Shadow Ridge High School is home to a plethora of different math classes, from Algebra and Geometry to harder classes like Calculus. Out of all of these classes, one stands out from the rest, Reasoning and Sense Making in Math. Reasoning and Sense Making in Math doesn’t have the most straightforward name, leaving students unaware of what the class is and what it actually covers.
Reasoning and Sense Making in Mathematics is a class normally taken by seniors. The class serves as a way for students to earn a fourth math credit after passing Algebra I, Geometry, and Algebra II. The class covers math in real world applications such as personal finance, probability, and other examples.
Shadow Ridge High School math teacher, Richard Silva, states, “Reasoning and Sense Making is for students who don’t necessarily have plans to go to a university or college after school. It’s more students who want to learn things like, what’s the math behind buying a car, or what’s the math behind buying a house? Or what’s the math behind savings accounts?”
Where most math classes have some applicable concepts on day-to-day life, no math class will focus as heavily on it as Reasoning and Sense Making does.
For students who are aware of Reasoning and Sense Making, many consider it to be an “easy class” that only students who don’t want to deal with the difficulty of another math class such as Precalculus. This however is not the case, as Silva explains, stating, “No matter what your past math skills are, whether you are confident with your math skills or not, there are going to be challenges for you in this class. In my Reasoning and Sense Making classes, I have students who have 4.0 GPA’s, and I have students who have 1.0 GPA’s sitting in the same class. I designed my lessons in a way so that the kids who are very advanced and kids who are not so advanced will both have opportunity to learn and be challenged”
For students still on the fence about taking Reasoning and Sense Making, Silva explains one benefit students gain from taking the class, stating, “There’s no homework in this class. We have time to do all of our practice assignments in class, so that’s one thing that’s different about this class as opposed to an AP class or college prep. In those classes, you’re probably going to have homework. But in Reason and Sense Making, we don’t.”
