Math Dept.

Notes from the

As the school year winds down, the math department is keeping busy by working on the teaching some of the end-of-the-year standards for each grade level.

Sixth and seventh graders, besides working on their normal math lessons, have begun to participate in a Math 24 tournament.

Math 24 is a card game which promotes mental math and strengthens problem solving skills. Students race to add, subtract, multiply and divide four numbers on a card, while trying to reach 24 as the goal. The catch is that the students must use all four numbers, but only use them once. Many of the cards have more than one solution and the cards have three levels of difficulty.

Students will compete against each other in pairs, with the winners advancing to the next round of competition. Good luck to all!

In eighth grade, students are computing with scientific notation and moving on to finding the volume of three-dimensional figures like spheres, cylinders and cones. Algebra 1 students are completing their unit on solving linear systems of equations and systems of inequalities. They will be moving onto monomials, polynomials and factoring quadratic equations in the coming weeks.

In geometry, students finished their work with similar triangles and figures. They are going to finish the year with units involving circles and trigonometry.

College algebra students are solving systems of equations using matrices. They will be moving on to algebraic matrix operations. Our pre-calc students are continuing their work with the unit circle and solving functions using cosine, sine and tangent laws. They will be moving into conics sections.

The Loyal High School Math League team just completed the final math league test of the year. Currently, we have teams that placed in the top half of our math league and have had students place in the top 10 of 216 contestants.