Anonymous wrote:Do you know who the instructor will be? I find that to be the single most important factor. My DD took geometry in 8th grade, and her teacher was excellent. The course work was difficult, much different than my high school geometry days! I can’t imagine squeezing it into a summer session. My DD’s friends are taking geometry now in 9th grade and it’s a breeze. Different teacher, not as in depth. It would be fine in the summer.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do you know who the instructor will be? I find that to be the single most important factor. My DD took geometry in 8th grade, and her teacher was excellent. The course work was difficult, much different than my high school geometry days! I can’t imagine squeezing it into a summer session. My DD’s friends are taking geometry now in 9th grade and it’s a breeze. Different teacher, not as in depth. It would be fine in the summer.

If both classes were honors level, FCPS has a standard curriculum. Maybe one was honors and one wasn’t? Maybe teachers allowed more retakes or granted partial credit?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do you know who the instructor will be? I find that to be the single most important factor. My DD took geometry in 8th grade, and her teacher was excellent. The course work was difficult, much different than my high school geometry days! I can’t imagine squeezing it into a summer session. My DD’s friends are taking geometry now in 9th grade and it’s a breeze. Different teacher, not as in depth. It would be fine in the summer.

If both classes were honors level, FCPS has a standard curriculum. Maybe one was honors and one wasn’t? Maybe teachers allowed more retakes or granted partial credit?

I'm a HS math teacher. The standards are the same, but the implementation can be completely different.

"Find the area of a regular hexagon with side length 5"
"Find an expression for the area of a regular hexagon with side length x+5"
"Find the area of a regular hexagon with side length x+5 if it is equal to the area of a right triangle with side lengths 2x+3 and x-7"

All meet the same standard. All are drastically different levels of difficulty.

pettifogger wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do you know who the instructor will be? I find that to be the single most important factor. My DD took geometry in 8th grade, and her teacher was excellent. The course work was difficult, much different than my high school geometry days! I can’t imagine squeezing it into a summer session. My DD’s friends are taking geometry now in 9th grade and it’s a breeze. Different teacher, not as in depth. It would be fine in the summer.

If both classes were honors level, FCPS has a standard curriculum. Maybe one was honors and one wasn’t? Maybe teachers allowed more retakes or granted partial credit?

I'm a HS math teacher. The standards are the same, but the implementation can be completely different.

"Find the area of a regular hexagon with side length 5"
"Find an expression for the area of a regular hexagon with side length x+5"
"Find the area of a regular hexagon with side length x+5 if it is equal to the area of a right triangle with side lengths 2x+3 and x-7"

All meet the same standard. All are drastically different levels of difficulty.

I would argue they are not really different, at least not conceptually. #1 and #2 are both the same thing, just a different expression for the side length. #3 is just not a very good question because it tries to superficially complicate things without adding any extra geometric insight: Students should already know how to write an expression for the area of a right triangle if given both legs; it's just the triangle area formula. Then equate that to the area of the hexagon, which the problem statement makes obvious. As for the messy resulting algebraic equation, it's just a quadratic with radicals and certainly not worth solving by hand. Sure, maybe #3 is more tedious, but I would not call it any deeper conceptually than the others.

Anonymous wrote:

pettifogger wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do you know who the instructor will be? I find that to be the single most important factor. My DD took geometry in 8th grade, and her teacher was excellent. The course work was difficult, much different than my high school geometry days! I can’t imagine squeezing it into a summer session. My DD’s friends are taking geometry now in 9th grade and it’s a breeze. Different teacher, not as in depth. It would be fine in the summer.

If both classes were honors level, FCPS has a standard curriculum. Maybe one was honors and one wasn’t? Maybe teachers allowed more retakes or granted partial credit?

I'm a HS math teacher. The standards are the same, but the implementation can be completely different.

"Find the area of a regular hexagon with side length 5"
"Find an expression for the area of a regular hexagon with side length x+5"
"Find the area of a regular hexagon with side length x+5 if it is equal to the area of a right triangle with side lengths 2x+3 and x-7"

All meet the same standard. All are drastically different levels of difficulty.

