Reply to Can someone explain to me the advantage of getting high school credit in middle school?

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Reply to "Can someone explain to me the advantage of getting high school credit in middle school?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote]Look, maybe the 5th grade Algebra teacher is awesome. That said, many students make it to middle school in MCPS in super advanced math classes and all they can do when presented with a word problem is try to set up an equation with a variable or two because they were pushed to learn quadratic equations before 6th grade. If a student doesnt understand why or how it works it's, hard to know when to use it. Maybe they'll do amazingy on standardized tests but frequently they lack the ability to think flexibly about math problems. I could be wrong, but in my experience kids who take Algebra I and use variables before becoming flexible mathematicians have a hard time going back. [/quote]

I agree completely with you.  If the extent of math preparation is limited to MCPS math curriculum even for the elementary school students in Algebra 1 you may be in trouble.  Your analysis makes one leaping assumption ... the MCPS math curriculum is the only exposure students with a deep interest and passion are getting.  In fact, for many of these students MCPS is simply a nuisance requirement necessary for a transcript.   For those rushed by MCPS system in the past with no interest in the subject than beware.

Do you believe the problem solving math clubs (outside of MCPS curriculum) where some elementary students have spent 3 full years preparing and taking annual AMC 8, AMC 10, Kankaroo Math and Elementary and Middle School Math Olympiads assessments of their weekly activities does not improve problem solving abilities?  In fact, some of these kids are now performing in the top echelons along with advance math students in middle and early high school.  Think of these extracurricular activities as similar to soccer, chess, physics, and science after school clubs.  The focus of the math club is pure problem solving and analytical thinking outside the traditional MCPS math box where  students share their strategies to solving hard problems with one another (the solutions come from many walks of mathematical life, common sense and intuition, algebra, geometry, counting and probability, number theory...domains rarely explored in any depth in the MCPS math curriculum).

Beware of a one size fits all analytic approach.  There are many examples in human biology were this theory falls flat on its face.[/quote]

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