courses.discussion


 * During 2010/2011, the High School Mathematics Department is in the final year of the curriculum cycle. This is the year when we invite feedback, review research, and conduct analysis to assess our current program (courses, curriculum, tools, and resources such as books). The purpose of this wikispace page is to collect your input and suggestions regarding this process. **

The current curriculum has brought a sense of normality to the students and teaching staff. It has provided the students with set standards and a plethora of examples and problems to master the desired subject. I particularly enjoy the use of workbooks and note-taking guides to enrich the learning experience. The only discrepancy would be the level of Geometry books for our co-taught. I commonly find myself pulling out topics and creating material rather than using the supplementals provided. This is me being meticulous though. An improvement we can do as a department is to gather practical teaching methods (not activities) that will develop our program. The combination of consistent and interesting methods will break through some of the monotonous routine while the skills are being stressed to the lower classmen. If ALL teachers focus on the methods for teaching Algebra I, the dividends will be paid forward. Just a thought.-Meli

Overall, I am pleased with the current curriculum. I like the sense of structure and normality that the Algebra I - Geometry - Algebra II progression creates. The texbooks offer more material than I can use, which is a good thing. I still like a lot of the IMP ideas and still bring them into my class (for example, function machines and mystery bags), but appreciate that now I have a plethora of practice problems that I can go to without having to create as much on my own.

As far as the resources, I love having the practice workbooks because I really feel that it especially helps the lower level students to be able to write in the books and have their work preserved as opposed to doing textbook work on looseleaf and then having to worry about losing the work. I personally do not use the Notetaking guides but they seem harmless. A complaint that I have is that the pre-generated practice worksheets and tests in the teacher kit do not allow enough space for the students to fit their work on the same page, so I do not use them at all.

I have probably under-used classzone to this point, but I think that it is great. I do not hand out my textbooks to go home, so I do give my students instructions for how to access the on-line book from home, but for whatever reason I have under-used it in class.

One other think I've noticed is that students taking the SAT prep course their Junior year are much stronger in Geometry than they were when they came to me from IMP. That not only helps them with SATs, but has to make an impact on PSSAs as well, which is a good thing.