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Welcome to Mr. Beard's Math 6-1!
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On-Line Textbook Info:
User Name: m6j5y
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Dear Family,
In this chapter, your child will learn to read, write, and order decimals and to solve problems involving decimals.Your child will also learn about metric units of measurement.
It is essential that your child be able to work with decimals, since computers and calculators use decimal representation. Since the metric system is used in the sciences, it is important that your child has a good understanding of how to work with it. Your child needs to know how to specify measurements such as distance, mass,capacity, weight, and length using metric units.
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A Mathematical Environment
As parents, teachers, aunts, uncles, grandparents, or friends, most of us know that if we take a child to the library once a week and real aloud to her or him a lot, it provides a good start toward enjoyment of reading and therefore toward reading well.
But what do we know about helping children enjoy mathematics? Is it learning the times tables? Completing pages of long division problems? Or is there a mathematics library somewhere that has motivating mathematical books to be read?
What do you remember of your own mathematical education? Was it a pleasure or a pain? What topics did you study? Was it all addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and percents? How do you feel now when your children ask you for help with math homework?
Mathematics is more than arithmetic--it is beautiful and fascinating and exciting and meant to be enjoyed. Children (and grownups) who have explored geometry, probability, statistics, measurement, and logic, and who have learned to estimate and to see patterns and recognize relationships will be able to regard difficult problems as a challenge rather than a drudgery. What a gift for your family!
Doing Mathematics at Home
Here are some ideas for you to consider as you and your family are doing mathematics at home:
Let your children know that you believe they can succeed. Let them see you enjoying the activities, liking mathematics. Children tend to emulate their parents, and if a parent says "You know, this is really interesting!" that becomes the child's model.
Be ready to talk with your children about mathematics and to listen to what they are saying. Even when you yourself don't know how to solve a problem, asking a child to explain the meaning of each part of the problem will probably be enough to find a strategy.
Be more concerned with the processes of doing mathematics than with getting a correct answer. The answer to any particular problem has very little importance, but knowing how to find the answer is a lifetime skill.
Try not to tell children how to solve the problem. Once they have been told how to do it, thinking usually stops. Better to ask them questions about the problem and help them find their own methods of working it through.
Practice estimation with your children whenever possible. Estimation helps the thinking about a problem that precedes the doing, and is one of the most useful and "sense-making" tools available.
Provide a special place for study, allowing your child to help you gear the study environment to his or her learning style. some kids really do work better sprawled on the floor or bed, or with a musical background. There are no hard and fast rules.
Encourage group study. Open your home to informal study groups. Promote outside formal study groups related perhaps to scouts, church, or school organizations. This will be especially important as you children grow older.
Expect that homework will be done. Look at the completed work regularly. But try to keep your comments positive. Don't be a drill sergeant. Praise your children for asking questions, and look for places where you can ask questions about the work. To be successful, your child will need to study 30 to 60 hours a week in college, at least an hour and a half each day in middle school and probably 20 minutes a day in elementary grades. The experts tell us that there is a high correlation between success in mathematics and the amount of homework done.
Don't expect that all homework will be easy for your child or be disappointed that it seems difficult. Never indicate that you feel your child is stupid. This may sound silly, but sometimes loving, caring parents unintentionally give their kids the most negative messages: for example, "Even your little sister, Stephanie, can do that," or "Hurry up, can't you see that the answer is ten?"
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