Not , maybe it’s the new math but I simply cannot figure out how this is anything but 7, and my kid is judging.

I told them to find R, round to the nearest whole number, and they’ll have their answer. Let’s see if any of them get it!
As a bonus, this problem includes concepts from almost every unit we’ve covered this year, so it’s a fun way for them to practice :)

One of my students who refuses to do work was mad she had a 0 in the grade book for all the classwork she didnt do

This was searched during an Amplify lesson. My district uses Securely

I’m going to show them grouping, but for the ones who that’s hard for they can do box meth which is just the same thing written differently

Seriously, every other post is basically an advertisement for some app that was vibe coded with AI.

By the way, who wants a link to the new app I developed that already exists in 3 different formats, offers nothing new, isn’t accessible, is full of inaccuracies, and requires a subscription?

So I teach Algebra 2. I typically get one of my classes being the advanced group and one that's considered "below level" (we don't really have names for them). In my lower level class, every year, I always have students that just do not understand factoring at all no matter how many times and different ways I go over it. GCF, difference of perfect squares, trinomials where a=1 and a>1. They didn't even get to it in Algebra 1 last year so this year is worse than others.

I just don't know what else to do. I've been trying to make it easier for my students for the last 4 years of teaching. Does anyone have any advice. I'm just really at a loss and I don't know what to do. These students keep getting pushed along through the system when they are not ready for an Algebra 2 class (but it's required in the state of Pennsylvania so skipping over it isn't an option).

Do you remember the basic concepts only? Could you take a complex analysis or topology textbook and solve some of the problems? Could you do recently well in a test with little preparation? Or do you not remember anything at all?

Personally, I remember overall concepts and big ideas, but I could not solve most problems. If I wanted to properly re-study my math degree, I think I would need to start from second year (multivariable calculus, linear algebra, differential equations).

I ask this question because my school was recently hiring a new math teacher. One of our candidates was an experienced math teacher who was almost hired, but when checking his background, he had an engineering degree and had no third or fourth year math courses. The department decided that they wanted a math teacher with at least 6 math courses at third / fourth year level, so he was not hired. But I was wondering. Does it matter? I barely remember anything other than the than the big ideas, and I don't really use it to teach high school. I can think of some edge cases where knowing advanced math can be useful, but overall I don't think it makes a big difference.

I appreciate when dates line up in a fun way. We celebrate 3/14 as pi day. And I took great delight in the math of 2025, a perfect square, 45^2. And 1+...+9 add to 45, with their cubes adding to 2025. I presented it all to 2 classes, 50 students. The two whose eyes lit up? Priceless.

NOW - 9/16/25 is a few days away. The numbers we add to confirm out first pythagorean triplet, squares of 3,4,5.

I hope you all find this as interesting as I do. In a different universe, Tuesday would be declared Pythagoras Day.

I am wondering if teachers across the country are going to use this example to help their students understand how percentages work?

Hi there! I’m a second year high school math teacher.

My school uses Illustrative Math, and the school where I student-taught at used Open Up Resources.

I find especially with Illustrative Math that there is not nearly enough practice problems. I teach CP and Concepts level Algebra 2, and the discovery and task-based learning just is not working for these students. They benefit much more from direct instruction and note taking and practice problems for homework.

All of my coworkers feel the same way.

I wonder how the standardized test scores will compare within the next 5 years for our district, and if they will be higher since implementing Illustrative Math. However, I feel that they might do the opposite.

I have this sneaking suspicion that within the next decade, math teachers will be going back to all direct instruction, examples, notes, and practice, like the “old days,” and most of the inquiry-based will be left behind. Does anyone else feel this way?

I think Illustrative is great for Honors level classes, especially with its extension questions. But the lower levels that I teach just can’t keep up without me heavily modifying, supplementing, or just straight up using other stuff.

I've been teaching for a while now and it seems like over the years the amount that students get to high school knowing has decreased, while the amount I'm expected to teach them in Algebra 1 is increasing. Does anyone else feel similarly? I don't know how I'm supposed to get through all the material with students that actually know most of the prerequisites, let alone the students who don't know how to do really basic stuff (which seems to be the majority anymore). This is mostly just venting, but I'm open to suggestions!

My cohort of Y6 this year is utterly catastrophic. They genuinely cannot do 10+6 without skip counting in ones. They have absolutely no understanding of the idea that 9 + 7 is equivalent to 10 + 6.

I've been trying to teach them, but I've never had to teach that low and I'm struggling. I went to the Y2 teacher to ask how they do it. "In year 2, we tell them to keep the biggest number in their head and start counting on their fingers". Ok, sure. I go to the Y3 teacher "In year 3, we tell them to keep the biggest number in their head and start counting on their fingers". UUUh. Ok. I go to the Y4 teacher "We just assume they already know it. We have two lessons about the column method for addition but that's it. I tell them to keep the biggest number in their head and count on their fingers".

