His Treasure Seekers

Since Classical Conversations released The Math Map in 2023, I’ve gone through the 30 lessons at least 5 times in various forms, as a tutor, a teacher at home, and “lead learner” trying to understand concepts I never learned in school myself. This year, as I prep each week (taking my Challenge class through it on Community Day, in addition to using it at home with my four youngest children), I’m writing a post on each lesson, sharing things I’ve found helpful or offering some suggestions in hopes of making it less intimidating to those just getting started.

Tips for Lesson 11: Curved Lines

I found this lesson to be rather challenging. If your student feels overwhelmed, I highly recommend working backward from the solutions. It also might help to break up the pages a bit differently this week, doing similar pages all on the same day rather than consecutively. On Day 1, do the page 1 with the solutions, then try the complementary pages (5, 9, and 13) and see if you can figure out how to do the problems. Then on Day 2, do pages 2, 6, 10, and 14, and so on.

Invention (i²page)

• Be sure to spend time on the section at the top of the page, which teaches you how to read the expression.
• This is one of those pages that overwhelmed me the first time I saw it. The best thing I have found is to focus on what’s familiar. For example, in the top section, think about the words you know (product, sum, quotient, etc.) and their associated operations (multiplication, addition, division, etc.).

Memoria and Arrangement(i³page) This lesson introduces the 16 functions that will return in several later lessons. Spend some time attending to how they are grouped and what is already familiar about them. Consider memorizing:

• Function name and graph
• Then memorize the equation for each

• Charts: These charts have a lot of information helpful for higher levels, but they can be overwhelming. For the first few times through TMM, I would just take a look at the slope of a curve and how it changes from point to point (C11:1). Then look over the rest just to be familiar with what’s there if you need to reference them, but don’t worry about them too much until the upper Challenge levels.

Other help as you explore Lesson 11:

• I have found The Math Map Book Club to be a great resource, but there are so many episodes out there, it can be a bit overwhelming. If you just want to focus on this specific lesson, here’s my YouTube Playlist of Book Club videos about Lesson 11: Curved Lines (with episodes from 2023 to the present).