Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Helping in AOPS

For those AOPS users out there I am struggling with how to handle helping in AOPS. The DD struggles with roughly 50% of the challenge problems on the HW. I am sure some of you have the same issue. How do you handle this?

1. Not help at all. If they cannot figure it out they should fail and repeat the class?
2. Provide some directional help to enable them to solve problem?
3. Sit down and help them understand how you solve such problems?

Like a lot of you I take approach 2. My concern is am I pushing the kids ahead without full comprehension

Does it help to remember that AOPS considers 70% to indicate correct placement? 70% with struggle not with ease.

With our DD it is normally one or two that she might need to work to find the answer on. We try somewhere between 2 and 3 - we never do them for her but we will 'hold her hand/act as a sounding board' at times to work through the thought process. Other times she breezes right through the challenge problems and it might be an Alcumus problem that stumps her. The difference at young ages between performance when fresh versus tired (at the end of the day) is vast from what we have observed in our DD.

Some of the the challenge problems are difficult period - I am not a Maths major admittedly but I am a problem solver and some make me (and DW who is off the charts when it comes to smarts) pause to think. She may work on thorny ones for a few days on and off. The important thing is not to throw in the towel right away or to bang one's head against a wall getting nowhere - take a break and try it again next day. This does mean try to do the online challenge problems early and not the night before they are due obviously which can be easier said than done LOL but having the luxury of a few days grace to tackle the thorniest ones is a life saver.

I don't care about the grade, just that she aquires a sold conceptual understanding of the topic at hand and she can successfully map that knowledge onto solutions for real applications of them. If we have to help her to think things out or discuss occasionally how one of us might try it I consider that mentoring and not cheating.

Something to beari in mind too is that if you start to see a lot of complication in your solution then you have probably made a mistake somewhere along the line. Often exponents or numerators/denomInators tend to cancel out leaving fairly simple expressions. If it starts looks like exponent or vulgar fraction with odd combinations of numerators and denominators soup then stop and backtrack to the last time it was simple and work forward again. I hope that wasn't too incoherent.

These problems are supposed to be hard - this is why we have our DD take AoPSclasses after all :-)

YMMV

DS works independently 95% of the time. When he does have a particularly difficult time with a problem he uses the AoPS forum to ask for help. Forum members typically do not give the answer but give hints/suggestions.

I agree with the previous comment that it is very important to start early and there have been times where he works with a problem on/off for several days.

One question is whether your DD is able to work through all the problems in the text first? It takes a huge amount of time, especially if she's jumping into a new area of math, and she may be struggling to get through it all.

Our experience in AoPS Algebra I was that the challenge questions were pretty easy (with no more than 1-2 that required some thought) if - and only if - all the textbook work had been completed first. When we fell behind in the textbook work, e.g. doing the basics but not following through with the full set of harder questions at the end of the chapter, then DS was unprepared for the homework assignments.

In terms of how much help you offer, a compromise might be to offer stronger support working through textbook questions, and step back from the homework challenge questions?

I will echo that.

The classes are structured in the following way:-
1. The week before the class on a topic start the required bookwork for the class and do the problems and the challenge problems in the book.
2. Do the Alcumus exercises
3. Do the online class session which will recap the bookwork and address any questions.
4. Do the online challenge problems for the week.

If steps 1 and 2 are done before the class then the online challenge problems are not so bad (with maybe 1 or 2 that may need to be worked on on and off for some days) some weeks.

Platypus101/Madeinuk,

Thanks for the tip. Our DS has not being doing the book problems. Just reading the material. Good tip an being prepared.