Welcome to the Mathematics Department at RHHS!
The math teachers at RHHS are here to provide assistance for all of your mathematical needs!
If you find math as exciting as we do, please remember to come by the math offices to check the sign up schedule for math contests. We have a long and proud history of success in math contests and look forward to another year of outstanding results! If you need help with preparation for the contests, or if you just want to have more fun with math, you are invited to attend the weekly meetings of the Math Club on Tuesdays after school in room 2024. Practice contests with answers are also listed on this website.
For help with course work, extra help is available after school from 3:40 pm to 4:30 pm. A mathematics teacher and /or senior student volunteers are available to assist students on a drop-in basis. Students needing help are also encouraged to speak with their teacher to make an appointment.
Still having difficulty? Pathways for each grade are also shown on this website. Taking a course at a different level does not close doors as there are alternative pathways to reach a destination. Please discuss with your teacher if the course is at an appropriate level for you. These conversations are important to your success.
Ms.C.Sinatra
Mathematics Department Head
OVERVIEW OF THE PROGRAMS
Grade 9 and Grade 10
The development of mathematical knowledge is a gradual process. A coherent and continuous program is necessary to help students see the “big pictures”, or underlying principles, of mathematics. The fundamentals of important skills, concepts, processes, and attitudes are initiated in the primary grades and fostered through elementary school. The links between Grade 8 and Grade 9 and the transition from elementary school mathematics to secondary school mathematics are very important in the student’s development of confidence and competence.
The Grade 9 courses in this curriculum build on the knowledge of concepts and skills that students are expected to have by the end of Grade 8. The strands used are similar to those of the elementary program,with adjustments made to reflect the new directions mathematics takes in secondary school. The Grade 9 courses are based on principles that are consistent with those that underpin the elementary program, facilitating the transition from elementary school. These courses reflect the belief that students learn mathematics effectively when they
are initially given opportunities to investigate ideas and concepts and are then guided carefully into an understanding of the abstract mathematics involved. Skill acquisition is an important part of the program; skills are embedded in the contexts offered by various topics in the mathematics program and should be introduced as they are needed.
Grade 11 and Grade 12
The senior mathematics courses build on the Grade 9 and 10 program, relying on the same fundamental principles on which that program was based. Both are founded on the premise that students learn mathematics most effectively when they build a thorough understanding of mathematical concepts and procedures. Such understanding is achieved when mathematical concepts and procedures are introduced through an investigative approach and connected to students' prior knowledge in meaningful ways. This curriculum is designed to help students prepare for university, college, or the workplace by building a solid conceptual foundation in mathematics that will enable them to apply their knowledge and skills in a variety of ways and further their learning successfully.
An important part of every course in the mathematics program is the process of inquiry, in which students develop methods for exploring new problems or unfamiliar situations. Knowing how to learn mathematics is the underlying expectation that every student in every course needs to achieve. An important part of the inquiry process is that of taking the conditions of a real-world situation and representing them in mathematical form. A mathematical representation can take many different forms – for example, it can be a physical model, a diagram, a graph, a table of values, an equation, or a computer simulation. It is important that students recognize various mathematical representations of given relationships and that they become familiar with increasingly sophisticated representations as they progress through secondary school.
The prevalence in today's society and classrooms of sophisticated yet easy-to-use calculators and computer software accounts in part for the inclusion of certain concepts and skills in this curriculum. The curriculum has been designed to integrate appropriate technologies into the learning and doing of mathematics, while equipping students with the manipulation skills necessary to understand other aspects of the mathematics that they are learning, to solve meaningful problems, and to continue to learn mathematics with success in the future. Technology is not used to replace skill acquisition; rather, it is treated as a learning tool that helps students explore concepts. Technology is required when its use represents either the only way or the most effective way to achieve an expectation.
Like the earlier curriculum experienced by students, the senior secondary curriculum adopts a strong focus on the processes that best enable students to understand mathematical concepts and learn related skills. Attention to the mathematical processes is considered to be essential to a balanced mathematics program. The seven mathematical processes identified in this curriculum are problem solving, reasoning and proving, reflecting, selecting tools and computational strategies, connecting, representing, and communicating. Each of the senior mathematics courses includes a set of expectations – referred to in this document as the "mathematical process expectations" – that outline the knowledge and skills involved in these essential processes. The mathematical processes apply to student learning in all areas of a mathematics course.
A balanced mathematics program at the secondary level also includes the development of algebraic skills. This curriculum has been designed to equip students with the algebraic skills needed to solve meaningful problems, to understand the mathematical concepts they are learning, and to successfully continue their study of mathematics in the future. The algebraic skills required in each course have been carefully chosen to support the topics included in the course. Calculators and other appropriate technologies will be used when the primary purpose of a given activity is the development of concepts or the solving of problems, or when situations arise in which computation or symbolic manipulation is of secondary importance.
Courses in Grade 11 and Grade 12
Four types of courses are offered in the senior mathematics program: university preparation, university/college preparation, college preparation, and workplace preparation. Students choose course types on the basis of their interests, achievement, and postsecondary goals.
The course types are defined as follows:
• University preparation courses are designed to equip students with the knowledge and skills they need to meet the entrance requirements for university programs.
• University/college preparation courses are designed to equip students with the knowledge and skills they need to meet the entrance requirements for specific programs offered at universities and colleges.
• College preparation courses are designed to equip students with the knowledge and skills they need to meet the requirements for entrance to most college programs or for admission to specific apprenticeship or other training programs.
• Workplace preparation courses are designed to equip students with the knowledge and skills they need to meet the expectations of employers, if they plan to enter the workplace directly after graduation, or the requirements for admission to many apprenticeship or other training programs.
Prepared by individual teachers which provides information about the course such as Course outlines, evaluations, homework, tests & quizzes dates, homework solutions, marks,... etc and other useful information to keep the students to stay on task and also let their parents aware of what is happening to the course through out the semester.
