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The purpose of this page is to provide a listing of resources that are useful particularly for teaching mathematically gifted students in grades 6, 7 and 8. A list often is necessarily incomplete. So if you come across information of this kind, please send to us through the "Contact us" page of this web site.
First, some observations. In most schools, the teacher has the repsonsibility to teach not only students inclined to or gifted in mathematics.
So a good approach would be to select a reasonable text book or module appropriate for the grade level. However, this poses a problem. A teacher is quite busy teaching and does not have the luxury of time to think about choosing a suitable book or module.
Therefore, what you might want to do would be to encourage those persons in the school district involved with textbook selection
to become familiar with the findings in reports such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Project 2061 and to use those in making a textbook decision.
It has been observed - the reference will be supplied here as soon as we can locate it - that in each class session in school, the students must be introduced to one new concept. This could apply to classes exclusively for the gifted or others. Apart from this, here are eight things that you might consider doing:
- Teach the proper use of calculators
- Encourage the proper way of writing mathematics
- Engage students in problem solving
- Ensure that the school library has an ample supply of books and journal titles suitable for the gifted
- Conduct occasional class sessions playing video tapes or CD's explaining the big concepts of mathematics.
- Persuade the school to subscribe for you the suitable math journals
- Ask the school to send you to the regional/annual meetings of the NCTM
- Seek grants to attend summer institutes for middle school teachers
(This note was written by George R. Thomas, Executive Director and founder of MathPath. Thomas is also founder and Executive Director Emeritus of Canada/USA Mathcamp, and a former associate professor of mathematics.)
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