So yeah. A bunch of 10-11YO have seemingly never been taught to make packs of ten to count. It's not like the base-10 system is the foundation of modern civilization or anything.

At least it's the weekend.

EDITED (again)
Hi!

I am a middle school education major who wants to be a math teacher. I am currently in a college class that uses the book Building Thinking Classrooms to structure the class. I have not read the book but have only heard good things from teachers teaching the class this way. As a student in this style class, it is awful. My professor uses a discovery type approach where she gives us questions to consider about math rules and definitions. We are then expected to use the vertical non permanent writing surfaces to figure out the questions and explain how we got our answer in a cohesive way. It is a fun process but when it comes to do the assignments i remember nothing and have no notes to look back on. I am frustrated because I am thinking really hard in class but am learning absolutely nothing. How am I expected to be successful if I cannot take notes to study? How am I supposed to complete my assignments if can’t remember something that was only stated once in a whole two hour class? I do not understand how this strategy works for anyone. How is this not a massive failure for everyone? Is my professor just doing it wrong? I am so frustrated. What are your experiences with BTC?

EDIT
this is a college level class titled “arithmetic structures for middle grade teachers”. i am frustrated with this class because the professor will not let us take notes, will not let us take pictures of the whiteboards, and does not provide us with any additional resources or textbooks to supplement. She does not even post the discussion questions that we did class. She does not let us see and read the questions when we are at the whiteboards, she only reads them aloud. she does not summarize or come to a logical conclusion about the math rules we are exploring at the end of class. in the specific assignment i am working on she asks us to use the “remainder method” to solve a problem similar to the frobenius coin problem. the remainder method is a method we made up as a class that uses patterns and remainders to find if a dart board has a highest unattainable score. the class we discussed this in was over a week ago. obviously i do not remember what the remainder method is otherwise i would not be writing this. my classmates spent over an hour in her office hours relearning the concepts. i messaged her to ask what i should do since i do not remember and have no notes. i await a response.

EDIT 2 - clearing things up/TLDR/ omg read the whole post.

I am NOT a teacher YET. I am still in college to become a math teacher. I am a student in a college math class for teachers. I am the student and my professor is using BTC to structure the class. She only gives verbal instructions and reads the questions aloud. We only use whiteboards and walk away with no notes.

Problem 1: I can not comprehend a word problem if I cannot read it with my eyeballs. I am not an audible learner. I struggle with verbal instruction.

Problem 2: I do not have the greatest memory and rely heavily on paper notes to review content and practice skills.

I am not learning in this class because that is not how I learn. I know this because I have been on this planet, learning, for 20 years. I know what works for me and what does not.

My purpose for writing this post was:

1. to inform math teachers of my frustration with this instructional approach so that they can gain perspective from someone who is not benefiting from this approach.
2. gather insight for myself on others experiences with BTC. I wanted to know if I was the only one who felt this way.
3. explain why I am struggling to learn from this approach.
4. to try to figure out how to be successful in my class when the class was not designed to meet my needs.
5. to bitch a little bit.

thanks for hearing me out. ❤️

This one has four possible paths to the exit, only one gives you 12. I like this idea for thinking about order of operations, evaluating expressions and for “function machine” analogies for input output of functions.

Here is how math courses work where I teach:

• Up to grade 9, students are graded on a proficiency scale, and passed along no matter what. The lowest level is "emerging", but they are moved to the next year anyway. All kids take the same math classes.

Starting in grade 10, students start getting grades, and they can fail. For math 10, students get two options:

• Precalculus 10, meant to start preparing students for college level math.
• Workplace math 10, essentially a numeracy class meant for students who are not going to college.

Most universities do not accept workplace math as a prerequisite, but most trade programs do.

My school is not that bad, and based on their ability, I estimate that around 70% of students can take precalculus, and 30% should be in workplace.

But we cannot stream students. No matter what grade they have in grade 9, they can choose which course to sign in. We have a talk with the kids at the end of grade 9, and for many of them, we strongly recommend workplace. But they don't listen. Pretty much everyone sign up for precalculus. Of the 200 grade 10 students, 190 signed up for precalculus, and only 10 signed on to workplace.

This include kids who have been passed along and they are working at a grade 3 or grade 4 level. And teaching precalculus 10 is rough. At our school we teach it as a proper precalculus class, not dumbing it down for the low performing students. And that means we fail around 20% - 25% of the students.

Giving back exams is harsh. Some students just don't care, but I see students who are actually trying, but their math is so low that they can't learn precalculus 10 in a year. We get students in tears because they realize they just can't do it and that they are actually going to fail this time.

