Reply to No Textbooks Honors Algebra 2 Can't Get Ahead Is Pre-Cal Any Better?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP here- we did buy a few textbooks and they have been only helpful a little bit.[/quote]

This is a you problem, if a textbook isn’t helping.  I am a tutor.  Alg II covers largely the same material everywhere.  If you have gotten a textbook and it isn’t helping then the problem is that your child doesn’t know how to “read” and apply the text and class notes.  Some kids have trouble pulling what is salient out of a larger discussion/text, some kids have trouble applying it, some kids have trouble moving between abstract patterns and real number problems. Other problems that present in Alg II - poor algebraic manipulation skills, poor fundamental computation skills in fractions or exponents or roots, weak math fact recall, poor organization of work.

Another very common problem is that students don’t corect their homework fully and understand their mistakes. Make sure your child is checking every. single. homework. answer & understanding and correcting her mistakes.

Get a tutor that comes weekly on Wed. Tutor should help review previous 2 days of homework, help student with that night’s homework and help identify what is important to memorize for test and how to do processes. [/quote]

I mean all your advice is valid, but expecting the student to re-write the course on the fly is a little much.  The issue really is the way the class has been concocted by MCPS.  If the teacher goes above and beyond the issues are masked.

Part of knowing how to read a textbook is having had classes taught from a textbook.  E.g. something as simple as having a teacher tell students that the day's lesson is also explained in the book.  But MCPS's whole shtick is that their packets replace a text, and whatever the teacher says in class stands on it's own.  And, all Algebra 2 is not the same, MCPS is does not teach it as algebraic manipulation.  When logs are introduced it is as the inverse graph of the exponential function, the algebraic properties of logs are not taught until pre-calc.  Change of basis is not taught until pre-calc.  For that matter, finding the inverse of a function, by algebraic manipulation is not taught until pre-calc.

An interesting exercise is, go to the MCPS curriculum guides, and focus on the parenthetical notes, which all explain something explicitly forbidden in the class.  E.g. rationalizing a denominator is not a required skill in algebra 2, teachers can't request that.  But there's an opportunity to practice a fundamental skills missed.  One of the course topics is trig identities but if you read the parenthetical note, the only identity actually covered is the pythagorean identity.  And so on, and so on.  It's a shell game of a class.  And as far as  doing all the homework and making sure it's correct, these are not long assignments, usually three or four problems--another time a book, with problem sets would be nice to have.[/quote]

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