kodokan

From middle school/ 7th grade on, my son's been given two sets of books for each subject - one to keep at school, and the other to have at home for homework. They're huge inch+ thick things, so he wouldn't want to be carrying them around.

Whilst I think this is great from the 'let's go through the lesson in the book again and see where you're going awry', I do worry about the colossal sunk cost of all those books, and the certain permafrost reluctance to replace them with something better/ more up to date. It doesn't matter overmuch with maths, but some of the English comprehension pieces are now looking quaintly dated, but when science books are well over a decade old...

If someone has a kid who regularly needs an explanation top-up to what's been taught, or needs it explained in a more visual way, perhaps try this virtual schooling site: https://www.time4learning.com

I used it to homeschool my son, then aged 11, when we moved from Switzerland to here and he needed to gap a fill a ton of maths and English stuff (he'd been in a French-speaking school for 4 years). I was really impressed by the little animated video lessons, and how it checks for understanding at each stage, so the kid can either have X explained again/ in a different way, or whizz ahead. It's pretty reasonable at $20 a month, and can be cancelled at any time.

Michael

That only works with very simple expressions when everything is assumed to be multipliers but won't work with more complex expressions since the parentheses also groups. That won't work with the following example.

3(-2a+2) = -6a +6 but when changed to 3 * -2a + 2, that equals -6a +2.

SultanOfSwing

It still works with more complex expressions, one just has to add steps as necessary, thus:

Yorkieabroad

Wish I had a quarter for every time I said "it multiplies everything inside the bracket" to my son last week....

Pulaski

That is correct, but none of the examples were that complex. ..... So to complete the maths lesson, take the number outside the parentheses and multiply it by each number inside the parentheses, then add them together. So x(a+2b) = ax+2bx

The next step is two numbers in two pairs of parentheses: (a+b)(x+y) = ax +ay +bx+by

If the same letter appears in both brackets some simplification is going to be required: (a + 2b)(a - 3b) =a² -3ab + 2ab - 6b² = a²-ab-6b² i.e. the-3ab and the +2ab have been aggregated.

SultanOfSwing

That sounds like the maths version of Silence of the Lambs, there

N1cky

Yeah they use Khan Academy at my kids school, she goes to school with one of the kids of the guy who created it. He keeps going into the school to do extra stuff with them.

I hate maths. Anyone want to sign up to be my kids online homework helper. She'll probably listen more to any of you lot than she does me.

Anyhow, once she knew what to do with the letters, she whizzed through the work

Mr Weeze

SultanOfSwing

It's also 5 cm. Good old 3-4-5 triangle ...

Bob

Where we are, they've gone to using the NY Engage common core system in the district.

It's open source content, online, so no books. They print the stuff out and photocopy the hand out sheets and they're so poor in quality that you can't see half the stuff.

She's only in first grade and really been put off maths since she started school, when she was quite interested before hand. It seems this and another, Oz system were the two out of three contenders that fitted the budget, but this was "free", so they're spending loads on printing shit out and having kids not understand it rather than the other system that was far more engaging, colourful and visually helpful where this one requires the kids to be able to read quite a lot and a lot of the kids are only just start to read properly.

Michael

When I went to high school in the late 1950s, mimeographs were used to copy papers and the quality was always very poor. With preparation and copying, that took about 10 minutes to copy a page.

Mr Weeze

A little bit tougher than a 3-4-5 triangle....

SultanOfSwing

Well, let's be honest, overcooked pasta is tougher than a 3-4-5 triangle

Michael

For Nutek, ℼ is ∞.

scrubbedexpat091

Well if I had kids they would be screwed...... I'd certainly have no clue what to do.