TVT Upper School students are invited to participate in the UCI SPIRIT (School Partnerships in Research and Information Technology) program. 

This week we are proud to feature a campus-wide snapshot of our Math Program. 
 
Lower School-
Kindergarten students use a wide number of material to lay the foundation for math mastery - this month they focused on craft

sticks and counters, activity boxes from Everyday Math, and math-based games to stimulate and challenge the children through play.
 
Fact Power!  In the first grade, students are diving in, head first into fact-finding strategies!  From fact families, equivalent names to "What's My Rule?" students are learning numerous ways of solving addition and subtraction problems.  First graders finally add the "quarter" to their coin combinations and enjoy playing Quarter-Dime-Nickel-Penny Grab! 
 
 From polygons to number stories, our Second Graders are busy naming quadrangles and building 3D shapes out of clay and toothpicks!  As students work on solving addition and subtraction number stories, they are using various strategies including diagrams, "tools" such as number grids, rods and cubes to help them solve their problems.  They are beginning their ascent into the wonderful world of multiplication with the introduction of arrays!
 
Tenths, hundredths and thousandths!  Third Graders are working their way through place value using base-10 blocks, money and exploring decimals in metric units.  They are also continuing their year long sunrise-sunset weekly graph, where they chart the elapsed time from sunrise to sunset.  At the end of the year, students will have a line graph that is a representation of the data that they collected!  Students will be able to look for patterns and make observations of the data and even make predictions for next year!
 
The approximate weight (mass) of the Earth is listed as "6.6 times 10 to the 21st power"!  One of the many "large" numbers our Fourth Grade students will be looking at as they learn about scientific notation and exponents.  Students are loving games such as "Number Top-It" and "High Number Toss" to compare large numbers and work on mathematical strategy!  Fourth graders have also learned the partial-products algorithm and the lattice method to complete multi-digit multiplication!  Coming up next...Division!!
 
Fraction time!  Fifth grade students are surrounding themselves with fractions!  From adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing fractions to finding percentages, fifth graders are figuring out how common these skills are in the "everyday" world!  Fifth graders are about to launch the "How Would You Spend $1,000,000?" project.  A fabulous hypothetical situation where each student inherits $1,000,000 and must investigate, research, and present exactly how he or she will spend it!  We look forward to finding out what our students decide to do with their money!
 
Middle School -
Middle School mathematics at TVT provides students with a strong foundation in numerical, computational and algebraic skills needed not only in high school mathematics classes but also in science classes. Students not only study mathematics from an academic standpoint but also build a strong understanding of how mathematics impacts their daily lives---from personal finance to understanding statistics and figures published daily in newspapers and on websites. 
 
 Mrs. Berkowitz's 6th grade

Accelerated  Math 6 students acted as statisticians and collected data from their friends and within the community.  They displayed their data using bar graphs, histograms, line-graphs, box-and-whisker plots, stem-and-leaf plots and tally tables.  They learned how to create a sophisticated bar graph in the computer lab and used the internet to research a topic of their choice that would illustrate change over time. 
 
Upper School -  
When students enter university, mathematics courses often serve

as gateways to a wide variety of possible majors. While not every student will major in mathematics, many students will have to at

least take at least one semester of calculus and possibly also courses in differential equations and linear algebra. As a college preparatory school, TVT wants its' graduates to enter college well-poised to tackle any major of their choosing.TVT Mathematics approaches a student's mathematical development with an eye

toward this goal.

 

The department offers three different sequences of courses so that students encounter mathematics at a level commensurate with their needs and abilities. Our regular track provides ample support and explanation for students who encounter difficulty in learning mathematics. Once students in this track complete Algebra 2 they can enroll in either AP Statistics or, if they want to be introduced to

a solid range of different types of mathematics they can try Function, Statistics and Trigonometry.
 
Students in our middle track encounter a sequence of courses that develops strong skills in function analysis, culminating with AP Calculus AB, which covers roughly one semester of college calculus. Students who graduate from this track and do well on the AP Exam enter college with a head start on calculus.
 
Our most advanced math students take our honors sequence of courses which provides a strong foundation in analysis while also honing proof technique and mathematical argument skills. These students take AP Calculus BC which covers the entire first year of college calculus. Students who take AP Calculus BC prior to their senior year have a variety of options from which to choose, including independent studies in Calculus in Three Dimensions at TVT or taking mathematics courses at area colleges.
 
 Hands-on application of math skills continues outside the math classroom, in courses such as Physics

 
In all of our upper school courses, students learn to interpret functions simultaneously from four perspectives: data, verbal, graphical and algebraic. We use software and graphing calculators to assist us

in our investigations. Students also learn rudimentary programming techniques when dealing with the calculator---skills which they can draw on should they choose to formally learn a computer language.