Book Published with Chatham Students' Help

students from Laura Scerbo's calculus class can now purchase the textbook they helped improve.

Ryan A. Duques of Tutapoint, LLC, an online math tutoring company, contacted Scerbo to ask for help reviewing a mathematics textbook called "High School Math Made Simple," written by Kara Monroe and edited by Margaret Mary Wilson, Kathleen Bergman and Marisa Nadolny.

. The book was published in June.

“With the third edition, we added quite a few new examples and exercises,” Duques said.  “As part of the editing process I thought it would be fun and productive to turn the pages over to those we ultimately hope will be our audience.”

The students at Chatham High were one of over 20 classes from throughout the country to review the book. Together they submitted over 150 pages of notes and suggestions, according to Duques. "They even found a few errors," he said.

Scerbo divided her class into three groups. Each group reviewed the chapter, and then went through a section of the chapter for more intense review. They checked the solutions for problems provided in the book, looked for errors and recorded their comments and suggestions for the publisher.

Scerbo said her students found that the book was closer to a review guide than a textbook. She said they called it "a simple survey of calculus [that] does not include a detailed explanation of concepts like the calculus textbooks used at CHS do."

Students also said that the book should have pictures, graphs or diagrams to go along with the calculus questions, and that it should be more detailed. "It's a book that is used for students to revew material in math that they learned in high school, and not a complete textbook," Scerbo said. "They found that it would most likely be good to use to review for SAT's, college entrance exams or college placement tests, but not for a comprehensive calculus course."