Sunday, April 26, 2009

Another voice for mastering those math facts NOW

The number one course of failure at Oregon State University, you ask: Algebra!!! Professor Argyres, who has taught the course for 10 years, has a theory about this:

He said he feels that this issue originates in elementary school.

"If you never had to memorize your times tables, how do you factor a number with a calculator?" Argyres said. "I see people fail Math 111 for arithmetic issues all the time."

When students never learned the basic information appropriately in high school, or earlier, it is significantly more difficult for them to succeed when they get to college algebra.

Throwing down the gauntlet at our feet. Well, I totally agree. We must send our kids to middle school with those math facts mastered, because if we don't where are they going to master them?


I say we start with a little school wide dose of the KIPP Academy math chants

1 comment:

Unknown said...

My husband is a high school Math teacher who teaches Algebra to 9th graders. He has often made the comment that the biggest problem with students who struggle in Algebra is that they don't know their basic Math facts. The Math chants is a great idea.