Nashua Math and Algebra

In the recent years, there has been a lot written about U.S. standards in math education. According to the 2012 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) — a study which measures proficiency in math, reading, and science for around 500,000 15-year-old students in 65 countries, the United States performed “below average” in mathematics and ranked 27th among 34 Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. The country’s performance in reading and science was closer to the OECD average. Much of the rhetoric has been around whether math is taught with the same rigor in U.S. schools compared to other countries. This perception that students need more focus on math could be partly responsible for the growing popularity of private, after-school math enrichment programs. Most of the math programs have originated from countries known for their stringent math education such as Japan, Korea, and Russia. I myself have sent my children to a couple of such

Why Math is Important It seems natural that the majority of the population knows almost nothing about mathematics and that their relation to math is limited to the four rules. This distance contrasts with the importance of mathematics today in society. Mathematics is at the center of our culture and its history is often confused with that of philosophy. Just as the cosmological and evolution theories have exerted considerable influence on the conception that humans have of ourselves, the non-Euclidean geometries have allowed new ideas about the universe and theorems of mathematical logic have revealed the limitations of the deductive method. The mathematics is present in our daily lives. For many students, math is boring, abstract, lacking in creativity, complex and very difficult to understand, hence the typical expressions of “I am of letters” or “Numbers are not mine.” However, it is a subject that is part of the study of our children and as such should be an effort for compr

In the past, the overall GreatSchools Rating in NH states was based on test scores. In some states, the GreatSchools Rating was also based on student progress (or “growth”) and college readiness data (SAT/ACT participation and/or performance and/or graduation rates). Our school profiles now include important information in addition to test scores — factors that make a big difference in how children experience school, such as how much a school helps students improve academically, how well a school supports students from different socioeconomic, racial, and ethnic groups, and whether or not some groups of students are disproportionately affected by the school’s discipline and attendance policies. Many of these important themes now have their own rating, and these themed ratings are incorporated into the school’s overall GreatSchools Summary Rating. The Summary Rating calculation is based on four of the school’s themed ratings (the Test Score Rating, Student or Academic Progress Rating

Why Students Struggle With Math And How To Overcome It As interesting as the subject is, over the years, math has got a bad reputation among the younger crowd. In fact, for many students, practising math is not something that comes intuitively or automatically, it takes plenty of effort. Survey reports even suggest that 37% of the students aged between 13-17 found math to be the most difficult subject. (Source) This goes without saying that these overwhelming numbers of students struggling with math are not simply because of a short attention span. From learning difficulties, anxiety to lacking basic concepts, there are many reasons why students are not drawn to math as a subject. Before we jump into the methods to help students overcome math problems, let us first discuss the common causes due to which students struggle to learn math: 1. Basic Concepts Are Not Clear The most common problem while learning math is that students lack an understanding of the basic concepts. Th

What is Mathematical Thinking Mathematical thinking is a lot more than just being able to do arithmetic or solve algebra problems. It is a whole way of looking at things, stripping them down to their essentials, whether it’s numerical, structural or logical and then analyzing the underlying patterns. Math is about patterns. When we are teaching a mathematical method, we are showing something that happens all the time, something that happens in general. Getting students to see these underlying structures, whether it’s in a math problem, in society, or in nature, is one of the reasons that studying mathematics is so worthwhile. It transforms math from drudgery to artistry. Identified four fundamental processes, in two pairs, and showed how thinking mathematically very often proceeds by alternating between them: Specializing – trying special cases, looking at examples Generalizing - looking for patterns and relationships Conjecturing – predicting relationships and results C