Sterling Middle School Math
Mastery Products
Every notice that you can pass a test on something you don't really understand. Or perhaps you are the sort of person who can understand something but just doesn't test very well. In both cases, Montessori Middle schools try to offer mastery products as a supplement to testing. Our experience with mastery products at Sterling has been that most students do not do well. We take this as a sign that we need to have more mastery products - but we also need to provide more support to students. An example that I can give is 8th grade Cycle 1: when asked to tell a story that used linear equations, most of the students showed that they didn't really understand the difference between constants and variables. Many of these students had done quite well on the Delta Math assignments and tests.
Mastery products per unit - in Cycle 2 there will be 2 units
-
10 different kinds of problems you can solve ; handwritten, in your math notebook, 10 problems from 10 sub-topics of that unit with solutions. Here is a 7th grade example. Here is an 8th grade example.
-
10 different kinds of problems you DO NOT KNOW HOW TO solve ; handwritten, in your math notebook, 10 problems from 10 sub-topics of that unit with reason why you can't solve. Here is a 7th grade example. Here is an 8th grade example.