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Re: Serra's _Discovering Geometry_
Posted:
Apr 6, 1995 7:32 PM
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Tom McDougal (mcdougal@cs.uchicago.edu) wrote:
: In article <Pine.3.89.9503161947.A5445-0100000@belnet.bellevue.k12.wa.us>
: Art Mabbott, mabbotta@belnet.bellevue.k12.wa.us writes:
: >I cannot more strongly
: >recommend Michael Serra's Discovering Geometry - An Inductive Approach.
: >It is an incredible text. In my opinion, it is the best thing since
: >sliced bread.
I feel that this is an outstanding Geometry book, and the fact that it
has no glossary or complete references in the book are beside the point.
These resources are available with the Teacher's Guides and can be shared
with any student who has not made his own. True, it is not the way I
learned Geometry, but I don't remember ever really understanding a
two-column proof in high school anyway. And I missed many things in my
Geometry class in high school (most notably the formula for the area of a
regular polygon).
As a bridge to Algebra II, however, the book is terrible. There is not
enough Algebra in it, not enough work with coordinate planes. The
investigative and problem-solving aspects of mathematics are
well-excercised, but the students' symbol-manipulation muscles get weak,
and they don't remember how to factor polynomials, and even their
facility with signed numbers suffers. I wonder, as have other posters, if
there is much need for a year-long geometry course, and I am asking if
anyone out there has ever taught from an integrated curriculum that did
NOT include a seperate Geometry; one such as Saxon publishes (which is
the only one I've personally seen), there must be others. Are the
students who've not had Geometry at a disadvantage when they get to
Calculus or even up to Algebra II ?
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