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Math for the 21st Century
Why do we use the University of Chicago’s School Mathematics Project (Chicago Math) at Aim Academy Online? Our math teachers have concluded, it’s the best program we’ve found to prepare students for 21st century, college-level mathematics—whether students are heading into the humanities, social sciences, or hard sciences (e.g., engineering and chemistry).
Developed by one of the nation’s highest ranked mathematics department, the program is backed by decades of research and has undergone rigorous field testing and refinement.
- Some of the advantages we’ve found in the Chicago Math program include:
- A focus on teaching students to solve real world problems through mathematics.
- Students learning to think logically and defend their reasoning.
- A foundation for algebra is laid in middle school, giving students a leg up before starting a formal algebra course.
- Statistics is incorporated throughout the curriculum (a must have skill missing from older math programs.)
- Use of current technologies incorporated throughout, including graphing calculators and Internet applications.
AAO now offers all of the University of Chicago School Mathematics Project (UCSMP) math courses starting with middle school. Additionally, Delta Math is included in the cost of all Aim Academy math classes. This highly rated online math practice solution gives students unlimited practice problems, immediate feedback, and an individualized progression based on their strengths and weaknesses.
After completing this sequence of courses, students will be well-prepared for our AP Statistics and the math portions of the ACT and SAT college entrance exams.
How to Get the Most from Your AAO Classes
Hey everyone, we’re so glad you’re joining us this year. We’ve been very busy this summer. We’ve been learning how to use Canvas and Zoom better to engage students. We’ve been meeting together to discuss our goals for growth and improvement. We aspire to lifelong learning ourselves and strive to model that for our students.
Our focus this year is on increasing student engagement and creating greater connections with one another across our community: teachers, parents, students, support staff, and administrators.
We can’t do it alone. So here’s a few tips for getting the most from your online classes at Aim Academy Online!
For Students
Engage!
Contribute to the class discussions, speak up in class, welcome your classmates, introduce yourself. Ask questions. Be curious. Take initiative. You will get so much more out of your classes if you decide to actively participate, and you invest in the success of the class overall—help your classmates and your teacher turn in their best performance as well. Be a great team mate!
Persist!
You’ll learn much more and not fall behind if you do a little bit in each class every day. If you don’t have specific tasks assigned by your teacher, then review what you’ve been learning. Read ahead. Read again. Read something not assigned about the topic. Watch a video in the subject area. A daily review and investment of effort will make deeper connections in your brain—you will be surprised how much more you learn. When you invest time daily in learning more about a topic, guess what? You get more interested in that topic. And interest is a key to learning. When you are interested, your brain comes alive. Learning flourishes.
Relax!
Give yourself time to reflect on and revise your assignments before you submit. Your brain consolidates information while you are at rest. That’s why you sleep longer during your teen years—you are learning a lot. When you take breaks between learning, you will learn more the next time you return to an assignment.
For Parents
Encourage!
Speak positively about your children’s efforts to learn and participate. Help the shy child to take small steps. Be aware of what your children are working on in each class. Provide an age-appropriate level of support and accountability. Once your children establish a routine of signing in daily to work on their Aim Academy Online courses, you won’t have to be as vigilant. But make sure everyone gets started on the right foot! You’ll be glad you did.
Ask Questions!
Get your kids talking about what they are learning—this solidifies their lessons and deepens their understanding. Model curiosity—an important characteristic of an independent learner. Take an interest in your kids’ online classes—this shows them you think their academic life is important.
Reach Out!
If you have questions or valuable insights that will help your child’s teachers or the AAO administration support your homeschool more successfully, let us know! We aren’t mind readers—I wish we were—but we are often clueless. We really appreciate it when we hear from students and parents about anything and everything—what’s going well, what do you like, what doesn’t make sense, what could we improve. Feedback helps us grow and improve in the same way feedback helps your children grow and improve. (support@aimacademy.online)
We’re all in this together. Let’s help one another have the best school year ever!
Thank you! We’re so glad you’re here.
