Russian School of Mathematics?

[Anonymous]

I was visiting friends in the Boston area and they were surprised I hadn’t heard of RSM. Apparently it’s extremely popular up there and kids who go through the program are way ahead in math. It appears there are classes offered around here but does anyone have personal experience? Thanks.

[Anonymous]

Yes.

[Anonymous]

Yes but it depends on where you live. I live in N. Arl and it's too far for me. I have several sets of friends, however, who really emphasize math and they're willing to make the drive. I think it's in Reston. Their kids are ahead in math and they seem to like it. If it were closer, I'd definitely do it.

[Anonymous]

There's another branch in North Bethesda/Rockville and an on-again/off-again branch in DC (the latter is off for now). It seems to be mostly the regular curriculum but accelerated and they have multiple levels (e.g. 5_1, 5_2 and 5_3 which is on level, accelerated and honors). They do assign regular homework, which is somewhat rote but seems to emphasize the concepts. The one downside, if you think it is a downside, is that the material hews closely to the regular school curriculum, rather than topics that are non-traditional (e.g. number theory, logic, discrete math etc.) which are well within the kids' grasp but not usually taught in schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There's another branch in North Bethesda/Rockville and an on-again/off-again branch in DC (the latter is off for now). It seems to be mostly the regular curriculum but accelerated and they have multiple levels (e.g. 5_1, 5_2 and 5_3 which is on level, accelerated and honors). They do assign regular homework, which is somewhat rote but seems to emphasize the concepts. The one downside, if you think it is a downside, is that the material hews closely to the regular school curriculum, rather than topics that are non-traditional (e.g. number theory, logic, discrete math etc.) which are well within the kids' grasp but not usually taught in schools.

My kids have been attending RSM-Reston over the past three years. Apart from one year (for one of them), they have taken the level 3 classes. Based on that, I disagree with the above statement regarding the RSM curriculum. In fact, I like how number theory was introduced at an early stage (and in an intuitive way).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There's another branch in North Bethesda/Rockville and an on-again/off-again branch in DC (the latter is off for now). It seems to be mostly the regular curriculum but accelerated and they have multiple levels (e.g. 5_1, 5_2 and 5_3 which is on level, accelerated and honors). They do assign regular homework, which is somewhat rote but seems to emphasize the concepts. The one downside, if you think it is a downside, is that the material hews closely to the regular school curriculum, rather than topics that are non-traditional (e.g. number theory, logic, discrete math etc.) which are well within the kids' grasp but not usually taught in schools.

Most of that stuff I did not get until well into my math major, and it struck me that a lot of it was stuff that did not require algebra, let alone trig/calculus/diff eq, and some I felt cold easily have been handled by 6th graders, which made me wonder why they kept some of the fun stuff in the closet all those years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There's another branch in North Bethesda/Rockville and an on-again/off-again branch in DC (the latter is off for now). It seems to be mostly the regular curriculum but accelerated and they have multiple levels (e.g. 5_1, 5_2 and 5_3 which is on level, accelerated and honors). They do assign regular homework, which is somewhat rote but seems to emphasize the concepts. The one downside, if you think it is a downside, is that the material hews closely to the regular school curriculum, rather than topics that are non-traditional (e.g. number theory, logic, discrete math etc.) which are well within the kids' grasp but not usually taught in schools.

My kids have been attending RSM-Reston over the past three years. Apart from one year (for one of them), they have taken the level 3 classes. Based on that, I disagree with the above statement regarding the RSM curriculum. In fact, I like how number theory was introduced at an early stage (and in an intuitive way).

My kid has been doing the same at North Bethesda and no, there have been no explicit number theory classes. Maybe some simple stuff like GCD and divisors but not much of modular arithmetic, Fermat's little theorem or Chinese Remainder Theorem, Euler's phi-function, Fundamental theorem of arithmetic or random stuff from Polya's "How to solve it". The local branches, unlike the Boston ones, don't set the math competition world on fire either. But it all depends on what you want out of such supplementation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There's another branch in North Bethesda/Rockville and an on-again/off-again branch in DC (the latter is off for now). It seems to be mostly the regular curriculum but accelerated and they have multiple levels (e.g. 5_1, 5_2 and 5_3 which is on level, accelerated and honors). They do assign regular homework, which is somewhat rote but seems to emphasize the concepts. The one downside, if you think it is a downside, is that the material hews closely to the regular school curriculum, rather than topics that are non-traditional (e.g. number theory, logic, discrete math etc.) which are well within the kids' grasp but not usually taught in schools.

My kids have been attending RSM-Reston over the past three years. Apart from one year (for one of them), they have taken the level 3 classes. Based on that, I disagree with the above statement regarding the RSM curriculum. In fact, I like how number theory was introduced at an early stage (and in an intuitive way).

My kid has been doing the same at North Bethesda and no, there have been no explicit number theory classes. Maybe some simple stuff like GCD and divisors but not much of modular arithmetic, Fermat's little theorem or Chinese Remainder Theorem, Euler's phi-function, Fundamental theorem of arithmetic or random stuff from Polya's "How to solve it". The local branches, unlike the Boston ones, don't set the math competition world on fire either. But it all depends on what you want out of such supplementation.

Well, I am pretty happy with the coverage of topics. And I say this as someone who was on the Olympic Math team of my native country.

[Anonymous]

The Bethesda/Rockville one is pretty disorganized, but the material is interesting.

[Anonymous]

I called the Rockville branch for info a couple of months ago and they were hard sell on testing my child. I kept saying that I just wanted a basic overview of what was offered and generally, what times to see if it could even work. I ended-up with not a lot of info!

[Anonymous]

We did it for a few months in Reston and I found is way too rote. For us was a waste of time. Frankly at this point my rising 9th grader is way too far ahead in math and at his pace will have to DE by 10th grade. Mathnasium gave him the foundation he needed.

[Anonymous]

I feel like it's good at being accelerated beyond the crappy public school elementary math curriculum, but I think they don't get deep into the conceptual understanding. So students can do a lot of impressive things for their age level, but I'm not convinced there is a really deep, fundamental understanding of what's happening and why.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I called the Rockville branch for info a couple of months ago and they were hard sell on testing my child. I kept saying that I just wanted a basic overview of what was offered and generally, what times to see if it could even work. I ended-up with not a lot of info!

They can’t tell you the times without knowing what class your child would be in and they can’t know what class your child would be in without testing them. (In our experience the “test” was like a ten minute convo about math with the Director; it’s not a major undertaking). They have second graders who take their third grade classes and second graders who take their first grade classes and of course a lot of second graders who take their second grade classes. So if you’re interested, the eval comes before knowing the class times. Usually there is a weekend and a mid-week option. Some of the mid-week classes are very late (6-8 pm for 3rd grade, eg). Which day it is will depend on which class it is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I feel like it's good at being accelerated beyond the crappy public school elementary math curriculum, but I think they don't get deep into the conceptual understanding. So students can do a lot of impressive things for their age level, but I'm not convinced there is a really deep, fundamental understanding of what's happening and why.

We have had a pretty good experience at RSM North Bethesda, but this is my finishing 4th grader’s current complaint. They show you how to do it but not why. She didn’t have this complaint last year in 3rd grade. She has always enjoyed going, but now doesn’t want to continue for 5th (and we will not force her). I think the difference is that this year her school math class is fun, interesting and engaging, which is a first for her in MCPS. Now that school math is interesting she doesn’t really want to bother with RSM too. But it was good for a kid who was really bored in 2nd and 3rd grade MCPS math.