Following the guidelines set forth by the National Council for Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), Mooreland Hill School recognizes the importance of essential mathematics, which represents the mathematical competence that students will need throughout their lives. The mathematics curriculum stresses the need to develop a thorough understanding of mathematical principles and concepts in the students. They must learn to reason clearly and communicate effectively; they should also recognize and apply their knowledge in the world around them and develop the confidence and determination to find solutions.

Fifth Grade Mathematics

Each fifth grade student is encouraged to develop and maintain a foundation in mathematics relative to computational skills, mathematics vocabulary, practical application and problem solving. Emphasis is placed on working with whole numbers over the four basic operations and on the development of a practical understanding of fractions and decimals. Learning to apply common sense to both numbers and estimation skills is a primary goal for fifth grade students. The metric system, prime and composite numbers, geometry, spatial relations, money, graphing, statistics, and positive and negative integers are concepts that are also introduced.

Texts:
Sadlier-Oxford: Progress in Mathematics (Level 5)
Sadlier-Oxford: Progress in Mathematics Workbook (Level 5)

Sixth Grade Mathematics

Sixth grade mathematics focuses on developing a sense of ease in the study of mathematics and on building self-confidence with the manipulation of numbers across the four basic operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

The course reinforces and expands upon concepts learned in previous mathematics courses. Place value is defined to the trillions place. The four basic operations join grouping symbols and exponents in the context of the order of operations and are used to simplify expressions involving whole numbers, decimals, integers, and fractions. Students write and solve word problems. They, also, explore the concept of prime and composite numbers as factors, which leads to the concept of multiples and to a better understanding of operations with fractions. Students translate fractions into decimal and percent equivalents, and they investigate the relationship between those concepts and those of ratio and proportion. Finally, some fundamental concepts of geometry are introduced.

Throughout the course, students make connections to real life situations by studying examples, by participating in discussions and by completing individual and group projects.

Texts:
Glencoe: Mathematics: Applications and Connections – Course 1
Glencoe: Mathematics: Applications and Connections Wrkbk – Course 1

Seventh Grade Mathematics

Seventh grade mathematics is the final course in the foundation of mathematics sequence. While this course will continue to strengthen basic computational skills, it will also introduce a variety of new topics intended to begin preparing a student for pre-algebra.

Essential to this course is a review of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division with whole numbers and fractions, which includes percent, ratio, and proportion. Students complete a project that requires them to collect and analyze data utilizing fundamental statistics, including mean, median, and mode. They will learn to create bar graphs, stem and leaf plots, and other types of graphs, as well. Basic concepts of geometry are explored, including perimeter and area of circles, triangles, quadrilaterals, and other polygons.

One of the primary objectives of this math series is for students to relate math to real life situations and problems in order to understand that math is used every day.

Text:
Mathematics: Applications and Connections – Course 2

Pre-Algebra
This course is designed as an introduction to the Algebra I course.
In this course students learn to extend the four basic mathematical operations over the set of real numbers. Inverse operations and other techniques are introduced as methods to solve multiple-step equations and inequalities. Linear equations are investigated, and the Cartesian Plane is introduced. With an understanding of statistics, students learn to apply the measures of central tendencies, quartiles and range to real-life situations. Furthermore, students continue to extend their study of geometry by exploring properties of right triangles, circles, quadrilaterals, angles, bisectors, parallel and perpendicular lines. Negative exponents and equations involving negative numbers are introduced.

Text:
Houghton-Mifflin: Pre-Algebra, An Accelerated Course

Eighth Grade Mathematics

Algebra I
This course emphasizes the simplification and evaluation of algebraic expressions and equations with the instruction to solve multiple-step equations and inequalities. The students learn to translate real-world word problems into algebraic sentences and ultimately to solve the problem. Also, students learn to factor polynomial expressions and solve algebraic equations by factoring and by way of the quadratic equation. This is followed by the study of linear equations and inequalities on the coordinate plane as students learn to identify slopes and intercepts and write linear models to express real world data. Students study complex fractions and systems of linear equations. The students then progress to the simplification of exponential expressions containing integral exponents and a study of ratio, proportion and basic probabilities.

Text:
Houghton-Mifflin: Algebra, Structure and Method, Book 1