Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Completely at a loss...math confusion???

this is not the first test, right? what were the issues on those previous tests?

I would say "I can't believe a teacher would send such a non-detailed email and expect any coherent response", but I've seen similar.

Suggestions? How can you make any suggestions without finding out what happened on the test and specifically what he means by 'goofing off'.
Bizarre.

My DS had three middle school math teachers. All retired or will be retired after DS had them. All were very nice, but extremely strict. We had an incident that for a month or so, DS had to carpool for 3-hour round-trip for swimming 4 days a week. So we requested delayed submission for homework. Math teacher rejected rightaway. I never asked for anything again since. I can understand why they are so authoritarian to kids....according to DS, math class is totally chaotic once the teacher let loose a little bit.

One thing to keep in mind is if he is really ready for the accelerated math class. In our local gifted program, about half the kids go on to take accelerated math in 7th grade and half take the regular math curriculum.
The teachers told us that when parents place their kids in the accelerated math course over their objections, the child inevitably doesn't do well since he/she doesn't have the math skills to succeed. They said it sets up years of poor performance in math and loss of confidence in the subject. Just a thought.
In our gifted program, acclerated math leads to 7th grade algebra versus the regular course is 8th grade algebra.

Well I know you said your child knew the material, so that is that. He knows it. The issue is whether the environment is right for him to show it and if the teacher is willing to see it.

Although it would be pretty impolite to imply the teacher has any issues with math concepts, do prepare yourself for that possibility. I have tutored a neighbor boy (9th grade) briefly and it was pretty clear the teacher was very bad at explaining things and frankly didn't seem to have a grasp of 'equal' and had really confused this kid (and the majority of the class). It took me about 40 minutes to un-confuse him and he did just fine on his next test and was determined to work out of the book and ignore the teacher as much as possible.
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Math is not English. You can not proofread it even the solution is wrong. Kids might think that they knew the concept, but in fact, they didn't. They would still get confused under different circumstances. So I think problem solving skill should be the focus for tutoring at home. Also encourage him to solve the problems using multiple techniques. It is like the proofreading in writing. Once he truly master the concept, he may try some fun activities, for example, Many kids on AoPS like to make up problems to challenge each other.

Truly master a math concept is no easy job. For example, one seemingly simple question on median/average concept puzzled many top middle schoolers in recent AMC contest. Problem solving practice is not repeating, it is true learning for math. Actually it is the main reason that AoPS attracts so many gifted kids. For my experience, I never prepare any "repeating" worksheets, school homework is more than enough, instead, I'd follow the progress of hard problems DS came up with, encourage him discuss with his friends and teacher, to see how he could finally solve it.

Erich has good points about problem solving being very different from rote repetition, but you really need information about what's actually going on in these classes/tests. One good and easy thing to try might be to give your DS the "Do you need this?" sheet from AOPS prealgebra, here:

http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Store/products/prealgebra/posttest.pdf

These are not rocket science - there are some word problems, but most are pretty straightforward - but they're varied enough that if your DS can do them all confidently and correctly, then I think you can stop worrying about whether it's really a maths problem, and focus on the teacher problem. OTOH, if he has trouble, you may need to help with the maths.

Great points, everyone!!! Thank you! So this is what I have so far...

Teacher tells me he did not follow directions given on the test, didn't label, simplify, and left FOUR problems blank. When I told this to my son he looked at me with tears in his eyes and asked how that could have happened. In all of his other classes, he does't have problems with reading test directions. A few times in the past, he has forgotten to label or simplify but he has never left problems undone and like I said before, he KNEW the material.

Teacher continues to go on and on about son's terrible behavior problems, drawing on assignments, etc... I find this interesting since DS is receiving all A's in six different classes ( 3 of which are subject accelerated ) and I have not received any e-mails or phone calls complaining about son's behavior or anything else.

Son admits all of his best buddies are in his class, it's the 6th hour...Says everyone hates the teacher, he's a "terrible" teacher, and he's not the only one gets in trouble...

I requested to the teacher to please move DS back to the front row. DS even wants it. I get this back from the teacher..."No seat is far enough away from people for him to control himself"

Son, husband, and I are meeting with teacher tomorrow morning. In an e-mail teacher says this..."This will be the last time I will allow him to retest when I have to remove him from class for behavior. If he misses anymore material/class time because of behavior, I will not offer another retake for him"

Great. Now what???

Sounds toxic. Ask to record the meeting with the teacher. Something in how he phrases his responses raises my hackles. What is his hair going to fall out if your son doodles on the edge of his assignments?

Sounds like it's time for a visit to the counselor's office for a schedule change. The fact that your DS is doing so well in all his other classes ought to make it easy to request a switch.

I wouldn't settle for the teacher's verbal or email assessment of what went wrong on the test. I'd still want that test in my hands, to figure out exactly what's going on.