The centuries old nightmare for children and parents worldwide is now over. Solving Word Problems with The Doodle Kids and Richard The Tutor shows you in an enjoyable way how to become an expert in solving word problems. Not just another book on word problems. My System represents a new and improved way to learn how to solve word problems. We provide a framework that takes the guess work out of solving word problems. A framework that does not change as you progress from one level of math to the next level of math. A framework that does not change as you progress from easy to hard problems within a level. Learn it once, use it forever is our motto. I’ll convince you of that in a moment, but first let me tell you who is my intended audience.
Word problems, perhaps more than anything else at an early age, help you develop critical thinking and logic skills. My System has been tested on students attending elementary school at the fourth grade level and above. I have used it
* On behalf of parents who need an affordable solution to advance their children at a superior pace.
* On students at the critical early middle school level at the time where they are having the greatest difficulty.
* As a resource for those students whose disability has prevented an appropriate access to education.
* On teens hoping to score higher on the math portion of the standardized test used to determine whether you are selected by your dream college.
* To help prepare high school graduates for a college math assessment exam and who want to avoid the remedial math course taught by Dr. Phylunkem.
You might have an exceptional child who can use it an at even younger age. It is best to expose a child to this early in life, before they become so confused about math that they hate it so much that nothing works.
However, My System is not just for the young. I’ve used these same strategies and techniques on adults in need of continuing education in math. It has been used
* To prepare college graduates who want an MBA and need to improve their score on the quantitative part of the GMAT test.
* To prepare a person looking to join the military.
* To prepare retired police officers and criminals alike, both transitioning to a new career and having to brush up on math.
* To prepare a rock star from a group that was breaking up and who now needed to go back to school and obtain a college degree.
It can be used by
* Those in need of obtaining a certificate indicating that they have achieved the equivalent of a high school education.
* Parents who have chosen home schooling for their child.
* Teachers, both recent and old timers, wishing to inject new life into their lessons on word problems.
* Superior achievers in math who nevertheless would like to learn a unified approach to solving word problems.
* Forward looking corporations wanting to substitute action for words and need to train an underperforming workforce.
* Nations who might be interested in using My System to enable their citizens to compete in the global economy. There is no reason for a country to spiral to the bottom of the educational math barrel.
As I like to say, if you have a pulse, this book is for you.
Math is based on a set of principles where each level of math builds upon a previous level. My System to solve word problems is based on those same sound and time honored principles. Don’t be fooled by razzmatazz that sounds good but looks strange and is abandoned at higher grade levels. And don’t be fooled by the fashionable buzzword of the moment. They are uttered by The Elders only to give the appearance of a plan to solve the issue of poor results on math assessment tests reported by various national and international testing agencies. The problem will only be solved at its root cause. The correction to this problem is to implement a new approach to math instruction. This book solves word problems the way they were meant to be solved.
I stumbled upon this enhanced approach a few years ago while transposing from hardcopy to eBook format a book I wrote as a college student when I was know as Richard The Student. My hardcopy chemistry book was based on a novel idea itself, but my post retirement tutoring led to a eureka moment where I realized that every problem could be solved by using a single strategic framework. I became excited as I immediately realized that this same approach was applicable to math word problems as well. The main strategic idea is based on what I call The Five Wonders of the Problem Solving World. We show you how to use each of these Wonders by applying a repeatable process. Along the way I teach you nine other big ideas to help you become a problem solving expert. I call these the Top Ten key concepts. I also point out the important Details that are frequently overlooked by others. Understanding these Details is critical to successful problem solving. The Five Wonders of the Problem Solving World along with the other Top Ten key concepts and the numerous Details organized into eight categories combine to form My System. Imagine, a system that works not only for math word problems but for chemistry problems also. One parent was truly amazed when I told her this. There are no barriers to the application of the principles of My System to solve word problems across many different disciplines.
But that’s not all. Thanks to the oversight of my trusted associate, The Neck, the DNA of a word problem has been successfully mapped for the first time at its most basic level as part of the Word Problem Genome Project. The few basic functional characteristics are not difficult to learn or recognize once you know of them. We have even developed the litmus test like details to guide you to the Wonder to use to solve the word problem. We turn difficult math problems into a simple solution, all within a repeatable process that guides you to the next step. The focus in this book is not the nearly two hundred word problems contained within it. The focus is on the repeatable process. The word problems exist solely to demonstrate how to solve them. And we don’t use the skip step or the random step approach to solve each word problem. We show you step by step.
This is a paradigm shift in the way to learn how to solve word problems.
And we have kept the best for last. A book is not good if the student is not motivated to remove the shrink wrapping and the troubling tendency of class handouts in lieu of a book is a bad alternative. This multimedia graphical approach has the look and feel of the classroom and is optimized for the visual learning experience. We call it Look and Learn. You never quite know what is around the corner as you advance through the course. It can be difficult at times to determine if you are reading a book, attending a class or just having fun. It’s my second “Classroom In An eBook!” eBook and the visual experience is improved over my ground breaking chemistry eBook, thanks to the suggestion of one of the parents of a child I tutored. There are only two short movies at the beginning of the course to set a wow mood. Ever hear of the student who says that the teacher goes too fast or too slow? That can’t happen in this course. You go at your own speed and not the speed of the teacher, or the speed of a movie. It would be far too expensive and impossible to make this into a hardcopy book and keep the enjoyable nature of the multimedia learning experience intact. Apple deserves the credit for the hardware and software that made this possible as well as the platforms (iPad, Mac, etc) on which it is viewable. And unlike those expensive textbooks that require a never ending student loan, this book is chump change for you. It’s like no other book you have ever seen. Enjoy, and learn too. But always be on the lookout for The Evil Test Maker and his team of evil-doers.
