mathmarm
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Posts posted by mathmarm
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So, sometimes the goats are left overnight.
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I am not delusional to think that I can "provide" them with a better future , it's not like "the future" is a singular item you can secure in your hands and pass off to someone. However, I do feel obligated to care for my children's health and well-being, as best as possible.
Many of the lifestyle choices for how we raise our kids is designed with that type of thinking--what's best for US and for THEM long-term?
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Chris Rock said something that (with context) was in poor taste.
Will Smith did something that was illegal.
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Will Smith committed assault on International TV and received no repercussions because he's rich and famous. Boo!
Jada Pinkett Smith is a celebrity. They trade their privacy for fame and fortune--I was unaware that she had alopecia, but apparently she's been public with it for some time. Wonderful for her and for the people who are comforted by her public experiences with this disease.
JPS does not have a terminal illness. She's not caused pain from her disease.
Tens of thousands of women choose to be bald as a cultural or fashion choice and add in the women who cut their hair for non-health related reasons as well as the women who have alopecia and it's not like she's exactly alone with having a bald head. As a celebrity, being talked about (positively and negatively) is a part of the price you pay for your fame and fortune.
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What about fractions/decimals/percents do you want to reinforce and cement?
For Fractions:
The best way to actually understand fractions is to experience them meaningfully. A few weeks of hands on work can lay a foundation that seamlessly bleeds into an understanding that prevents fractions from becoming an arbitrary number-stew that kinda-has-a-pattern to them, that kids can never quite latch onto.
For non-decimal fractions we use a group of say, 144 small items (such as lima beans) and work on splitting the groups into different fractions.
The kids should already be comfortable with the words factor(both noun and verb), multiple, and fraction. If not, teach those words first. Kids will need to actively know and use those terms correctly.
So, we start with 144 and divide the pile into, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/5, 1/6, 1/7, 1/8, 1/9, 1/10, 1/11, 1/12. We note that there are no 1/5s, 1/7s, 1/10s, or 1/11th of this particular pile, and that's because 144 is not a multiple of 5, 7, 10 or 11.
Then we hone in on one of the fractions. So, let's say that we're looking at 1/6 of 144, we see that 24 is 1/6 of 144. So we can calculate 2-sixths, 3-sixths, 4-sixths, 5-sixths, and 6-sixths. We can also predict and calculate how many beans it would take to make 7-sixths, 8-sixths, 9-sixths, etc.. (fraction of a quantity)
We can compare the 2-sixths and notice it's the same amount as 1/3, 3-sixths is the same amount as 1/2. (Equivalent fractions)
We can look at 6ths on a number line (we use a single sheet of paper as the unit and divide them into 6ths, we use a few sheets of paper so that we have multiple units) and we look at how6ths compare to halves and thirds on the number line.
Rinse and repeat.
The commercial manipulatives that we like and use are c-rods and fraction-overlays. As we're working with quantities of beans, we can represent the relationship in the c-rods and keep that visual summary connecting back to whatever specific quantity they're working on. Fraction over lays are nice for seeing those equivalent fractions, though fraction over lays may have a very short use-life.
After a a few weeks ours kids have been able to see very quickly what a fraction of a particular fraction of a particular quantity is, so this manipulative heavy phase only lasts for a few weeks, but it's been so worth it to us to do it this way.
For Decimals
For Decimals we treat them just like base-ten, place-value units. Our kids read and write tenths, hundredths, and thousandths, as a part of their daily math work. They learn to decompose and compose them just like units, tens and hundreds, They learn to compute them as a part of base-10 calculations so for them it's little different. (We compute left to right in steps) The only differences are in the way you read them, we dont say each period and the way we write them we don't put a comma or any demarcation between periods. Instead you read the entire number after the decimal point and say that last place value.
So 3.12466
is 3 and 12 thousand, 466 hundred-thousandths.
They already know the rules for adding and subtracting so a calculation like
4.2 - 2.8 is read 42-tenths minus 28-tenths, so subtract 20-tenths, then subtract 8-tenths.
42 - 20 - 8
22 - 8 | (or -2, -6, if you prefer)
14
14-tenths, so 1.4
They also multiply and divide fractions the same way that they do base-10 whole numbers. So, I don't have a suggestion for decimals other than "Teach base-10 well and decimals are already well-taught"
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Look and see what classes will be offered over the spring/summer -- our rec centers offer a wide variety of classes for kids. Pottery, Computer Classes, Knitting, Gaming Classes, Karate, etc...
