Appendix D. What to do in School and Why
Volume 2, Three Skills for Algebra
A Why Go or Attend
Education is for both sons and daughters. The assumption that someone
else will provide home and shelter for us is too often false. So you
should get the most out of your schooling and education. Your ability to
get a job, your future earnings and your future joys and companions may
all depend on what you learn in and after school. All this may also
depend on factors beyond your control (wars, social conditions, the
economy or parents). The suggestions provided below are for some, not all
eventualities.
School can be a place where you learn to master rule and pattern-based
thought (logic) and where you master further skills and knowledge. You
are in school to learn about the wide range of human knowledge and
behavior. Try to understand whatever you might be asked to study or do.
Think for yourself and ask why you or others do this or that.
In school, you should look for the ideas new to you and for the ideas
worth repeating to others. That is what makes a class or a subject
worthwhile. Again, ideas which you have already seen are reassuring and
comforting - not much work is needed here, but you only learn from the
ideas new to you. Look and search for them.
What you see in school and in books represents the experience of others.
When you are observant, you can learn from the experience, skills and
mistakes of others instead of your own.
History courses, English (or literature) courses, science courses and
some realistic novels offer this experience secondhand. Secondhand
knowledge of hardship is preferable to first hand. Ask your teachers,
relatives and the others about the joys and the difficulties they met or
foresee. Learn from their experience. Ask for opinions. Guidance from
others requires the statement of opinions. Get two or more opinions even
if you liked the first. Seek and politely allow opinions different from
your own. Different points of view may sharpen or change yours.
B Health and Social Skills
You are also in school to meet people and to learn how to mix or
socialize with others. To this end, join a club or group activity. See
how people, including yourself behave in groups. After school, the
opportunities to mix may decline - or you may not develop the habit of
mixing and socializing. Choose activities you like. Try one, two or
several, but leave enough time for your studies and for special events.
Suggestion: each week, get three or more hours of physical exercise. This
exercise could come from physical labor. Or, you may find a sport or
activity which you can do now and later. This exercise should build your
health without risking it and without damaging it.4
4I saw in a university soccer match or
practice in 1984, a player with a small cast on his leg. I thought he
was risking permanent damage.
In 1990, after twenty years of cross-country skiing for exercise etc, I
began to ski in colder and colder conditions without fear. The eventual
result was a deep frostbite to my cheeks, an area difficult to protect.
Then for five years, exposure to the cold was an unpleasant experience
followed by hours of pain or discomfort - a distraction from work and
play that is not recommended.
C Suggestions for Learning
By law you are required to attend school. Make sure your time is not
wasted. Make sure that some of your courses are with helpful,
hard-driving, teachers. Ask them for advice on what to do or what could
be useful to you. Further advice follows. It repeats in part advice given
in previous appendices.
- Look for the ideas new to you and for ideas worth repeating. When you
are preparing for a test or for a future lesson, your studying is done
when you can find no ideas new to you.
- Try to remember the names of places, people and ideas. You can use
the names in conversations, essays and tests later.
- Learn to read precisely what is written. This skill will serve you
well. It gives you more independence both in class and when you leave
school. It may allow you to learn at your own pace.
- Learn to take notes. When no textbook is present, note-taking skills
will be needed. When a textbook is present, look at it first. (Reading it
in advance may allow you to take fewer notes and understand lessons
better.)
- Learn to type. Today, computers are used in all areas of office work
bureaucracy and technology. These computers are controlled by keyboards.
Accurate, if not fast, typing skills will make your exposure to computers
and report writing more pleasant.5
5This advice is valid now. Advances in
computer technology - the introduction of voice-controlled
dictation/computer systems - may make part of this advice stale or
obsolete.
- Get careful thinking skills. That is, master the use of rules and
patterns. Every area of skill and knowledge offers rules and patterns
which you might follow. Learn to read exactly what each says. To follow,
to agree or to disagree with rules, you need to understand exactly what
they say and exactly what they don't say.
- In high school take courses which provide immediate job skills such
as auto-mechanics, typing, metalwork, woodwork, drafting etc. Master
arithmetic and learn to read and write carefully. Employers want skilled
workers. They are easier to train and worth keeping. Even if you are
planning a college education, practical job skills could get you a summer
job. They may allow you to work and pay for part of a college education.
Care is required to take the best and avoid the worst of the academic and
non-academic courses in your school.
- Take English or master another language of your choice, well. This
includes reading, writing, speaking and reasoning. When you write, tell a
story, describe what is, or present an opinion or defend one. Watching
for ideas worth repeating, will help.
- Take history courses. Courses with ideas new to you are worth taking.
If possible, avoid history courses which only promote the group, state or
country in which you live. History courses tell us about the experiences
and mistakes of past, if not present generations.
- Read newspapers which do not (always) glorify the nation or group to
which you belong. Contrary opinions make us think. So look for and read
newspapers with views you occasionally find disagreeable.
- A little uncertainty in the words of a teacher leaves room for
thought and the practice of thinking skills.
