Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments CTY AL1 completed. What's next?

Ds10 has completed the online John Hopkins CTY Honors Algebra 1 course. His instructor has recommended that he can take Geometry, AL 2 or any science courses. Ds's initial decision was to take Geometry, but when he found out that Geo is not on Thinkwell and not taught by Prof. Edward Burger (he loves this professor!) , he changed his mind and said he would take AL2. Also, textbook is required for Geometry and it is expensive!

If I follow the High school Math curriculum, Geometry will be taught after AL1. Is it ok to continue with AL2 and skip Geo for now? My preference is for him to take Geometry as I feel that there should be a break in between AL courses and Geometry may be more interesting.

Would love to hear your views.

I can't comment on the specifics, but I do want to comment, in case you didn't know it, that the fixed order of US high school maths courses is peculiar (and I do mean peculiar :-) to the US. In the UK, for example, the material of these courses is taught in a much more interleaved way. Looking at the equivalent course summaries in ALEKS it looks as though Algebra 1 followed by Algebra 2 would be fine; there might be the odd thing that needed to be filled in, but I don't see any very major issues.

That said, I think your idea that it would be good for your son to do a variety of kinds of maths is a sound one. One thing you might consider, perhaps, is having your son do some geometry but less than a full year course of geometry - maybe something basically problem-oriented/recreational, since your son obviously has time in hand and that kind of thing is great for developing mathematical thinking? There are some super stand-alone materials out there, although I don't know which ones would be at the right level for your son. We've got the Art of Problem Solving geometry book, but he may be beyond that? I've also just bought several geometry books from the UK Mathematical Trust, here:
http://www.mathcomp.leeds.ac.uk/publications/index.php?type=Book
which look super (although they are mostly beyond my DS for now, so we haven't used them seriously yet). The various maths challenges and olympiads are a rich source of geometry problems, too. And then there's the rest of maths... but this is long enough so I'll stop.

Thks for sharing your views ColinsMum.
I am not certain which way to go. As we will be moving again and changing school, I thought I would take a break for summer. It was DS who asked if I have renewed his CTY course! :P

I was abt to find out more abt the AoPs textbooks. Wondering if they would be good for self reading. It is not easy to get Higher Level Math/ Science books which are written in a more interesting (ie. not boring) way. The AoP texts reviews looks good. Thks for the link. I will run thro' them.
The Geometry Text recommended by CTY is "Geometry" by Ray C. Jurgensen. I think I will look into getting a 2nd hand copy first b4 registering for the course. I am also thinking of using this http://www.khanacademy.org/ for the meanwhile.

I think DS is motivated by how structured the CTY Math courses are, but they are not cheap. At this point of time, I am also thinking if it makes sense to consider a more rounded course (ie. diploma courses), since the international schools in general do not recognise the credit of the individual courses.

Yes, textbooks so often seem to be written on the assumption that the reader finds the material hard and boring! I think the AoPS books that I've seen are really good. The reader does have to be up for an approach to the material that is based on working on problems first and as the main way of learning. Sometimes even very mathematical kids find that rather threatening, and find more conventional spoon-feeding style books/courses (where it basically just tells you stuff and then tests that you've understood it, maybe with the odd "challenge" question thrown in towards the end of each topic) more congenial; however, to do anything with maths it's essential to get over that fear, and the sooner the better.

Ah: do you know about AoPS's Alcumus on-line courses?
http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Alcumus/Introduction.php

Mmm; I don't know exactly what your situation is, but since you were thinking about leaving maths for a bit until your DS asked about CTY presumably finding a credit-bearing course isn't urgent, anyway; maybe experimenting a bit over the next few months would be a good idea before you commit to the next big thing? E.g. tell your DS that it's the holidays so he does recreational maths, and get him some Martin Gardner books or something?

Where I'm coming from: DH and I both feel we didn't get challenged enough in maths at school, and determined that our mathy DS should be. Result, he's going exceedingly fast through the usual school material. We're trying to move the emphasis now to lots and lots of different kinds of problem-solving - not to slow him down, necessarily, but just because problem-solving is so important. I think there are two reasons why it's vital: first simply that solving problems is really what maths is all about, and second that we want him to be comfortable with facing problems he has no idea how to tackle. The second is really the reason for putting emphasis on this now, because we reckon that the more experience someone has with being "good at maths" and expecting to be able to do everything, the harder it is to make the attitude shift into it being perfectly OK not to be able to do something. I liked Richard Rusczyk's talk on this (although it's a pity the video is so bad technically): did you see it?
http://mathprize.atfoundation.org/archive/2009/rusczyk

Of course YM(and YDS)MV!