Starting the School Year off Right

It’s normal to be full of anxiety at the beginning of the school year. Students, teachers, and parents feel the stress of new expectations, new material, and new people. Here are a few tips to help stay organized and manage some of the new-school-year stress.

All grades

1) Color Coding. Assign colors to school subjects and keep everything for that subject in a color-coded folder, notebook, and/or binder. At the end of every school day, go through each folder to check for homework and notes to review. Keeping subjects separate helps avoid clutter and missed assignments.

2) Write Things Down! If you never wrote down your homework last year and want to be better this year, now is the time to start! There is usually less homework at the beginning of the year so even writing “No Homework!” in an agenda or wherever you keep track of your to-do lists will get you on the right track. Also, make sure you write things down as often as you can, not typing them into a computer or phone. Hand writing helps you remember so it’s like doing twice the work in one pencil stroke.

3) Gather your Resources. If you anticipate struggling in a subject, ask your teacher for some resources at the beginning of the year. You can supplement work in class with videos, games, reading, workbooks, and other activities to help you catch up, or place into a higher level class. Here are some places to start:

Your public library has an endless wealth of knowledge. In most cities, you can go online to reserve any book (or DVD or other media) in their catalogue and pick it up at your local branch. (All age groups.)
Khan Academy offers free, in-depth videos, taught by experts, on a variety of subjects. It’s an especially good resource to focus on tough math concepts. (Most age groups)
German animation studio Kurzgesagt has a YouTube channel full of colorful animated videos that provide simplified overviews of topics in science, politics, philosophy, psychology, and technology. (Best for middle and high school students.)
Sites like SparkNotes and CliffsNotes can be helpful SUPPLEMENTAL material for readers struggling with understanding or wanting a deeper look at a particular book. These resources should be used to guide reading, not to replace it. (Best for 8th grade and above.)
Shmoop.com has a variety of free and paid resources for test prep, homework help, and subject area review. (All age groups.)

4) Try Something New! It can be stressful to take on new things, but if you look at a new school year as an opportunity for growth, it can be less daunting. I suggest trying a new extracurricular or elective, or even just taking up a new hobby, as a way to get to know people (who can make great study partners!) and to build new skills. I especially encourage this if you are starting at an entirely new school. The beginning of the year is when everyone else is trying new things, too, so you won’t be alone!

Maryann Aita 3/8/19 Maryann Aita 3/8/19

Math Tips: How to Do Word Problems

Math Tips: Tackling Word Problems

Best for Grades 4 - 9

If there’s one thing students like (or can at least tolerate) about math, it’s that it involves very little reading. This might be why word problems are almost universally hated. They seem much harder than other math problems because they require an extra layer of understanding, which is also what makes them so important to master. Word problems are the answer to “when I am ever going to need this in real life?”

In theory, word problems should provide examples of real world applications of math concepts. Problems about compound and simple interest, percentages, and averages are especially relevant.

Many of the problems in textbooks, though, are strange or completely unrelatable to an eighth-grader. The common person probably doesn’t need or want to figure out when two trains will collide or how tall a lighthouse is based on the shadow it casts when the sun is at a 45-degree angle, but until math textbooks get a major overhaul, we have to work with what we have.

Beyond their (hopefully) practical applications, word problems also help to develop analytical skills.

With a consistent strategy, word problems really aren’t so bad. I like to think of them as puzzles—all I have to do is put everything in the right place.

How do I do a Word Problem? Here are some key steps to get you started. These won’t be comprehensive for every word problem, but they make a strong strategy framework.

1. Read the problem carefully. Seems obvious, but it’s important.

2. Underline (or circle, or highlight etc.) all the questions and all the numbers you are working with.

3. Put the question in your own words. Make sure you understand what it is asking. If you don’t, it’s okay to re-read. It may help to write a sentence with a blank for the answer you are trying to find.

4. Now, look for keywords. These are words that indicate operations (addition, subtraction, division, and multiplication) like “more than” (addition), “three times as many” (multiplication), or more obvious ones like “divided by.”

5. Put it together. Write down all the information you know in a neat list.

- What are you answering?

- What operations do you need to do it?

- What numbers are you working with?

6. Write an equation. Chances are you’ll have just enough information to write an equation with one variable. But don’t forget to consider things like conversions.

7. Solve the equation! And don’t forget to include units (feet, miles, square inches, apples etc.)

Let’s do an example.

Your brother traveled 117 miles in 2.25 hours to come home for school break. What’s the average speed that he was traveling?

What will my answer look like? My brother traveled ____ miles per hour on average.
What operation do I need? Well we have miles traveled in an hour. That’s like miles per hour, which means division.
I know:
- ? miles per hour
- 117 miles
- 2.25 hours
- division
Equation: 117 ÷ 2.25 = X
Solve: X = 52 miles per hour