Do you have a Nerf War group in your area? If so, maybe he'd like to attend a a Nerf War or a LARPing event in your area.
A Make: Electronics set?
A painting set or drawing kit
Frisbee / Kite / Drone
A gift card to a home improvement store for building supplies or tools
A tool box
Sports equipment
A pocket knife
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If it were me, I would suck it up and use TT and online resources like KhanAcademy learn the material myself, then teach her directly using the materials that you have--ie Teaching Textbooks, free internet (endless supply of well-sequenced worksheets) and a notebook + pencil for a semester.
That's what we do in our home school. It is very teacher-dependent in the elementary years. It's consistently hard work, but the results are far superior to what I would get if I taught by-the-book instead.
If you would like more detailed instructions and examples, feel free to PM me.
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1 hour ago, Momof3sweetgirls said:
we started with HWT but I don't like that there isn't a top line. I like the strokes of HWT though. Which would you go with, ZB or TGATB?
You've been given some feedback already, but I am going to chime in and say that I think that it would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater to change programs because of the lining on the pages, since you have the program and like the strokes of HWT.
You can print various ruled pages offline for free. You can also buy a pad of lined paper for your children to practice on from the dollar store. I strongly encourage you to use HWT--you have it, you like it and have only (voiced) 1 problem with it.
After all, no program will be "perfect". I want to discourage you from jumping to something else.
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What do you mean that there isn't a top-line?
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Of course we have the typical book-shelfs and baskets. But the real MVP of our Home School Organization system is Backpacks! We keep a teacher book-bag and each student has a backpack. The bags get hung on wall hooks when not in use. Backpacks are easy to take in the car and travel with when we have to be on the move (which is a couple of times a week usually, but some times its much more often).
Student Backpack contains:
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a big binder that holds:
- a hole-puncher
- two 1-subject notebooks (math and writing)
- a small stack of hole-punched printer paper (drawing instruction/practice)
- a durable folder that holds an Active Reference materials in plastic sleeve protectors with whatever they're learning
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a pencil pouch that carries
- manual sharpener
- 2 wooden pencils with eraser caps
- a 4-in-1 ink pen that writes red, green, blue and black (we do annotations/corrections in color)
- a yellow highlighter
- 2 nonfiction books (1 Teacher choice, 1 Student choice)
- 2 chapter books / novel (1 family read and 1 student choice)
- a durable folder that contains math pages for them to do
- some graphing sticky-notes for them to do some graphing
- Active Reasoning and Writing textbook
Teacher Backpack contains:
- one 5-subject notebook (where we keep scope and sequences, example problems or assignment types for each subject, as well as notes on where the kids are in each continuum)
- a 1.5 inch binder with a few sections of printed TM instruction (from home made or Vintage resources)
- Active Teacher Manuals we keep only the ones that we're actively using
- A Pencil Holder with pens, pencils + eraser caps, highlighters
- sticky notes because we use them a lot
We can use the Bookbags at home or on the go. Each time we use them, we put them back together and put them away.
So far, our K-3 Elementary school is very teacher-dependent. We have created our own Teacher-Led programs (phonics, handwriting, math and Geography) either from scratch or from cultivating really high-quality resources. In our homeschool, English/Language Arts uses the most "school-like" materials. After phonics and handwriting, teach Rod and Staffs Spelling By Sound and Structure, and Dynamic Literacy's WordBuild program from the TMs. Occasionally, we give the kids a few activity pages from WordBuild.
As for our in-home shelf. We try and keep all actual home schooling materials in one place. In the living room/study area we have a shelf where we keep the TMs. Most of this is Writing and ELA stuff.
We have a shelf for teacher guide books like Writing Revolution, Drawing with Children, etc. Then the rest of that shelf is Applied Teacher Manuals for series like WordBuild, Spelling by Sound and Structure and Reasoning and Writing for each of these the student textbooks go next to each TM, so we always know where they are and can tell right away if one is unaccounted for.