I would argue they are not really different, at least not conceptually. #1 and #2 are both the same thing, just a different expression for the side length. #3 is just not a very good question because it tries to superficially complicate things without adding any extra geometric insight: Students should already know how to write an expression for the area of a right triangle if given both legs; it's just the triangle area formula. Then equate that to the area of the hexagon, which the problem statement makes obvious. As for the messy resulting algebraic equation, it's just a quadratic with radicals and certainly not worth solving by hand. Sure, maybe #3 is more tedious, but I would not call it any deeper conceptually than the others.

Apologies for the tediousness, I teach algebra 1 and 2 and was trying to geometry-ize an example I haven't done since I was in high school, lol

It still illustrates the point that the same standard can be assessed at a simple level, a mid level, or a "tedious" level, all while hitting the exact same standard that the course requires. It's not an extended standard, it's just a different level of difficulty of the same question. It's why a honors math at school A looks different than honors math at school B--it depends on what the team thinks is appropriate. In summer geometry it's probably even more dependent on the teacher since there aren't CTs planning common lessons to keep things equivalent across classrooms.

Of course honors has additional standards and (hopefully!) deeper thinking questions too, but even at a surface level problems can assess the same standard at 100 different levels of difficulty.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

pettifogger wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do you know who the instructor will be? I find that to be the single most important factor. My DD took geometry in 8th grade, and her teacher was excellent. The course work was difficult, much different than my high school geometry days! I can’t imagine squeezing it into a summer session. My DD’s friends are taking geometry now in 9th grade and it’s a breeze. Different teacher, not as in depth. It would be fine in the summer.

If both classes were honors level, FCPS has a standard curriculum. Maybe one was honors and one wasn’t? Maybe teachers allowed more retakes or granted partial credit?

I'm a HS math teacher. The standards are the same, but the implementation can be completely different.

"Find the area of a regular hexagon with side length 5"
"Find an expression for the area of a regular hexagon with side length x+5"
"Find the area of a regular hexagon with side length x+5 if it is equal to the area of a right triangle with side lengths 2x+3 and x-7"

All meet the same standard. All are drastically different levels of difficulty.

I would argue they are not really different, at least not conceptually. #1 and #2 are both the same thing, just a different expression for the side length. #3 is just not a very good question because it tries to superficially complicate things without adding any extra geometric insight: Students should already know how to write an expression for the area of a right triangle if given both legs; it's just the triangle area formula. Then equate that to the area of the hexagon, which the problem statement makes obvious. As for the messy resulting algebraic equation, it's just a quadratic with radicals and certainly not worth solving by hand. Sure, maybe #3 is more tedious, but I would not call it any deeper conceptually than the others.

Apologies for the tediousness, I teach algebra 1 and 2 and was trying to geometry-ize an example I haven't done since I was in high school, lol

It still illustrates the point that the same standard can be assessed at a simple level, a mid level, or a "tedious" level, all while hitting the exact same standard that the course requires. It's not an extended standard, it's just a different level of difficulty of the same question. It's why a honors math at school A looks different than honors math at school B--it depends on what the team thinks is appropriate. In summer geometry it's probably even more dependent on the teacher since there aren't CTs planning common lessons to keep things equivalent across classrooms.

Of course honors has additional standards and (hopefully!) deeper thinking questions too, but even at a surface level problems can assess the same standard at 100 different levels of difficulty.

This is a spiral, and is useful for maintaining geometry knowledge through later subjects.
Not intended, but it does add something conceptually. The 3rd question has no solution, if the students thinks about the answers.
This is because the quadratic has two solutions, but for each of them the two side lengths for the right triangle are negative.

Anonymous wrote:DC, an 8th grader now will be taking geometry in summer. His friends are discouraging him as its very intense. DC is doing Khan academy these day and near to completion. Will that help the summer geometry. The worst scenario, if DC drops it after 2 weeks of start of the course then what will DC lose in long run. Will DC will be able to take AP physics later?

Anonymous wrote:Thanks so much. DC is hard working, also doing the quiz and unit tests of KA. I am planning to use IXL questions and will find out SOL questions too. Basically we are targetting on complting geometry before summer geometry starts.