Number Sense Introduction

When looking at a textbook, you will see that the chapter on Number Theory or The Real Number System has a LOT of information. Almost as much material as would be covered in one year of middle school math. At JCCC, we have decided to concentrate on five topics: fractions, decimals, percent, ratio and proportion, and scientific notation. Throughout these topics, we will concentrate on applications and estimation.

When I teach the corequisite section, I will cover more of the material under Number Theory. I will include such topics as operations with signed numbers, simplifying radicals, and an expanded lesson on order of operations.

As instructors and tutors, you are very familiar with this material. You should teach it in the manner that is most comfortable for you. If you decide to skip the video lessons, I would encourage you to look at the file on each lesson page called "blank script". On the "blank script" document, you can see how deeply (or not so deeply) we present these topics.

My goal for my students is for them to feel more comfortable with the different forms of numbers, to see where these numbers are useful in applications, and to realize the power of estimation.

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