On the next shelf, we have a 3 inch phonics binder where we've printed our home made phonics program and each unit is stapled and kept in a plastic sleeve. We have a bunch of phonics readers from around the internet printed and stored in the sleeve as well, so when we have a child who is still learning phonics, we just take that particular sleeve and add it to TM binder that we carry in the book-bag. At home we have a ton of non-fiction RAZ Readers printed and stored in one of these.
For things that need to be drilled, we use rings of home made cards, which are easily stored in a box. We have a bunch of math drill pages printed and stored in the same type of box that holds the RAZ Readers by category.
Most of our shelves are actual books that the kids read. We have a reference shelf full of encyclopedias, guidebooks and oversized visual books.
We have a shelf where ALL Library books are kept so that they don't get mixed in with our personal collection.
Whatever we're actively using probably gets kept in the bookbags.
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a big binder that holds:
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We don't use Beast Academy, but I would definitely feed his interest and offer more Probability assignments.
With younger kids it's perfectly normal to have to scaffold the book-keeping work a lot, so don't feel hesitant to pre-make the charts or tables that he'll need so he can just focus on filling them in as he works problems.
Happy Counting.
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9 hours ago, UHP said:
We reached lesson 91 today. I haven't started it. The program has the student use a calculator to illustrate pi. It's elegant in its way but my daughter so far hasn't learned to use a calculator and for now I prefer to keep it that way. I'll think about how to do it without a calculator.
The lesson opens with some information about circumference and diameter:
"You're going to learn about circles. I'll read what it says. Follow along..." and afterwards three guided exercises I've copied below.
If she doesn't already know them, I'd pause the program for a couple of a days and teach the parts of a circle using cardboard cut-outs and markers.
Once she knows the the circumference, radius and diameter of a circle, you can explore circles around the house (bowls, cubs, rolls of tape, bottle caps, tires, etc).We use a ribbon (or Yarn) and a marker. We measure and mark the diameter of a circle on a ribbon, then, wrap it around the edge (circumference) and clip the ribbon/string. We have the kids fold the ribbon to see see how many times longer the circle is than it's diameter.
It doesn't take them long to notice that the circles circumference is always a little more than 3 times as long as the diameter.
9 hours ago, UHP said:Some twenty lessons ago the program had me train my pupil to solve oral questions like "7 times some fraction equals 22. What fraction?" The answer is "twenty-two sevenths." She also knows how to figure out the "mixed number" (3 and 1/7) that equals 22/7, but doesn't yet know how to crank out 22/7 in decimal form. She did learn in the previous lesson how to round decimals (after practicing rounding whole numbers for a few lessons before that).
As for computing sans calculator. I suggest that you use place-value units and the distributive property, so for 22/7, my kids are taught to work it as follows:
Rewrite with the division-house: 7 ) 22
Next decompose 22 into multiples of 7.
I tell them which place value I want them to go out to. So if I tell my kids to do 22/7 to the ten-thousandths place they will do it like this.
7 ) 21 + 1.00
7 ) 21 + 0.70 + 0.28 + 0.020
7) 21 + 0.70 + 0.28 + 0.014 + 0.0056 + ...
Then, they just divide each chunk by 7 and get 3+0.1+0.04 + 0.002 + 0.0008 or 3.1428
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Since you already have TGTB, then you should start there and pull out the spelling/vocabulary exercises that you have at your disposal.
Personally, we liked and used Spelling by Sound and Structure. It's very affordable, offers explicit instruction and thoroughly teaches what's in its scope and sequence. After SbSS your children will not be ready to compete at the Scripps, but they'll be able to write most of the 10,000+ words in their active vocabulary and look up the rest in a print dictionary with ease. Also, SbSS is easy to streamline and accelerate. We like that SbSS is gentle and gradual, but accomplishes a lot by the end of the spelling program (SbSS 6). SbSS is a program that teaches children to spell the words in their world and in their active vocabulary.
Of course no program is perfect so I will share some of the drawbacks of SbSS.
The Teacher's Manual for SbSS 2 and SbSS 3 contains 14 learning drills and ideas for learning/practicing the spelling words that are applicable for all the levels through 6. Unfortunately the TMs for SbSS 4 and up do not offer that same bit of guidance, but if you've already been teaching spelling you probably have many good ideas or exercises that work for your students. Additionally, you could simply search online for ways to practice spelling words.
