In Ignite Christian Academy’s math courses, students strengthen critical thinking skills and learn to apply mathematical concepts to real-life situations to come up with practical solutions. Math allows students to see and discover the order of the natural world, through logic, patterns, and processes. Math gives students insight into the rational, consistent nature of God. Examination of various mathematical concepts contributes to a deeper understanding of God’s creative and ordered design and the responsibility to use the ability to reason, problem solve and make choices based on our understanding of content to serve and glorify God.
Based on plane Euclidean geometry, this rigorous full-year course addresses the critical areas of congruence, proof, and constructions; similarity and trigonometry; circles; three-dimensional figures; and probability of compound events. Transformations and deductive reasoning are common threads throughout the course. Students build on their conceptual understanding of rigid transformations established in middle school as they formally define each and then, use them to prove theorems about lines, angles, and triangle congruency. Rigid transformations are also used to establish relationships between two-dimensional and three-dimensional figures. Students use their knowledge of proportional reasoning and dilations to develop a formal definition for the similarity of figures. They apply their understanding of similarity to define trigonometric ratios and radian measures. Students also make algebraic connections as they use coordinate algebra to verify properties of figures in the coordinate plane and write equations of parabolas and circles. Throughout the course, students investigate the properties of figures, make conjectures, and prove theorems. Students demonstrate their reasoning by completing proofs in a variety of formats. The standards of mathematical practice are embedded throughout the course as students apply geometric concepts in modeling situations, make sense of problem situations, solve novel problems, reason abstractly, and think critically.