Honours Maths

AtomicMess · 05-01-2011 10:36pm #1

Just out of curiosity, how are people getting on with the Maths course.
I'm in 6th year at the moment,
my class is made stay after school every Tuesday and Thursday to do more Maths,
and since January of 5th year we've been staying after school every Thursday.
After all that time, we've only covered 9 chapters in Text & Tests 4 and we haven't touched Text & Tests 5.
Should I be panicing?

jumpguy · 05-01-2011 11:08pm

Hmm, I'd begin asking your teacher what's the plan with the rest of the course at that stage, just when do they think ye'll be finished and stuff. Unless they're one of those annoying teachers who think any question not about maths and about the course is out of line...

We've finally finished Text and Tests 4 completely and have gotten probability, transformations and integration done in Text and Tests 5.

GoldFour4 · 05-01-2011 11:25pm

Seems like your in the same situation as I was in a couple of months ago . We had a teacher just out of college who was slow to explain new material and had different ways of doing things . The lads ave to stay back agter school for maths somedays aswell . I dropped back in November due to fear of messing up my whole LC by failing maths . We only had about 7 or 8 sections covered at that stage .

workingstudent · 06-01-2011 12:09am

we have 6 timetabled maths classes a week since 5th year and have never done anything after school. we've only vectors complex numbers and a bit of p2 q8 left to do. we are going fairly quickly through it. our maths teacher retired out of the blue before xmas and we have a new teacher already, he moves a lot slower but i'm sure we'l have the course covered fairly soon!

EuropeanSon · 06-01-2011 12:58am

Short answer is yes, you should. Your teacher must be dreadful.

Bottleopener · 06-01-2011 1:12am

Yeah, you're pretty far behind. I don't use them books, how many chapters do you have left to cover in total?

We finished the course (except for one section which we're leaving till after the mocks) back in early December.

niamhallen · 06-01-2011 11:18am

We don't use texts and tests, we use leaving cert maths (Aiden Roantree) and we've the first book done since september and we have series and sequences, further calculus and series and vectors to do.

Digits · 06-01-2011 4:03pm

We had the course finished by the end of fifth year but thats because we done an hour every day after school last year and this year...were going back over everything now which is very handy indeed.

QueenOfLeon · 06-01-2011 5:52pm

How much of the full paper can you do? If you haven't even gone near a lot of it getting grinds might be an option to make sure you get it all done.

DaveMur1 · 06-01-2011 8:50pm

This basically means you're all going to fail pre & end up doing pass!
After school classes only happens when teacher is panicking about getting complaints from students that they're not getting the course covered!If you want to stay in higher maths ,screw the after school classes & get grinds once or twice a week!

seriouslysweet · 06-01-2011 10:26pm

Can you talk to the teacher? I think it sounds like they're panicking with all the extra classes...not good.

J_E · 06-01-2011 10:52pm

We do it after schools on Thursdays. We haven't touched T&T5 either. To be honest though we are starting to use the exam papers more than the books because the book is useless in terms of answering some of those exam questions.

We are a little behind but we didn't actually start HL until halfway through 5th year so we're at a disadvantage.

Our main aim isn't now to cover the entire course but to get what's required done to a good standard then give one or two fallbacks.

Evan93 · 07-01-2011 12:40am

Finished t&t4 and have integration and statistics done in t&t5 . Not worrying at all, basically, I won't be able to answer the option Q for the pre. Which isn't that worrying. Only four in my class and since november we have been flying through everything. Might even have the option finished by the pre. We have till June, 6 months, there's a heap of time between then and now, don't worry, just do what needs to be done.

Patriciamc93 · 07-01-2011 12:59am

I only know what I have done as per exam papers really but I have:

Paper one q's 1 2 3 6 7 8 complete

Paper two q's 1 2 3 4 5 and half the option

Not bad ........I think!

whistlin_boy · 07-01-2011 3:18pm

I'm only a fifth year and we have a different book to you (new concise maths 4) but we have the 5 algebra chapters, the 3 differentiation chapters done fully and we have started the co-ordinate geometry chapter just started before Christmas......I would be definitately worrying by now..........:(

jomama · 07-01-2011 6:43pm

I teach Hons Maths and you really should be concerned. I will finish the course with my students before the Pre exams in 2nd week of Feb. I have not had to teach any time after hours either. I don't see that this will change at this stage am happy with finishing in Feb.

I have my students for 6 x 40 minute classes per week, and I try never to miss one. That should give any teacher plenty of time. Perhaps yr teacher is trying to keep alot of students in the class who really should be taking the Ord level paper. This can slow things down alot, and it is the responsibility of the teacher to recognise when a student is not able for the course.

Definitely get grinds if you are dead set on sitting Higher level. I would also talk to the principal, because frankly I think yr teacher is not performing.