SbSS 3 teaches alphabetization throughout the level--and unfortunately the alphebetization is basic all the way through. L25 of 34 teaches alphabetization to the 2nd letter. Even after alphabetization to the 2nd letter is taught, it's limited to words like bigger vs broken. The simplicity of the alphabetization track is a little redundant if your kids get alphabetization already or catch on quickly, so I recommend streamlining that tract.
SbSS4-6 has a "Bible Thoughts" activity, so each lesson has a part where kids are expected to use their bibles and the spelling list to complete words from bible verses, so the program assumes you're using a specific translation that aligns with their program.
The entire program has religious references scattered throughout. If it doesn't align with your faith, then its' a nuisance to filter it all out if you use the students workbooks.
Most of sentences provided in the Teachers Guides are all Old-Timey, Agricultural or religious, so that can be charming or annoying depending on the day of the week, lol. We tend to make up our own every couple of lessons. A few of the sentences contain erroneous facts, for example, one of the dictation/context sentences is that Tigers are big cats from Africa--we just fixed it on the fly.
Despite these short comings, we use the TMs and teach the program directly to our kids and we like it well enough.
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What video courses are out there to teach painting systematically and skillfully?
We are wanting to find a resource that will teach the foundational skills needed to learn to paint at a decent level. We don't want any art history or "A little of This and That" mediums. We want an instructional, "Learn to paint" program. It doesn't matter if its acrylic, watercolor or oil painting--just something aimed at beginners.
Any ideas? I've been browsing amazon for a couple of days now.
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The Drawing Textbook all the way! It's a simple, cheap, affordable drawing curriculum. It doesn't cover anything besides drawing, but it teaches 3-D drawing very strategically and systematically. We've been very happy with it.
Mark Kistlers Draw Squad is a revised, updated edition of The Drawing Textbook. 🙂
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5 hours ago, Clarita said:
Interesting, I feel like after "fractions of a circle" I expect the subsequent angles and problems to be in radians instead of degrees.
I wondered about that, but radians are a measure based on the radius of the circle and don't exactly map to a clean fraction of a circle that elementary students will already know.
By teaching angles based on "fractions of a circle", students are able to build onto what they know--a full circle is 360*--and are enabled to use skills that they know--rates, ratios and proportions ( or fraction multiplication <-> division) to solve problems at their current level. This approach enables students to intelligently and reliably tackle 2 and 3 step problems at their level from day one.
Ultimately, the goal is to instruct and develop the students ability to work more meaningfully with what the know, and make connections between what they're learning and relate that back to what they've learned. Too often, students are required to work only with supplementary and complementary angles prior to geometry--this is for students 6-8 who only have to add/subtract from 180 or 90 degrees.
Here, the 4th grade student must connect multiple steps
1) M + R = Q
2) R is 1/20 * 360 or 360/20, so 18
3) M + R is Q, so 40 + 18 = 58@UHP I'm interested to see how they develop this idea in later levels.
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Now I have to know what's in these Duo Lingo stories?
Is it sex? Gambling? Drugs? 👂 Crude humor? Violence?
Please do tell.
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41 minutes ago, Green Bean said:
So precalculus is considered remedial now in college? I’m surprised at that as not every kid is going to get there before then.
To the OP- your thread is so timely as I have a teen struggling on. It has helped me see we just need to push on, not drop back. Thank you for this thread.
As far as I know, the universities that offer College Algebra and/or PreCalculus do not count them as remedial. As far as I know, all of the schools that offer College Algebra and/or PreCalculus count them as credit-bearing courses for all students. However, the math requirements for STEM majors pretty much always begin at Calculus I--so the classes don't affect a major GPA for a STEM student.
At my University there's a pretty consistent (at least on paper) pacing for most of the courses within the STEM math sequence beyond Calc III (ie, Numerical Analysis, Linear Algebra, Differential Equations, Complex Variables, Topology, Abstract Algebra, Advanced Algebra, Foundations in Analysis, Discrete Math I and II, etc). I personally manage to stick fairly faithfully to my pacing schedule and spread the material out as necessary. Its easier to cover 10 chapters of Linear Algebra in 15 weeks if you move at a steady pace.
So, what @EKS described hasn't happened in any of my classes.