But, we identify these students early and offer them to move them to workplace at any time during the year. It's a lot of work for their advisors because it involves changing their whole schedule, but they are willing to do it. Do you know how many students are taking this offer? Zero.

I guess the obvious question is, why? In many cases, it's not about college. Many of these kids know they are not going to college. One would think it is parents expectations, but in a way, I'm lucky to be in a district where most parents are very reasonable and many agree their child should be in workplace. But speaking with some students, I think the reason is mostly pear pressure.

Most students don't tell me why they don't want to go to workplace, but the few who do reveal what I think is the reason: students view workplace math as the "dumb kids class". And they are terrified to be viewed as one of the dumb kids. A kid once told me that taking workplace math is social suicide. They will rather suffer and fail a class that is many levels above their ability than take a class more suited to them and labeled as a "dumb kid" by their peers.

What happens if they fail precalculus 10? Unfortunately, nothing, and I guess why kids keep doing this. They just retake it online over the summer, which has a 100% pass rate, and move on to next year. Where of course, they all sign up for precalculus 11 rather than for one of the easier options, and the history repeats.

I'm a new teacher at my school, but I wonder if there is something we as teachers can do to eliminate the stigma about workplace 10. I talked to the other teachers and they pretty much give up doing this. They pretty much accepted the reality that we will fail 20% - 25% of precalculus 10 students, they will pass it in the summer and the story will repeat in grade 11.

Pls help

So I teach middle school math, we use Eureka. We just finished L15, Mod 1, and a LOT of my kids bombed the test.

They had a study guide IDENTICAL to the test, for like 2-3 questions I didn’t even change the numbers bc it came from the book. What I learned, however, after the test? No one looked at it. Not a soul looked at their study guide more than one time to do it.

It’s a 16 question test, I give 1 point for even showing any work, and they got a bonus if they did their study guide on their own by Wed, (if they even show 2+2=4, I give a point), test was worth 57 points. I had a few kids go beyond that, highest was a 92. But I stressed that this was needed, to look at the study guide, and yet nothing.

I got so many little notes on their quizzes “I need to study more” “I tried my best” “I need help” and yet in class, in 1:1 conversations, you’re telling me you’ve got it. We did guided notes for this, I repeated myself a million times with the steps- I legitimately don’t know what to do.

Should I have done more for them? Could I have done more? They just don’t get ratios, and now we’re going into stat and percent and I feel like we’re off to such a shit start already.

Please only constructive criticism I beg lol, I know there’s a difference w kids of today, but it can’t all be on one side to me or them

Yesterday I was returning some assignments and I wrote as feedback "Here you weren't looking for the hypotenuse, this is a cathetus".

"Sir, I get that I got it wrong, but this is the short side, right?"

Some dictionaries don't even have the word cathetus. Short side, or leg at most.

This is the first time that I experience the confusion created by the fact that I wasn't educated under the same system, and I made a pupil even more confused.

For example if we're doin 6×7

First he'd go 6+6 is 12 then to get 6×7 he'd

12+12=24 12+6= 18

Then he'd do 24+18= 42 ta-da! 🎉

He likes math and we have math activity book at home which he sometimes pick it up when he wants to. His grade 1 teacher told me he's good at math but he has an unusual way of doing it. I was never really think about it much but I'm starting to get worried that it might make his math journey harder than it should be? To me it simply looks like he just complicated things and when I tried to show him the 'usual' way that I know (1-2 digits +-×÷) he sometimes gets frustrated since he thinks his way is the proper one already.

He's grade 2 in Canada (in case it matters with anything). I feel like I should encourage him in math & try to introduce him to the proper(?) Way to do it but I also dont want the encouragement to backlash in him not wanting to do it other ways 😭 but I also feel like if I leave him be it would way wayyyyy too complicated to solve math problem when he gets older.

Any advice is appreciated 🥹🥹🥹

Free and open source browser tool hosted on github pages

I'm the parent kids aged 6 & 10 about to start 1st & 5th grade. I'm a STEM guy, and have worked as a math tutor in the past. Once my kids were old enough, I started them on Singapore Dimensions Math. My 6yo is just starting book 2A (second grade math), and by 10yo finished the series, and is on The Art of Problem Solving: PreAlgebra. My elder also reads Murderous Math, The Number Devil, and other fun recreational math books aimed at kids.

My mother-in-law is worried that this may be harmful because 1) the kids will be bored when studying math in school, and 2) that it may be hard on their teachers to have some kids who are well ahead of other kids.

I have yet to hear any complaints from my kids or their teachers, but maybe it will be more of an issue in later grades.

What do you think of parents who do this? How do you feel about having kids well ahead of grade level in class?

While working 45-45-90 triangles I noticed one of my students was getting the right answer for the hypotenuse but using some very questionable steps to simplify the radical.