Making Math Real: Geometry Part I for Elementary and Middle School
14 half-day DL Course | 9:00 am to 1:30 pm daily [Pacific Time]
Registration Fee: $1,999 for tuition & materials binder (shipped)
4 optional academic units [see below]
∞ CALENDAR FOR COURSES
∞ LIST OF PREREQUISITES
∞ REGISTER
∞ DISCOUNTS & SAVINGS
MANDATORY PREREQUISITES: All students who enroll in this course must have completed the Overview K-12, 9 Lines Intensive, 4 Operations & 400 Math Facts Part 1 and Part 2, Fractions, Decimals, and Advanced Place Value.
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course provides the comprehensive, simultaneous multisensory structured methods for introducing and teaching the concepts and applications of geometry for grades K-8. It is designed and intended for educational therapists, special educators, and elementary and secondary classroom teachers. Parents and those who consider themselves non-math majors are especially encouraged to enroll.
Topics include full units on measurement for standard and metric units, reading and using standard and metric rulers, reading and using protractors, unit conversions, classifying polygons, circles, polyhedrons, and 3-dimensional space figures, area, perimeter, basic surface area and volume, graphing and the coordinate plane, the fundamentals of geometry: points, lines, planes, and angles, decoding and encoding the vocabulary and codes of geometry, and unit analysis.
The developmental purpose of the content of Geometry Part I for Elementary and Middle School is to prepare students for the perceptual demands of high school geometry, most specifically for solving deductive proofs. Geometry requires synthesizing given information into a perceptual big picture and is a vastly different developmental experience than either elementary school mathematics or algebra. From a developmental perspective, the major difference distinguishing geometry from other math is its perceptual demand on working memory: synthesizing a complete big picture from selected given parts, making it a multisensory closure task requiring visual, auditory, and kinesthetic closure to synthesize the whole from partially given information.
Therefore, success with geometry at all levels requires completely different perceptual skills than either elementary math or algebra; and to foster students’ success, teachers need to help students make the requisite perceptual shifts for processing geometry. These perceptual shifts are of particular importance in the grades K-8, because, unlike high school geometry in which the entire grade year maintains consistently similar perceptual demands, elementary and middle school geometry units can be presented to students at any time.
Whether in second grade or in middle school, students need structured support from their teachers to help them become perceptually ready for success with any geometry unit or lesson. Just because it is slated to be the next lesson, it is not educationally appropriate to jump into a new geometry unit without first preparing students for the necessary perceptual shifts. In Making Math Real: Geometry Part I, participants will be provided with the specific, simultaneous multisensory structured incrementation to help students perceptually prepare for the unique cognitive demands of geometry, whether for teaching metric units, how to read the ruler, or how to understand finding the area of a trapezoid, and much, much more.
Extensive color-coding is a critical element of the structure. Please have 4 colored markers or pencils in blue, green, red and black on hand, and plenty of paper for note taking.
RELATED ARTICLES FROM THE DESK OF DAVID BERG, ET:
Published on: February 23rd, 2016
Geometry is Different from Algebra and Elementary Mathematics
Published on: March 8th, 2016
Success with Deductive Proof: Synthesizing the Perceptual Big Picture
Published on: March 29th, 2016
Developing the Perceptual Tools for Geometry: You Can’t See the Geometry Through “Algebra Eyes”
Published on: April 26th, 2016
“Just the Facts, Ma’am”: In Geometry, Assumptions Are Not Welcome: If It’s Not a Fact, We Say Nothing; We Write Nothing
Optional Academic Credit Costs & Registration: Optional units of credit are available for select courses at the low cost of $134 per unit, paid directly to CSUEB Continuing Education, by the last day of every course. CSUEB Online credit registration and payment instructions, along with the MMR grading policy, will be provided on the first day of every class. All credit registrations and payments must be submitted online through CSUEB’s website by the end of each course. No exceptions.
∞ List of Prerequisites
∞ Calendar for Courses