Thursday, May 15, 2008

Teaching Algebra: Slay the Demons First The Rest Is Easy

Labor Day is fast approaching and you can almost smell car cheapest insurane quote students at Engage is the largest social dating community on the web. Join now for FREE! front door of your classroom. Another year and another sixty or so Algebra I students to grapple with. And although the first few weeks might go fine, you know that as you hit the third chapter or so of the text, the kids will start having problems. You dread having to explain things over and over again, and you loathe grading those awful tests. You just cant understand how the students dont get it. To you its all trivial but to them its relativistic mechanics. Ponder that situation as you may, what you might not have realized is that if you slay the demons first, the rest is...well simple.

What do I mean by slay the demons first? In mathematics, as in other things in life, there are demons: those pesky, nasty creatures that serve to torment, vex, and thwart any hope at success. For the teacher of algebra, the demons are those nasty pitfalls into which students constantly fall and toward which they are constantly drawn. Almost like unavoidable temptations, these demons draw students into their Cool Whip and then wreak havoc with their algebra grades. If you, as the teacher, can declaw these creatures and deprive them of their strength, then you can get your students on the road to health and get their grades soaring into the stratosphere.

Rather than concern yourself with rushing through the course curriculum, you should spend the initial few weeks of class setting the stage to disempower these demons. After all, what good is it if you are on track with the course outline but more than half of your students are lost in the dust? Specifically, I am talking about teaching students the basic terms like variable, coefficient, and exponent. Moreover, students need to understand the invisible demons like 1 and -1 as hidden coefficients (see www.mathbyjoe.com/catalog/item/2924777/3476352.htmAlgebra Ebook). You know what havoc these sell structured settlement payment create in all kinds of expressions.

Spend time going over these basics until the kids have an intuitive understanding of what these symbols and expressions mean. The reason I have catalogued and named each technique within the Wiz Kid Teaching Philosophy is so that students have a colorful name to remember a procedure by. that name also gives them a visual with which to anchor the technique or method to their inner mind. Such nomenclature is more than just witty and humorous creation: its clever teaching strategy.

Teachers, do yourself a favor when the next Labor Day rolls around. Invest a good deal of time insuring that your kids have the tools to do algebra. Get a book on the pitfalls of algebra or study my techniques in my series of ebooks. Give these to the kids and watch them master that subject. If you do, the demons will no longer haunt themor you.

Joe is a prolific creator of self-help and educational material and an award-winning former teacher of both college and high school mathematics. Under the penname, JC Page, Joe authored Arithmetic Magic, the little classic on the ABCs of arithmetic. Joe is also author of the charming self-help ebook, Making a Good Impression Every Time: The Secret to Instant Popularity; the original collection of poetry, Poems for the Mathematically Insecure, and the short but injury lawyers for you effective fraction troubleshooter Fractions for the Faint of Heart. The diverse genre of his writings (novel, short story, essay, script, and poetry)particularly in regard to its educational flavor continues to captivate readers and to earn him recognition.

Joe propagates his teaching philosophy through his articles and books and is dedicated to helping educate children living in impoverished countries. Toward that end, he donates a portion of the proceeds from the sale of every ebook. For more information go to www.mathbyjoe.comwww.mathbyjoe.com .


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