7 Reasons to Take an Online Class—3 Reasons to Not
- Virtual learning is the future. If your kids are collegebound, a significant portion of their learning will take place online. Colleges save a lot of money by offering virtual classes. Kids who head to campus already comfortable with digital tools like Canvas (a learning management system), Zoom, and online textbooks will be ready for success.
- Virtual learning introduces students to digital tools and skills. How we learn and the resources we use to learn are changing rapidly. Learning how to learn online is a new skill set—most of us parents never had to learn this way. But our children do. Enrolling in a few online courses a year during middle school and high school is a gentle way to help them acquire these 21st century skills.
- Online learning saves time and gas. Add up the time spent driving your kids to co-op classes or extra curriculars—couldn’t you use that time for something more important? Think of the fuel you’re consuming! Online learning is more efficient—that’s why it’s the future.
- Online learning diversifies your child’s learning. Peers from around the world are more likely to make-up an online class than a local co-op. Even when your online community shares a similar worldview or is made up of only homeschoolers, your kids are being prepared to step into the wider world. They will become more skilled at expressing their viewpoints graciously and listening carefully, even when they may not agree with the speaker.
- More niche classes can be found online. While your local homeschool co-op may not have enough students for AP Calculus or advanced languages, you can find these classes online. This allows your children to follow their passions, even when you don’t have the expertise to teach to them.
- Your child’s future job will likely be virtual. Ongoing training for that job will likely be virtual. Acquiring digital skills now will help your child make an informed choice about his or her 21st century career.
- Online learning helps your child become more responsible and self-motivated. That’s just a positive benefit to the reality that online learning requires more of students—a virtual teacher can’t hold a student accountable to the same degree that an in-person teacher does. Most online classes meet once or twice a week—not daily. But as stated in no. 1—virtual learning is the future, so helping your children learn to take charge of their learning is a critical skill they need before they leave home.
What Online Learning Can’t Beat
- Face to face learning helps students develop better relationships with adults and peers. Online learning just can’t duplicate this. Even though I run an online academy, I still know that most of a student’s learning should be one-on-one with Mom or Dad, or face-to-face at a local homeschool co-op. Important developmental milestones require in person relationships, and kids need to know the difference. Virtual relationships are not the same thing, and we don’t want to give our kids a false impression. The only way to know the difference is to experience authentic, in person relationships and compare those to our virtual ones. If your circumstances dictate that your child be fully remote, choose classes that do not require students to be online most of the day. It’s much better if they can sign on, get their assignments, and work on those offline.
- Learning in person provides more accountability and support. Kids need a certain level of maturity before they take an online class—you don’t want to enroll them prematurely. It is much easier to forget about the online class, then it is your face-to-face co-op classes or daily homeschooling at the kitchen table.
- Online classes are typically more expensive. You can barter among your local homeschool friends, or charge much less for a local class. The teacher is likely to be more available for questions and support outside of class. Because it is easy to forget about that online class, it is easier to not get your money’s worth from it.
Coming up: How to Make the Most of an Online Class
Collegebound? What to Do in 8th Grade
The best way to avoid a pile-up senior year is to start planning your child’s high school course of study in 8th grade. You can start earlier, but I found I really didn’t have a good bead on my kids until they were finishing up middle school.
They’ll be fine if you start later—I only know now what is mission-critical in 8th grade because my four kids are grown. I have enough distance to have some perspective and to pass those insights onto you. We missed the boat in multiple ways, and everyone at my end still turned out to be employable. So, kids do recover from our mess-ups. It’s good for their souls—helps them develop grit.
However, for those of you who don’t want to intentionally make mistakes, here’s an essential tip for that 8th grade year:
- Academically, the most important question to answer at the beginning of 8th grade is How far do I think this child should get in math by the end of high school? The more advanced math courses your child completes, the more doors will open. Kids interested in engineering, science, medicine, or tech all should push to complete introductory calculus, (AP Calculus, ideally). Kids likely to head into the humanities or social sciences; English, pre-law, political science, history, teaching, etc. don’t have to get as far in math. Anything beyond Algebra 2 will work, though having advanced math on the transcript doesn’t hurt. It shows admissions offices that your kid is willing to challenge him or herself—colleges like that. (Try Statistics with the humanities loving kid instead.)