Appendices with (repetitive) advice for Students: [ B How to Learn ]
[ C. How to Read ]
[ D. What to do in School ]
[ PS. Study Tips ]
[ PS: Time and Effort ]
[ E. How to Study Math and Why ]
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Teachers & Tutors: Site pages offer better or best practices for providing skills -
simpler than expected & comprehensive but for exercises. For your charges, your duty is to study them alone or in
groups and develop skill building exercises & activities to share. Start now. The effort here is the best I can do.
Others are welcome to refine or exceed it. Please do.
Secondary
Mathematics for Ages 11+, A Practical Approach for home-tutoring or -schooling, or for schools & colleges
with local curriculum control. Study how to include site content - its skill development how-TOs and innovations
into present or future lesson plans - some reading required.
Road
Safety Messages and Questions: When and why should you face
traffic when walking along a road or cycle path? Is it a good
idea to hang limbs outside of cars etc? What gives more
protection in a crash: a car, motorbike or bicycle?
See too, the BBC-Belgium story Texting and
Driving - texting & the impossible test - the article links to a gruesome utube video on the subject
The Logic of Injustice:
How Texas sent
an innocent man to his death - The wrong Carlos. Some judgments are irreversible. Procescution: Where and when prosectors play to win rather than for
justice, guilt beyond a reasonable doubt goes unrespected due to prosecutors who putting winning
first, those innocence before the law may be convicted. Some procescutors offices in continuing to accuse after a pardon
due to reasonable doubt or innocent being shown, may sucessfully oppose compensaton for false convictions
by asserting a pardon individual is still under suspicion. Then the pardoned individual or the latter's estate
is not compensation for years or decade
of improper or false imprisonment, or for execution. Site chapters on Logic
and some in Pattern
Based Reason may slowly lead to greater precision in reading, applying and
writing laws.
May 2012, Composition Starting:
Pre-School and Primary Mathematics - Quantitative Skills, An
Intellectual View, Feedback Welcome:
The 8 Most Popular Site Inlinks
Parent Center: Help your child or teen
learn:
Parent-friendly
Work Booklets for ages 3+ to 13 Use these or others to check
or build skills. Other booklets are available but these booklets
allow parents unsure of themselves in mathematics to help their
children. The selection acquired in Canada is published in the
USA. So it has a US orientation. In retrospect, the selection
shows parents what to check with the booklets or by other ways,
the choice is theirs. But in retrospect, the selection does not
cover integral and fractions liquid weights and measures - ask
the publishers to correct that! For ages 9 to 12 say, parents may
compensate by showing boys and girls how to use weights or mass,
and further measures in food preparation. Beyond that children
may be shown how to measure and calculate angles, lengths and
areas [proportional amounts too] directly or by using maps and
plans drawns to scale. Learning how to gather and measure all the
ingredients, pots and pans for a dish or a meal, along with
cleaning up sets the stage for like activities or experiments in
science courses, and in developing organizational skills,
gives boys and girls a head start. Good luck. At the other
extreme, more comprehensive than light, if your motto is
McCainian: drill, drill, drill then Toronto
mathematician and actor John Mighton's jump math organization has jump math
workbooks for at least grades 3 to 8 for at-home and in-school
use - training sessions for teachers available. Jump math has
been expanding to cover older students. Jump Math Samples: plus
Fractions for
Grades 3-4 & Grades 5-6 [Read] Free Resources grades 1 to 8
[unread - likely to be good]. and
Mathematics
Skills For Ages 3 to 14 - technical!
Skills with take
home value - A few ideas
Basic skills include
time-date-calendar Matters; money matters; map, plan and
scale diagram matters;counting, measuring and figuring;
decision making with logic and likelyhood; being careful and
being aware of the domino effect of mistakes; reading and
writing with precision.
Is your child able to add, subtract and multiply amounts
of money, work with fractions, work with clocks and calendars,
work with maps and plans, and measure length, weight-mass and
volume? Schools may promote your son or daughter without
providing basic skills in reading, writing and
arithmetic.
Arithmetic
and Number Theory Skills
Algebra
Starter Lessons
Geometry
- maps plans trigonometry vectors
More
Algebra
70
Calculus Starter Lessons
Calculus Lessons Elsewhere:
-
How to Ace Calculus: Street Wise Guide - Mostly
Text.
-
Flash
Video for Calculus Phobics
They cover basic topics in ways likely to complement your
notes, your textbooks and site material. When Goldilocks
trespassed in the house of the three bears, she found three bowls
of porridge, two not to her liking, and one just right. Different
bears have different tastes. As invited guest here and elsewhere,
if one or more explanations is not to liking, try another. It may
be better or just right.
Unsolicited Advice
Learning to do and high marks if it comes to easy is often
deceptive - light rather than deep. For that reason, students
with learning difficulties determined not to let it get in their
way may go deeper and farther than those with none. High marks,
if the come easy, may be deceptive - provide a too light and not
a deep mastery. That could have been your problem in secondary
school, one that leads to comprehension shock or difficulties in
calculus and more generally in the first year of college. Bon
Appetite.
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