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Appropriate age group
In the opinion of the authors and education professionals, the 5th, 6th and 7th grades are turning points in a child's academic career. This is where they start making life decisions about what they want to become. By giving them a positive experience in math, they are opened to considering the STEM subjects as life-long pursuits. Especially girls. At this age girls haven't been subjected to peer opinions about math and can make up their own minds. Once they get into high school those decisions have been made. This program exposes them to math at a very critical time in their development.
- Time Tested!
This program has been used to instruct thousands of 5th and 6th graders and has been upgraded and modified over the years to correct shortcomings, omissions and defects. It is a far cry from the program first used in 1990. Inputs from coaches, educators and the students themselves have been incorporated into the updated program you see here. One of the biggest changes was the shortening of the lecture portion of instruction. We learned that 5th and 6th grade students learn by doing better than by listening to lecture. Most of our lesson lectures are very short.
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Adherence to NCTM Standards
The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) has published standards for math instruction in all grades. We adhere to their 5th, 6th and 7th grade standards in this program. Specifically,
- We concentrate on the specific subject areas NCTM recommends:
- Number sense
- Measurement
- Geometry
- Probability and Statistics
- Algebra
- We incorporate mental math warmups in our lesson plans. Mental math (the ability to solve problems without pencil and paper) is a key NCTM recommendation.
- We teach kids how to work in teams to solve problems. Our extensive competition materials are made for teams of 3 or 4 kids per team.
- We offer instruction in 'problem solving' using our extensive set of problem solving problems:
- working real world problems that can be solved using multiple approaches.
- explaining the logic used to solve the problem with pictures, graphs, tables and diagrams.
- communicating clearly the solution and how it was arrived at.
- checking the result with a different approach.
- Complete Materials
Everything a coach needs, including lesson plans, handouts, in-class and homework exercises and answers, are provided.
- Lesson plans: Step-by-step plans with time allotments for each step are provided
- Mental math: The lesson plans have mental math warmups.
- Board examples: The examples that the coach puts on the board are provided!
- Coaching flexibility:
- Coaches with limited math training:
The completeness of materials allows coaches with non-STEM backgrounds to effectively coach kids in math. We have had (successful) coaches that had to 'bone up' on the materials before they taught them to the kids.
- Inclusion of new coaches:
This completeness of materials also allows the inclusion of new coaches into the program, even in the middle of the school year!
- Coaches with limited available time.
The fact that everything is provided means a smaller commitment of time is necessary for all coaches.
- Practice competition materials: Practice competition materials are provided in the plans of lessons 9 and later for 5th and 6th grades and every lesson for 7th graders for a second weekly hour of scrimmages. These scrimmages are optional, but the students find these practice competitions fun, expecially when small prizes are awarded. We highly recommend that you include them in your program.
- Emphasis on competition
We include A LOT of materials supporting math competitions in our program. We feel the inclusion of competitions in your program helps reinforce the concepts learned in a way that is fun for the students (and pretty easy for the coach!).
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