Math News
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Math department hosts Golden Ring Middle
Falcon Fives to Nina, Michael, Megan, Martine, Jim, Linda, Anna, John, Chris, Elbert, Amanda and Jhael.

From: Roberts, George A.
Sent: Tue 2/12/2008 11:15 AM
To: Tomback, Robert M.
Cc: Parker, Elizabeth C.
Subject: FW: Overlea visit

Rob,

I wanted to share with you the email below, which is from my math chair.  She visisted Overle , this past Monday with one other GRMS math teacher and Erika Hamada from the Algebraic Thinking Program.  As you can see below, they were very pleased with the teaching/learning occuring in math classes at OHS and the commonalities between the AT program at GRMS and mathematics program at OHS.

I just wanted to share some good news!

George 

From: Holland, Lisa M.
Sent: Tue 2/12/2008 10:05 AM
To: Roberts, George A.
Subject: Overlea visit

I wanted to tell you about our experience while it is fresh in my mind.

We had an absolute wonderful time!  Although it was very exciting to see former students, it was also amazing to see how quiet the hallways were, and how engaged the students were during the lessons.  The most surprising thing however, were the lessons that we saw.  Each lesson observed was a topic that is covered in the Algebraic Thinking program.  One Algebra class was solving linear inequalities- this lesson will be coming up very soon in the AT2 program.  An Algebra 2 class was finding cubed roots of numbers- we did this in AT2 about a month ago.  A GT Geometry class was finding surface area and volume of cylinders- we just completed the SC covering this material.  We didn't get a chance to see the College Algebra or Trigonometry With Algebra groups, but I hope to be able to observe these classes on our next visit.

In our debriefing session, Erika Hamada (from the AT program) was able to answer more in-depth questions about the program, and the results we hope to see after the students have been in the program for 3 years.  The Overlea teachers were also very excited- their thoughts were it shouldn't take as long to get through lessons next year since the students have already been exposed to the material in the 8th grade.

Hopefully, we can set up another visit in the very near future.  I would actually like to take a group of AT2 students to Overlea, so they can see what is going on in the higher level math classes.  I would also like to invite some of the Eastern Tech folks to visit us if they have not already seen the AT program in action.  Thank you for allowing us to do this- it was a great experience, and I look forward to keeping in touch and working closely with the high school teachers.

Lisa M. Holland
Math Department Chair