- To fit calculus into the high school schedule, Algebra 1 should be completed and mastered then by the end of 8th grade. Find a solid course and make time for your child to prioritize doing well, as Algebra 1 is the foundation of all other math classes. We took two years (7th and 8th) to finish Algebra 1 at our house. Nothing wrong with that. I’d put math first thing in the morning (if that is when your child is most alert) and make sure the time is protected. Have a plan ready for getting help when it is needed. If nothing else goes well in 8th grade other than Algebra 1, I’d consider that a big win.
- Choose a math program you can stick with throughout. While the topics covered in an algebra, geometry, or calculus course are reasonably similar from program to program, the approach to teaching math varies widely and most kids are confused by this. We use University of Chicago Math at Aim Academy because it has so many real-world problems embedded into the program. This can take some getting used to for students coming from math curricula that take a more traditional approach. Aim Academy math teachers, who are also homeschool parents, did a thorough review of popular math programs for homeschoolers and Chicago Math just makes the most sense for collegebound students. Kids are expected to complete a lot more math now in college than you probably did. And, it is taught more in line with the Chicago approach than a traditional one.
What to Do in 8th Grade, Part 2
Collegebound? What to Do in 8th Grade, Part 2
Part 2 (You can find Part 1 here.)
In Part 1, I made the case for math as the most important decision you will make with your collegebound 8th grader. If your child might be heading into a science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM) field, then completing one year of calculus by the end of high school is important. To get that far, Algebra 1 should be completed in 8th grade. Kids more likely to choose a field in the humanities or social sciences will be fine if they only complete Algebra 2 and some trigonometry, which can be covered in a geometry course (though, more math is always advantageous—and statistics for non-STEM minded kids is ideal).
There is another decision to make in 8th grade that will pay huge benefits down the road: What foreign language your child will study in high school. Most colleges expect to see two years of the same foreign language on the high school transcript as an admissions requirement, and many states require this for high school graduation (Homeschool laws from state to state vary. Even if foreign language is not required where you live, it may be required by the college your child hopes to attend.) My kids all went to different schools, obtained different degrees, and all had a foreign language requirement.
Most colleges now make a foreign language part of their degree requirements. Students can often place out of this requirement if they have four years of the same foreign language in high school or they score high enough on a placement test. Your child will never regret any college credits or requirements he or she can knock off during high school. This is an essential strategy for graduating from college on time and controlling college costs. (My son Mike completed his final credits in French by hiring a tutor while studying abroad in Thailand by special permission from his university. It made for an interesting story but was stressful to figure out. Word to the wise: get those credits completed early.)
Fulfilling the foreign language requirement in high school is an easy place to save on college costs and time. The goal is to score high on that placement test, and that’s why starting the four-year sequence of a foreign language in 8th grade is smart—there are so many other things to fit into the high school schedule. Completing the first year of the same foreign language by the end of 8th grade relieves pressure down the line.
At Aim Academy, our teaching strategy is to give students a longer and slower approach to mastering essential skills and content—an excellent place to see this strategy is in our foreign language department. We have both Spanish and French classes starting in elementary. French 1 and Spanish 1 can both be completed in middle school, and students can take two years to complete the course material if they like. Just like with Algebra 1, taking time to master the introductory material for a foreign language makes all the higher-level courses so much easier!
We’ve also added American Sign Language recently and now offer ASL 1 and ASL 2. In the past, American Sign Language was not always accepted as fulfillment of the language requirement, but most schools have changed their policy. Here is a list of schools that accept American Sign Language.
One language that may not be accepted is Latin. Check the website of the schools your child might be interested in attending. The rationale is that Latin is not a modern language–no one is speaking it these days. The rise in foreign language requirements is because our kids are entering a global marketplace–the ability to speak a second (or even third) modern language adds versatility to your child’s resume. While Latin has many benefits, it doesn’t help in this regard. That’s why we chose a romance language–French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and Romanian–these all have Latin as their base but have the added benefit of being living languages, which my kids used then in their world travels and to differentiate themselves in the job market.
What to Do in 9th Grade, Part 1
