Math Department

Current Events

• Ms. Shafer’s and Ms. Froehlich’s students had to research five professional athletes from different parts of the world and calculate their weight on the moon using direct variation and proportions.
• Ms. Shafer's students created a circle graph that represents a week in their life.
• Mrs. Deignan had her Precalculus students do a compound interest project. Students had to find out the current rates of three banks for CDs, money market and savings accounts.
• In November the Probability and Statistics class held a Carnival of games that were created by students in the class. Among the attendees were the special education classes.
•  Mr. Corvo was recently featured in an article regarding alternate route teachers.  

Departmental Philosophy

The Mathematics Department provides curricula that:

• Meets the National and State Core Curriculum Standards
• Teaches the students fundamental math concepts
• Demonstrates the applicabilreveals
• Reveals the elegance of mathematics
• Excites students' curiosity of mathematics
• Encourages students to work together to solve problems
• Helps students turn experiences into knowledge
• Builds student's confidence
• Uses technology as a key tool to support learning
• Promotes articulate oral and written communications of mathematics

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Department Activities:

Pi Day is celebrated on March 14 each year. Students participate in hands-on activities in their math classes to discover new uses for this mathematics symbol. Before the day arrives, students hang posters around the school and make announcements to heighten the anticipation of this event. The students send Pi Day cards to their teachers in other departments.  Each teacher in the mathematics department wears information related to Pi, and the students must find this information to complete the contest application.

Shore Math League is twenty-two area high schools. Six meets are held during the school year, and cumulative scores are kept to determine the top schools, top students in the league, and top student from each team.

New Jersey Math League is open to all students taking mathematics classes. It consists of a series of six after-school tests. Scores are sent in for the highest five students from each meet. Cumulative scores determine the winning schools from each county and winning schools from each county and winning students from each team.

The Association of Mathematics Teachers of New Jersey sponsors an annual 45 minute, 15 question test. It is open to all honors math students. Awards are given to the top five individual scores and the top five school scores.

The American High School Mathematics Examination is a 75 minute, 25 question test. Forty students take the test each year at Middletown South. They are invited to participate based on their performance in other competitions, and teacher recommendation. Students with their top scores are invited to participate in the American Mathematics Examination.

The calculus classes participate in the Continental Mathematics League. There are four meets during the year with questions that are similar to those given on the Advanced Placement test in calculus. After each meet a published report of the scores for the top six students is sent to all participating schools, and students with a perfect paper receive individual recognition. Participating helps our students become familiar with the expectations of the math community outside our own school, and keeps us abreast of the changes that have occurred in mathematics.

Principles of Engineering

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Introduction to Computer Science

This course begins with the following computer literacy topics: computer systems, the history of computers, different computer languages and career information. Students will learn to form algorithms and flow charts and plan and develop programs in C++ with a structured, modular approach. They will utilize the techniques of sequencing, altering flow of control, formatting output, selection, sub-procedures, and looping. In this course students will learn to code sound and graphics displays. They will develop programs utilizing functions, one and two dimensional arrays, array processing techniques, records, and files. A culminating project utilizing all the features of the language is a requirement of the course. Prerequisite: C in Algebra I and Math teacher recommendation. top

Advanced Placement Computer Science

Computer Science AP is an accelerated course in computer science that stresses program design, implementation and analysis, standard data structures; standard algorithms, and computer systems. This course prepares the student to take the A-level advanced placement exam. All APCS candidates must be familiar with a year long course study. Prerequisites: B in Visual Basic or computer science teacher recommendation.

Computer Science Final Projects

First year and Advanced Placement Computer Science students work on a final project during part of the fourth marking period. They write a program for a teacher from another discipline, providing them with a piece of instructional software that they may use with their classes. Some of these projects are applets, accessible from the following links:

2004	2006	2008
Oregon Trail Battleship	Duck Hunt	Circle Killer Square Attack
2005	2007	2009
Connect 4 Checkers	Pong Hunt Food	Breakout Turtle racing Spacey Testaroo Bomber Tike

The following project, a Battleship game written as a Java application, can be downloaded from here and run as an application with the following command:
java -jar battleship.jar

Integrated Algebra and Geometry

Algebra I

Algebra II

Algebra II Honors

Geometry

Comprehensive Geometry

Comprehensive Geometry Honors

Mathematics Review

Trigonometry and Related Studies

Pre-Calculus

Pre-Calculus Honors

Advanced Placement Calculus AB

Advanced Placement Calculus BC

Fundamentals of Calculus