Minutes of Meeting on Monday, November 7, at Georgetown Day Upper School
Present: Paul Penniman; Kathy Rueter, Carol Berenson, and Andy Lipps of Georgetown Day; Ayana Touval, on sabbatical from Jewish Day and teaching at Montgomery College; Betsy Bennett, Linda DeBord, and Max Murphey of St. Albans; Nancy Wright and Erik Chalphin of Washington Episcopal; Andrew Callard and Cindy Goldman of Sidwell Friends; Suzanne Nucholls of St. Stephen’s and St. Agnes; Beth Cole of National Presbyterian.
Kathy bought some excellent snacks; thank you for that and for hosting!
Paul presided and went around the room asking everyone what they thought makes a kid talented in math
n asks a different question
n comes at a problem from a different perspective
n the ability to generalize
n asks interesting questions and has a willingness to but the discipline with it
n quality of questions and generalizations
n correct, but not quick
n brings ideas from other subjects
n the good ones tend to finish my sentences for me
n it’s not the kid with the highest average
n flexibility of mind, different ways to generalize
n the one who says, “don’t show me, I want to figure it out myself”
Paul shared a speech Julian Stanley gave a few years ago (NB We can send hard copies of any hand-outs to anyone interested) about talented students. Paul reported that he was unable to find anything widely accepted other than the SAT used to identify the young, gifted and talented.
There was some discussion about the AMC and AMC8 as ways that are used to identify.
We also discussed that students are gifted in different ways and these lead to different paths and the ideas of multiple intelligences (more hand-outs).
Paul also shared a handout that compared talented students to ADHD students.
Betsy shared information about the JETS competitions and talked about math problem solving as a team sport. There was a discussion of math teams as a social setting for kids a way for students to explain an engage.
MathCounts and Math Olympiad were also mentioned.
Sources of problems:
Math Olympiad site
The Art of Problem Solving
AMC
North Carolina School of Science and Math Problem of the Week
How do we know a 7th grader is ready for Algebra?
n can s/he display the work on the page
n use both math and reading scores (can s/he translate, have the ability to write and explain)
n it’s hard to find challenging programs for grades 6 and 7 that don’t push them ahead
n Gilman School wrote their own curriculum for 6 – 8; Andrew recommends you contact them for more info.
n What do we do to enrich kids rather than push them ahead?
n Is there a correlation with ERB constructed response scores?
n WES uses an algebra readiness test to sort into algebra decision based on score and overall GPA
n Some have looked into texts from other countries, like Singapore.
n CTY seems to be offering more varied courses
Cindy and Betsy shared interesting challenging problems for upper school students (more hand-outs)
The latest treasurer’s report was distributed by Suzanne and accepted without any discussion.