Description
Our Making Math Meaningful™ workbooks are specifically designed to lead the students along a path of discovery. The teacher needs to carefully guide the students along this path. The problems contained in these workbooks are NOT randomly ordered or selected. They are chosen to promote the development of mathematical thinking in a very conscious way. As teachers of math, our most important task is to develop mathematical thinking in our students. This thinking needs to be flexible and creative.
Who can use this workbook? Most of the author’s teaching experience is within the Waldorf school system. Yet this workbook can be effectively used by any teacher or homeschooling parent who wishes to teach meaningful, age-appropriate math.
The importance of seventh grade. Seventh grade is an important year academically. This is the year when the students start to develop abstract thinking (through algebra, physics, essay writing, etc.). The material contained in this workbook is both exciting and age-appropriate for the developing minds of seventh graders. For many students, seventh grade math can be a real turning point. It is relatively common for a student to enter seventh grade weak in math, but then to “wake-up” and take some big steps toward becoming strong in math before they make the journey to high school.
The Nine Units in this workbook are:
- Arithmetic. This brief unit mostly reviews sixth grade, and includes fractions, decimals, long division, divisibility, and powers and roots. This theme continues with the review section of the measurement unit.
- Measurement. This unit covers both the US system (hopefully, mostly a review) and the metric system.
- Ratios – Part I. This is one of the most difficult and important units in the workbook. It gets to the essence of what a ratio really is.
- Percents. This builds upon the percents that were introduced in sixth grade.
- Ratios – Part II. This unit builds upon the first unit on ratios. It introduces the idea of irrational numbers, including pi.
- Rates. This includes many rate word problems, such as rate of speed and rate of pay.
- Geometry. This unit builds upon topics introduced in the geometry main lesson, such as: angle theorems, the Pythagorean theorem, and area.
- The Square Root Algorithm (optional). This unit consists of one of the most difficult and most rewarding topics that I have ever taught at any grade level.
- Algebra. This unit appears as the last unit, but is intended to be done in the middle of the year as part of the algebra main lesson.
