From F to A in Math

Calfgrit11 came home this week with the results of his first math quiz of the year: he failed it. Wifegrit and I were shocked. He was good in math throughout elementary, and, in fact, is actually in the advanced placement math in middle school.

So Thursday night I sat down with him to go over the test. He also had some math homework and I helped him with that. The homework was working with exponents and order of operations. He claimed to not understand what some of the terms were, like squared and cubed, but I think he just isn’t paying attention in class. I think he’s daydreaming, or sneak-reading a book, or something. But anyway, I went over it all with him. I explained what squared and cubed meant, and why those terms are used — squaring a number is how you get the area of a square, and cubing is how you get the area/volume of a cube. He likes learning the whys of things.

I don’t know where this cartoon comes from, so I don’t know how to properly credit it.

On his math class web site, there’s a cartoon illustration with an equation:

Although the cartoon had nothing to do with his homework, I thought it would be fun to explain it to him and let him work it out on paper. I explained how to convert a whole number to a fraction, reminded him how to change a fraction to a decimal, and I explained what pi is, (its value and its meaning). He did all the calculations on paper, himself, and I checked him on paper and then checked us both with a calculator. He wrote the answer, (169.69697, if I remember correctly — I’m not going to do the calc again, right now), on a piece of paper to take to school with him the next day. He wanted to show his teacher.

So we got his homework all done, and he went off to play before bedtime. The next afternoon, (Friday), Wifegrit called me after picking Calfgrit11 up from school.

“I want to congratulate you,” she said.

“Thanks,” I said, “for what?”

“For being a good daddy. Calfgrit11 got an A on his math test today. He said it was because you helped him learn his homework last night.”

Boom! From an F to an A in two days. My boy just needed someone to get and hold his undivided attention. He can understand and learn anything when he actually puts his mind to it. But when he has distractions, or just doesn’t have someone to focus his attention, he wanders and gets lost in his own world. I have no idea where he gets that. <looks away and whistles innocently>

Bullgrit