My daughter failed her second re-test on grade 11 Polynomials. Strike three. I don’t understand why. She prepared for this test and even had a couple of tutoring sessions. This is the most frustrating thing about her Learning Disability…the effort is there but not the results.
Now her Christmas exam is next week. She has two hours with a tutor. Do we bang our head on the wall and review once again Polynomials…or do we focus on all the other stuff that I know she can do. What do you think. I wonder how important Polynomials are to the rest of the year?.
Re: Polynominals
Yea, what she said.
Having taught a few dozen folks the stuff of polynomials — what exactly does the probleml seem to be? It’s a pretty tough little concept to grasp … one of my fellows got through it with ideas like “you can’t add 3 to 5X because the X is protecting his homies…” but most of my folks do better with the idea that X is a package or a check that we haven’t opened yet — but we’ve got five of them. We just don’t have any ide what they’re worth, though (but they are all worth the same thing). So if she has been just practicing problems but not really getting the concept, it might be worth a little more work on the concept.
If she has rigorously memorized the steps to do all the “stuff she can do,” then I would lean towards reviewing that — as a survival mode thing, becuase if the problem is conceptual, then it would be possible that she’d end up getting other concepts confused if she spends her time wrestling with the polynomials. I wouldn’t be able to resist some basic fundamentals though in the hopes that something would stick.
Also, is the test format part of the issue? Are there ways she can get a better score with her current knowledge, by figuring out how to use it best? Is it multiple guess, or show-your-work-and-circle-your-answer? Does she know to do what she knows and then go back and work through the “sorta” ones, and not get stalled out on the sticky ones?
Thanks!
Thanks Victoria and Sue…you gave us some directions and useful tips to pinpoint problems.
On a side note, I realize a tutor is not for quick fixes. My daughter has had a math tutor in grades 6,7, and 8 to build a foundation. (This tutor is well trained in Lindamood methods etc). Over the years we have decreased her dependency on tutors; from 6 hours a week to eventually one hour a week.
This year, grade 9 she is doing it on her own!!! She was going great until we ran into polynominals….that is why I booked two hours with her old tutor which has turned into 6 for exam preparation.
Keep your fingers crossed…her exam is tomorrow. If she does not do well I will have to look at the format of the exam…great point, Sue!
It all depends on how her math course is organized.
If you are in the rare situation where there is a planned and organized cumulative program, polynomials are a very important basic type of function that everything else is built on.
If you are in the more common math-trivia type of curriculum, where every two weeks they throw something else disconnected at you and tell you to memorize five more formulas at least until the test and then wipe the memory blanks clean to jump into the next topic, well polynomials are important but to maximize your chances you should work ahead on the next topic before the test and not after.
A note on tutoring - as a tutor myself I run into this, and it is a real problem. In general, tutoring is not a quick fix; you can’t pay for two hours of tutoring as a patch over the weak spot and expect the troubles to be cured. You have to clear out a lot of weak spots down to the foundation and then rebuild a more solid structure of understanding. This takes time and money, sorry, no way around it. Try to find a tutor who will work on depth of understanding and develop a long-term plan for success.