But we're a STEM university and the Math Dept. has to cover all of the material that students will need during their years in their perspective colleges.
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8 minutes ago, EKS said:
I just took a course that started by spending four semester weeks on one section of the textbook that had already been covered in a prerequisite course. Then at the end it devoted four weeks to the last four sections of the textbook which were much (much!) more complicated. I honestly have no idea why the professor decided to pace the course the way he did.
Hopefully this turns out to be the exception rather than the rule.
Oh that's terrible!
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5 hours ago, daijobu said:
Also, don't college professors often spend a greater part of the time on the easy stuff at the beginning of the term, then rush through the most difficult material at the end?
No, not in my experience. I guess it matters the course, as well as the individual professor.
The departmental-wide pacing guides were pretty uniform at one of the schools that I've worked in, though in the event that some section has to get cut we're more likely to cut material that won't be required in a following course. So, for example, that college algebra course focused on foundational polynomial arithmetic and graphing by hand. The precalculus courses was more advanced polynomial manipulation, graphing by hand, working with polynomial, logarithmic, and exponential equations, graphing by hand and with a calculator and lots of trigonometry.
Precalculus had to touch on all the obscure bits of math that students would need for the calculus sequence--Matrices, fraction-decomposition, analytic geometry can be in Precalc or College Algebra in a college, it just depends on the state.
Many students complained because our courses started exactly where they were supposed to start and moved at a pace that assumed that each student was well prepared and understood all the background information.
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On 2/5/2022 at 9:51 PM, UHP said:
I might be reading "core standards" wrong but I think common core doesn't include this material until 7th grade.
On 2/5/2022 at 9:51 PM, UHP said:In Level E, students learn the following information about angles:
1) Angles are measured in degrees and are shown with a curved arrow that goes from one line to the other: [figure omitted]
2) The arrow may be close to the point where the lines intersect or it may be farther from this point: [figure omitted]
3) The curved arrow is part of a circle. The number of degrees for a whole circle is 360; the number for half a circle is 180. [figure omitted]
4) The number of degrees for a "corner" is 90: [figure omitted]
5) The same angle is the same portion of a circle, regardless of the spatial orientation. All these angles are 30 degrees: [figures omitted]
6) An angle that is divided into two parts can be shown as the big number in a number family; the two parts are the small numbers. [figure omitted. "Number family" is jargon from the program for a simple notation for a+b = c. The notation puts the three numbers on an arrow, but is possibly similar to what Singapore Math calls a "bar model."]
7) A line intersecting parallel lines creates the same angle at both lines [figure omitted. corresponding angles are congruent]
8 ) Opposite angles formed by intersecting lines are equal. [figure omitted. opposite angles are congruent]
I don't know enough about commercial math curriculum to speak with authority, but all of this is included in a high school geometry course, so it's not expected that every student know this before they get to geometry. I'm impressed, but not at all surprised, to see CMC teaching this content at the E-level.
re: #6, unfortunately I have had students arrive to my college classes unaware that there are more than just 4 angle measures. (Acute, Right, Obtuse and Straight) Yes, Number Families are used to show the same relationship as a parts-whole bar model.
re: #7 and #8, are taught in both highschool geometry textbooks that we own. While that may be in some some middle school texts, it it's not always taught in middle school.
Personally, we pull from 2 geometry textbooks while teaching our kids. We are able to organize some of of the material using bar-models which makes it super easy for our kids to pick it up. We do spend a lot of time upfront to make sure that the children can actually read and draw diagrams, as well as take care to teach correct notation as we go along.
Because they're confident with Bar-Models and basic algebraic equations they can follow with the algebra needed to solve all of the problems.
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This has been more or less my experience--both in learning mathematics and in my many years of teaching mathematics.
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It's much more informative to see the problems from CMC-E. Just the OP was difficult to understand or envision. This definitely goes more advanced than most math curriculum at the K-5 level that I've seen.
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The clip only includes sounds--no picture.
I think it sounds like the teacher is trying to sound upbeat, engaging and move at a brisk pace with their speaking.
Whether or not an 8th grader would respond to this depends on the 8th grader.
If your 8th grader is annoyed and insulted than that's the only 8th graders opinion that matters.
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Future of Public Education?
in The Chat Board
Posted
I opted out of worrying about Public Education when I chose to home school my own.