Parents,
Please help me to help your student by doing the following:
1) Continually monitor their progress.
You can do this by looking for the progress reports that I sent home
with your student approximately every two weeks. I have
included a list of dates that the progress reports will be sent home at
the bottom of the syllabus.
2) Continually monitor your students
understanding of the concepts that are presented to them each day
in class. You can do this by asking your student to explain how
they reached a solution to some of their home work problems. If
you're worried that you don't remember how to reach a solution because
it's been a long time since you've been in this math course,
don't. What is important is whether your student currently knows
how to reach a solution to a problem. When you ask your student to
explain how he/she reached a solution, you will be able to tell whether
they know what they are talking about or not, it will be apparent.
If you find that they can not explain how they reached a solution, then
your student needs to get some more help from me, or at a minimum ask
some more questions in class!
3) Continually encourage your student to
complete their home work assignments. To make it easier for you
and your student I give each student an Assignment Guide for each
chapter at the beginning of the chapter. The Assignment Guide
lists the list of problems that are expected to be completed for each
section in the text book. Remember an assignment is not completed
until each problem has been worked and any necessary corrections have
been made.
4) Encourage your student to study and to review
nightly. It is better for a student to review current and
previously presented concepts nightly as opposed to waiting until the
night before a test and trying to "cram" all of the lessons
into one review session. All too often what happens is that the
student discovers the night before the test that they didn't know the
material as well as they thought they did, but then it's too late to get
any help! If a student will review nightly, the review of each
concept will take less time overall, and the student will tend to have
better retention of the material if they are continually
"revisiting" each concept.
5) Encourage your student to study...period.
Many students tell me that they never study at all! The danger
with this practice is obvious, but often students do not attempt to read
the text book. They rely on examples that are presented in
class. One of the reasons our current text books were selected for
use in the high school was that they have excellent examples and explanations
of each concept right in the text! Have them get used to reading a
text book now, and they will be better prepared for college.