This is an eight week course, taught one to one, for students who already think of themselves as good at mathematics and want to go further than a classroom can take them. It is where the one to one path begins.
You are good at this. Numbers make sense to you, and in class you are usually the one who gets there first.
Then you meet a definition that does not quite click, or a proof that moves faster than you can follow, and for a moment that feeling disappears. Nothing has changed about your ability. It is because nobody ever taught you how to actually read mathematics. Only how to calculate it.
Most classrooms move fast, because there is a syllabus to finish. A definition gets half a sentence. A proof is shown once, then it is on to the next topic. Even strong students end up far better at calculating than at understanding, and that gap tends to catch up with you later, not sooner.
Eight weeks, one to one, starting from the very first idea.
This course exists to close that gap. Over eight weeks, one to one, we go back to the definitions, symbols, diagrams and proofs you have been rushed past, and we stay with each one until it actually makes sense. Not just until you can repeat it back.
This is not about falling behind and catching up. It is about learning mathematics properly, the way it should have been taught from the start.
Every session is led personally by Lerato, one to one, online, one hour a week. There is no group to keep up with, and the hour is yours.
You will not learn new mathematics in this course. You will learn to properly read the mathematics you already know, the definitions, the notation, the examples and the proofs, until none of it is a mystery any more.
You start by learning to read a line of symbols as a real sentence. From there, you learn to test a definition, question an example, and take a proof apart until you can see exactly why it works. By the end, you can pick up a page of mathematics you have never seen before and work out what it says, on your own.
The final two weeks are different. You gather everything you have made across the course and build a portfolio of your own mathematical reading, in a form you choose yourself.
Read Like a Mathematician is for students taking the IB Diploma, AS Level or A Level.
It suits you if you are willing to ask questions, even the ones that feel obvious, and if you want to actually understand your mathematics. Not just get through the next test.
Lerato is the founder of MathBridge Academy. She studied a BSc in Mathematical Statistics in South Africa and an MFA in Creative Writing in the United States, where she was a Fulbright Scholar.
She has spent years teaching and tutoring students at both high school and university level, and kept noticing the same thing. Even the strongest students are rarely taught how to actually read mathematics, only how to calculate it. That is the gap MathBridge Academy was built to close.
The way in is The Portrait, a short assessment over two sittings. It shows how you read mathematics and what to do next, and its fee is credited in full against this course. We read every Portrait ourselves and write to you personally.
Places open a few times a year, a small number at a time. Every lesson is yours alone. If the current intake is closed, please join the waitlist.
This course. The skill everything else rests on.
Learning to argue your mathematics clearly, so others can follow it.
An independent inquiry you choose and write up yourself.
Read Like a Mathematician is the first of three courses, and it is built to lead somewhere. Once you can read mathematics with confidence, Write Like a Mathematician teaches you to argue it clearly, and Think Like a Mathematician brings the two together, in an independent inquiry you choose and write up yourself. Each course builds directly on the last, and we encourage every student to follow the full path.