Sunday, April 19, 2009

3A Mathematics Specialist Course

Well I sat down today and finished my worked solutions for the 3A MAS course for Saddler's text. The most difficult part seems to be the Vectors component as the other areas are quite simple in their delivery.

I suggest to students to get a hold of the OT Lee text and do extra examples of these vectors questions. A couple of examination preparation books are also available from Academic associates and Academic task force. I was lucky to have been given the West One 3A CD that also has some great material to supplement the standard text.

A problem that I have seen in the class is getting students to understand the nature of vectors, especially the idea of magnitude and components. I even have to think twice when wind problems are involved. I need to amend the programme and structure it more to vectors and away from logarithms.

My advice for all starting out teachers is to do the hard yards and complete any exercises set for students before asking students to complete them. This is especially true for mature age teachers with long gaps between completing high school maths and teaching it.

One useful thing I did was mark stop points against the work where I felt I'd had enough before starting again. Although I completed the text in a couple of days, it was in multiple sittings. I'll use these stop points as indicators where I can slow the programme down.

The TDC assignments to date have been well received by students. They have been able to complete the assignments and have been positive in their feedback. If the TDC can keep supplying quality assessment then that will reduce the assessment problem for teachers starting to teach yr 11/12 specialist courses. It is daunting for starting teachers to identify good assignments/investigations.

The MAT course on the other hand so far is a bit of a doddle given the work we did with students last year.

1 comment:

Hi, thanks for leaving a comment.. it's good to hear what people think!