely determine a line passing through them). Normally geometry starts with 2D, builds up angles and triangles, then much later moves to 3D.

OP, in this situation I would argue that your child saying "sometimes" shows that she could be thinking more deeply than someone who correctly said "always". They may have been thinking of a specific example (e.g the xy plane in 2D), and just leaving it at that. One should in general try to have a good proof when distinguishing whether something is sometimes true vs always true, and I don't think it is easy or trivial for a student to find such a proof for this problem early in this class. Furthermore, posing questions such as these in multiple choice format without requiring a proof/explanation, also harms students because it can hide misunderstanding such as the example I mentioned of someone assuming the right answer from one specific example, for the wrong reason. Because she picked "sometimes" I would bet she at least tried to think about the question, may have also seen easy examples like the xy plane, but she was not satisfied it can always be true, thus guessing sometimes.

Here's one satisfactory proof that it should be "always true" (assuming they've been told that 3 non-collinear points determine a unique plane, as I mentioned earlier) would go as follows: Consider the point of intersection of the 2 lines, call it A. Now pick another point B on the first line, and another point C on the second line. A unique plane passes through A, B, C by the above axiom. Thus both lines are part of this plane.

Again, I don't expect someone new to geometry to already think along those lines, but they definitely can later in the year. I honestly wouldn't worry about it, as others said. If she enjoys thinking about how and why something works, she will do fine (hopefully the class it taught in a more logical fashion going forward and hopefully she finds geometry thought provoking and beautiful).

OP here. Thank you for this. That helps me put her issue in perspective.