What are we learning today? We are learning Math - Math is AWESOME! Today with new testing standards and new testing formats, students need daily practice with the tools they will use on the test. Our old 4-function calculators are falling apart and now the test uses scientific calculators.
Our school is at almost double its intended capacity.
All of our students need math and some need extra support and have two periods of math. We support students from a remedial level all the way to honors students taking 10th grade courses. Each of those students must take and pass an on-line State mandated exam for their course level. The on-line exam offers an on-line calculator that is scientific and much more complex than previously used. It is important that students get daily practice with the proper tools. This ensures that students are familiar and competent in the skills required to be successful on the exam.
My Project
Students are pressed to learn much more content at earlier ages. The math test now includes complex formulas, exponential functions, and radical functions which are not possible to represent on the old 4-function calculators. The on-line test includes a scientific calculator. To prepare our students we need to give them daily practice representing the computations in the same format. Simple things like the difference in having the * key instead of x for multiplication can cause serious anxiety for students. The anxiety only increases if you consider the additional problem of having no button to represent a cube root but needing to represent it as a fractional power (i.e.. the cube root of 8 is 2, that looks like 8 to the 1/3 power on the scientific calculator). We want to make sure students feel prepared and confident!!
This donation would benefit my 8th Grade Math Department.
I am the Math Department Chair and will provide a class-set of calculators to the 7 teachers teaching 8th grade for approximately 700 students. With these calculators students will build confidence on how to properly use a scientific calculator and have less test anxiety during state testing.
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