Reply to Math 7 Honors question

Forum Index » Advanced Academic Programs (AAP)

Reply to "Math 7 Honors question"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=pettifogger][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]So a kid in 6th grade AAP is taking the 7th grade SOL in math. 
That same child takes Math 7 honors in the 7th grade and takes the 8th grade SOL in the 7th grade to match honors. so... not a repeat, right?
The math is still one year advanced from Gen Ed, right?[/quote]

Yes.

There is a lot of natural overlap between math 5/math 6, math 6/math 7, math 7/math 8, [b]because concepts spiral.  In math 7 they learn how to find slope from a graph.  In math 8, they find slope and y intercept and write the equation of a line.  It's slightly repetitive, but it's incorporating new stuff too. [/b] Math 8 (aka math 7 honors aka prealgebra) is a solid foundation for algebra 1.  They cover most of the first semester of algebra 1 over the course of the year.[/quote]
This is one of the main problems with how math is taught. This emphasis on learning incremental "skills" year over year does nothing for enhancing a student's mathematical maturity, logical reasoning, and general problem solving ability. Thinking about it in terms of superficial baby steps (as in the above example) is misguided, because it doesn't achieve or improve the main goal at all: namely teaching students how to think independently. Students will still have a hard time in algebra 1, 2 or any other math course if they are incrementally spoon-fed these 'skills' that are supposed to be formally taught in their next class sequence. Late elementary and early middle school is for teaching them how to fish, not just give them the fish. In addition, now that books have been taken away while testing has been overemphasized, students are more reliant than ever on the teacher to feed them knowledge, and that is really not a good thing for their motivation to learn or care. The most common question is either "why do I need to know this?" or "will it be on the test?". Very sad to see that learning and curiosity seems to be slowly disappearing from math classrooms as students get near the end of elementary school grades.

It is much more important for students to be challenged with homework that teaches them how to apply mathematical ideas and tools to solve problems that aren't just a word for word repeat of the examples they saw in class. They need interesting puzzles and problems to keep them motivated and engaged and teachers should be empowered to achieve this goal, and to spend class time productively helping students get unstuck and thinking about problems. Minimizing the teaching to the test as well as the amount of testing done in school will allow teachers to actually use their valuable class time to teach.

If students develop some amount of problem solving/thinking skills in elementary school where there is plenty of time to expose and teach these things, they will have no issue at all with the algebra, geometry and other math courses that are currently taught in our high schools.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics