2024-2025 Course Flipbook v2 - Flipbook - Page 8
IONS
As students join the Field community as 6th graders, they are wrestling with ideas both
mathematical and personal: Who am I as a mathematician? What does it mean to
be part of a math community at Field? In the IONS (Integers, Operations, and Number
Sense) course, they begin answering this question with a study of data representation
and visualization to support their understanding of statistics that may come up in history
and science classes, and to begin to use mathematics to help make sense of the world
around them. Students then explore ratios and proportional relationships across a
variety of contexts, solving complex problems that apply to life outside the classroom. In
other investigations they extend their understanding of computation with positive whole
numbers to deep understanding of operations with fractions, decimals, and negative
numbers. In geometry, students go beyond memorizing names of shapes to deriving the
formulas for area, surface area, volume, and angle measure of polygons and polyhedra.
Throughout the year they begin to make sense of equalities and inequalities with
algebraic notation and learn to think and work like mathematicians – collaborating on
teams, making conjectures and gathering supporting evidence, and communicating their
ideas to each other and the wider community.
ALGEBRA 1A
MATHEMATICS
The main throughline for Algebra 1A is “Math is about relationships,” which has both
personal and mathematical meanings. On the personal level, students re昀氀ect on
their own identity as mathematicians and practice the skills important to functioning
as a community: collaborating on teams, using evidence to support arguments,
communicating their ideas and evaluating the ideas of others. Mathematically, they delve
into these skills as they develop deep understanding of independent and dependent
variables, proportional relationships, and equations and inequalities. Throughout the year,
students apply these concepts to complex, open-ended problems across a variety
of contexts. Through a study of percentages, they investigate the question, “How
does math help us make better decisions?” In a unit on geometry, they build upon
previous work with polygons as they explore, not as an irrational number but as a
representation of the ratio of circumference to diameter. In other investigations,
students examine what the word “opposite” means in math, including inverse
operations and positive and negative integers, decimals, and fractions. In all
units, students look for patterns across problems and make explicit connections
among the models, algebraic equations, and graphs that represent mathematical
situations they will encounter both in future math and science classes and in their
lived experiences.
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