Mu son has straight As,but is doing poorly in Geometry, Help, I think this deficit won’t get him in to second tier schools )His cohort will got to the best of the best.
It is late in the school term. However, a tutor can be very helpful for various kinds of math.
In general it is helpful to find the right tutor. However, the “right” tutor means one that actually helps your son to understand the subject. This might be a teacher, someone from a small local tutoring company, or even a classmate who does well in the subject. One important point is to get your son to understand the reasons that things work the way that they do in math, and not to just memorize things.
You might want to keep your eye on how your son is doing in math, and bring in a tutor earlier in the year if this issue repeats in future years in other math subjects.
Often a kid who is great in algebra will find geometry more difficult and vice versa. It’s late to make a tremendous difference in grade but a tutor for finals will help. Try not to stress it. It’s one grade.
He may do fine if he picks a non mathy major.
Can he retake it over the summer for a better grade?
I just looked at the UW (WI) sample math placement test (yikes- how much I have forgotten over the many decades). There are geometry problems on it, the info specifies what percentage of the test is devoted to various precalculus math subjects. It is likely that any college your son applies to will have a similar test or the need to take a course with no credit for graduation. Regardless of his HS class grade it will be wise for him to refresh/learn geometry to pass such a test to avoid taking time for it in college. This sort of math knowledge would be a college/university wide graduation requirement regardless of major.
I have degrees in engineering, math, and physics, but I never took a course in Geometry. Smh at that.
But- you need to pass that darn placement test to not take any more Geometry in college. Mastering enough concepts now/this summer may make it easier to review them- and take less time- next spring/summer.
Don’t need the details, OP, but “poorly” for an A student may not be all that bad (eg almost failing). Plus, one class will not determine his future. Be sure he is not too pressured with a need to keep stellar grades. Let this class not be magnified out of proportion.
Never let his cohort determine who he is or his worth. They do not matter. Let him live his life without excessive peer pressure. Perhaps one non-A will get him out of the rat race for top student and he can enjoy being a good student. He can concentrate on learning for its own sake and not the almighty gpa. Keep his confidence up by supporting him, do not let peers a part of the equation.
Remember- all elite schools will take some of those with less than a 4.0 while rejecting some with that magic number.
Keep the focus on gaining knowledge ands skills. Allow him to not be perfect. Be sure he knows that you, his parents, do not feel any less of him for this. He is still that same smart kid. He has just discovered he is human, too.
Geometry is one of my favorite courses to teach, but it’s an entirely different animal from other math classes. You have to learn to let the problem lead you-- you can’t simply follow the rules for each type of problem the way you do in Algebra. As a result, it’s not uncommon for kids who have never struggled to experience difficulty-- and for kids who have always struggled to suddenly do well.
As a longtime math-- and frequent geometry-- teacher, here’s what I suggest:
- First and foremost, he NEEDS to know the formulas, and there are a billion of them. I like the old school approach. This weekend, have him write up a Formula Sheet. You can find some online, but not all the versions will match the approach taught in class. And the writing itself is important--- writing is the easiest way to get something into your head. Have him write (not type, write) a formula sheet this weekend. Flash cards are also a good idea. Simply understanding the formulas isn't enough; they must be committed to memory.
- Starting Monday, have him ask his teacher about extra help, and have him become a regular at her sessions for the rest of the year. (THis one is frequently hard for bright kids.. they think that extra help is only for the stupid kids. They're wrong, of course.) One, his teacher will see the effort. But more importantly, she can point out the context clues in each problem that will help him get through.
- Diagrams are a huge part of geometry. The diagrams give so many clues!! Each time he has a problem, he should start by drawing the most complete, most correct and to scale diagram possible.
- At this point in the year, some connections should be automatic. So, for example, if he's given an isosceles triangle, he should automatically mark the base angles congruent-- and it it's a proof, that should come in right away. Likewise, perpendicular lines (or altitudes) and right angles.. and in a proof, that's followed by "All right angles are congruent."
- Some relationships that exist,but aren't stated: vertical angles and supplements. Every time he's stuck, he should be looking for vertical angles or supplements.
- Similar triangle proofs are always AA-- and should be done from the bottom up. So you end with "product of the means = product of the extremes." The step before that is the proportion and "Similar triangles have corresponding sides in proportion"-- his teacher may use an acronym there. The step before that is AA. So he then knows which triangles he's dealing with, and simply has to find the two angles.
- Once he finishes up the last quarter, make sure he knows that geometric proofs, as difficult as they are, can only be a relatively small percentage of the final-- and probably won't ever appear on any sort of college placement test. So he has to get past those proofs to the rest of the course.
- Too many kids are overly reliant on the calculator, but don't really understand what they're doing. One of my friends was complaining yesterday-- she was testing on the Trig chapter. One or two kids simply did not understand the difference between "Tan x = 12" and "Tan 12 = x." They had no idea of how or when to use that "2nd" key on the calculator. Your son should take a look at some old tests, and figure out what types of errors he's making... then bring those tests to extra help for correction.
- And, in geometry in particular, you answer should always make sense. So, no, the third angle of a triangle can't be 206 degrees, and the height of the tree can't be -10, regardless of what your calculator says. If it's giving you the wrong answer, it's because you asked the wrong question.
I hope that helps a bit.
Few if any colleges offer HS Geometry or anything like it, so this really should not be a problem that he would have to take MORE. As I stated, I can wallpaper with my degrees, but I’ve never taken Geometry.
OTOH, bjkmom has great suggestions for how to succeed right now, and there is intrinsic value to learning the thinking/reasoning process involved in Geometry proofs.
But- geometry shows up on math placement tests. It would be a shame to take a remedial math class that gives no credit towards graduation, especially if the concepts are mostly known. Most students pass the test and never need math except for their major.
^sure, but you don’t have to take remediation just because you missed a few questions. There is some threshold of passing and placing into the next level.
If a kid takes geometry as a High School freshman and does poorly then takes Algebra 2 and pre-calculus and calculus the chances they will fail some placement test and have to take geometry in college seems unlikely.
I was never a natural math student, but I loved geometry. Thought it was really fun to do my homework and made As easily. It really is a different type of math.
IMO, Geom is the first real course in HS that requires critical thinking and problem solving skills (which are generally in short supply). Keep at it. Once he gets it, he’ll also be learning something else at the same time.
Like some others above, I aced Geom. OTOH, my D hated it. But unlike others, not learning math was not an option in our house. Encouraging a non-mathy major bcos of one HS course just didn’t make any sense. Several years later, D won a science fellowship to grad school, competing with engineers and other mathy types…
I preferred Geometry/Trig to Algebra in HS. With Geometry, I had a teacher who helped us to visualize real life applications and that made Geometry easier to understand than Algebra, at least for me.
^^ And that’s a part of the puzzle that’s probably the hardest-- how well you do in a course like Geometry can sometimes be a direct consequence of the teacher you end up with. I can have a class of 30. Twenty seven of those kids will love me and my teaching style, and do well. One will love me but hate my teaching style. And two will hate me and my teaching style.
For those last 3, there are always other teachers in the department willing to give extra help. If your child is struggling with one teacher, absolutely have him/her try another teacher’s extra help. That slight change in phrasing and approach might be all it takes for those “Aha!!” moments that make all the difference.
Oh, and even as a math major, I think I took ONE geometry course in college: Non-Euclidean Geometry. (For the non-mathy people out there: if you change ONE particular theorem in traditional geometry, everything falls apart. Triangles can have more or fewer than 180 degrees, for a starter.) I loved it. But most non-mathy types never see it.