What do you advise me to do to understand middle school maths?

Question

people. I am very new to stack exchange, and i just came into the maths section (i usually stick to coding section) because maths has started to get harder for me. I am now going to eight grade, and i'm gonna have to learn a lot about new stuff, like the Thales' Theorem and Pythagorean Theorem. Luckily, i've already found apps to help me on homework for those two ^^. (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kormik.pythagoras) (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kormik.thales)

But there are still lots of topics i need to learn, and i'm scared it will be too difficult for me to understand. So, my question is, what do you advise me to do / practive / anything to get more familiar with 8/9th grade maths? Thanks in advance, Joao

Answer 1

(1) If having trouble with a topic, ask your teacher for suggestions of additional work

(2) See if Khan Academy has a video on the topic you have trouble with

(3) Try other web sites with material for middle school, for example http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/

Answer 2

It is really important to constantly work with this kind of stuff. The most people who say that they are bad at maths haven't tried hard. If you can't solve a problem, don't give up and try another similiar one after someone has shown you how to solve the first one. In the 8th grade you typically won't need to have the greatest own idea's to solve the problems presented to you since the problems are very replicative. So I can give you the following tips:

1. Learn the important formulas by hard. There are very few you need to know but if you don't know them you can't solve any problems.

2. Get an idea of what the formulas say and how to apply them. That is almost as important as knowing them in the first place.

3. Observe the problem types and learn how to solve them. There will be very few problem types and if you can recognize them as such you will have an easy time solving them if you know how to solve that specific type.

4. Don't give up and don't fall behind. There a two very important things in math: The first is practice (!) and the second is that you keep up with the new stuff you learn. In maths everything is building up on the things you learned before. So if you fall behind you will get much greater problems in the future.

5. Chill down. You are in the 8th grade and there are much bigger problems in life than 8th grade maths. Don't pressure yourself too hard. The fact that you inform yourself before the 8th grade is very good in itself. You know what you will be facing and that's more than the most kids at your age know.

I'm sure you will get this, greetings from a german master student :)