Received word back from the BYU Math Contest organizers that the problems I submitted a few weeks back made the cut and will be used in the problem pool for this years test!
In other news, I crossed the 3,000 question threshold for my automated Number Sense Tests which will mean less test-to-test repetition. My goal is to get a bank of 10,000 questions before I begin work on having user-generated exams via the website so students aren’t beholden to my weekly posts.
Anyways, 2017 is off to a great start!
Dear Mr. Heath,
I have been looking for the author of number sense technique file. Glad that I came across your website. Thank you SO MUCH. I really appreciate your work on Number Sense. While I was going through the NS practice questions, I noticed that those questions are for highschool level. I wonder whether you have created anything for Middle School.
I have been teaching my son NS and he has been attending Mathleague.org, TMSCA and UIL math and NS tests. He is keen to learn more techniques, and do more practice, but not able to get much practice tests. Your NS technique Manual is very handy.
I will show your website to my son. I am sure he would be delighted to see.
Thank you and please continue your wonderful work.
M Menon
Thank you for the kind words. Yes, all the questions concern high school number sense competitions. Still, some of the tricks discussed are applicable for later sections (#40 – 80) of middle school tests — things such as multiplying by 25 and 75, multiplying numbers close to 100, change of bases, sum of series, etc…, so hopefully there are some good take-aways for you.
Looking over a practice middle school test, the majority of early questions seem to be basic arithmetic, fractions, and simple geometry questions that, otherwise, don’t have too many tricks associated with them (questions like: 176 divide by 4; 1000 – 281 =; three-fourth of 20 is…). In essence, these types of questions are more like drills whose purpose is to improve middle school students’ general “number sense” skills which will then be relied upon heavily as they transition to the high school exam. If you are needing to practice those type of problems, I suggest google searching for things such as “arithmetic drills” in order to get some practice in.
Best of luck!
Hi M Menon,
It seems that a lot of people were interested in having Middle School Number Sense material as well, so I decided to expand into that space. You can download some sample tests I produced using the same “code” here: http://bryantheath.com/middle-school-number-sense-practice-tests/
Just like with the high school material, I will be updating the database of questions and will be providing free practice tests on a weekly basis. Hope this helps!
Bryant,
This is a great website and I love you thinking outside the box to autogenerate problems. I am a coach of middle school number sense team (state champion in 5a) and I wrote a book on number sense similar to yours with videos for the tricks which you mentioned you were going to start doing. I really think the tricks along with a video is the way to go for today’s learners. That being said I would really love to pick you brain on how reasonably it would be to make a similar auto-generated program for junior high test. I stumbled across your number sense book awhile back and I use it periodically on my own team. Thank you.
If you want to see what I did similar to what you are mentioning take a look at my number sense sections of my site mathninja.org
Thanks for sharing such great stuff.
Anthony Gillespey