Patriciamc93 · 07-01-2011 11:52pm

You have the new course though so there is less differentiation and less of a lot other stuff as-well!

Wish i wasnt sent to school so early

Kavrocks · 08-01-2011 12:45am

I did the leaving cert last year and recieved an A1 in honours maths. I bought Text and Tests 4 & 5 but never even opened number 5. We were taught mostly through notes and actual questions we could be asked and instead of being taught the maths course we were taught the paper. We went through question by question and learned how to do every possible question that could come up in it and when we finished we just kept ticking them off. By our mock exams in March we knew enough to answer a full paper without any extra questions but by our graduation I was able to answer all of Paper 1 and all of Paper 2 except for the options, I only did 1 of them, further calculus. While some of the class were content with just revising what they knew up to the exams I went and taught myself the questions I didn't know by using past papers, solutions and notes I asked my teacher for. If I had any problems I could always ask my teacher to meet during a time when I had a not so important class in the grand scheme of things to go over what I was having trouble with. In short don't worry as long as you can answer a full paper correctly by March and if you are worried ask your teacher for extra notes and get solutions to the papers and just go over them until you know how to do them. http://studentxpress.ie/ is a very helpful website and after using it regulary to teach myself found a lot of similiarities between its method of teaching and my teachers.

Fireball07 · 08-01-2011 1:46am

I'd be slightly worried if I was you. Everyone was saying our class was going slowly but we've finished T&T 4 except for the very last section (can't think what it is atm) and we're onto Matrices in T&T5 which is a good bit beyond what you're at.

We sometimes have extra classes on Wednesdays, though we mostly do revision and go ever exam papers.

**Timbuk2** · 08-01-2011 3:30am

I wouldn't get too worried just yet! We had some questions not covered for the Pres (February) but we got the course finished 3 weeks before we finished up before the LC. Just make sure to keep on top of the work as you go along as you may end up finishing very close before the actual LC.

Hopefully, the teacher covers all possible questions with you (but with only one Option question). It's a huge pet peeve of mine when teachers don't cover certain things - it's not up to them to decide which questions you answer on the day. The more choice you have, the easier a paper will be. A question you could be 'banking' on could be difficult in your year, and it's nice to have a backup.

I felt last year that we were moving slowly. I didn't have T+T, instead I had New Concise Maths (George Humphrey's book) and I felt like we were spending a lot of time on the first book, but it turned out that we progressed through the second book a lot quicker than the first.

Although extra classes sound unusual. We didn't have any extra classes, we just had 7x40min classes a week! And he was missing for a few of those as well.

squishykins · 08-01-2011 10:51am

Does your teacher do exam questions with you after you've finished a section? That's what my maths teacher did, because of that we didn't actually finish learning until the middle of May, but we were up to date anyway, cuz he kept giving us loads of questions from papers right back to 1992 to do each weekend.

Don't panic. Even if you are behind, don't panic. You can go for grinds if you're worried, and ask your teacher for extra questions, if you can. Make sure you understand what you've done, at least. And it couldn't hurt to have a read ahead in the text book.

doc_17 · 08-01-2011 2:20pm

Did you really stay back for 1 hour every day afetr school for maths?

Did you have 6 x 40 min classes in 4th (1st yr of LC) year as well?

Chuchoter · 08-01-2011 2:24pm

I'm in 5th too, we have the concise maths book and we've done all of algebra, bit of indices and a fair bit of co-ordinate geometry. What I'd do is I'd attempt to do an entire paper(1 and 2) and if you have covered less than 75% you're in trouble. I'd see if you can change class if not I'd be working ahead by yourself. We have 6 classes a week, I think this holding people extra hours is unnecessary. Talk to your principal and say listen we are moving way too slowly and this teacher is compromising my exam.

jomama · 08-01-2011 4:01pm

To doc_17

Only 3x40 mins in 4th year. But in my school we don't consider Transition year to be an extra year for LC. In 5th year, we start from scratch. This also facilitates any student who has chosen not to do 4th year, which is optional in my school.

whistlin_boy · 11-01-2011 10:39pm

No less differentiation for us (I think? - We did the Differentiation from 1st Principles, Differentiation By Rule Product/ Quotient/ Chain Rules ,Trigonometric Differentiation, Implicit Differentiation, Parametric Differentiation, Logarithmic Differentiation, Applications of Differentiation and the Newton Rhapson Method of Approximating Roots....and it was done all out the old book)...that's next year's Fifth years (unfortunately...........:()

nommm · 13-01-2011 6:41pm

I'd definitely be worried. We've been finished the course since the end of December and are probably going to be doing exam papers for the rest of the year. Probably would be a good idea for you to get grinds.

I'm in a similar situation with English at the moment. All we did last year was the comparative studies.

Honours Maths

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