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Yesterday, our 3rd grader daughter brought home her first factoring worksheet.
It required the students to answer questions such as:
6 x __ = 18
and
7 x __ = 28
Not so bad right? Except the directions explicitly told them to solve the problems by drawing clusters. In other words, the problems would be solved by the students like this:
6 x __ = 18 oooooo oooooo oooooo (3 groups of six = 18 so answer is "3" )
7 x __ = 28 ooooooo ooooooo ooooooo ooooooo (4 groups of seven = 28 so answer is "7")
I had my daughter do the worksheet without the clusters and wrote the following message on the paper:
"Christina will not be drawing clusters to solve factoring problems. I drilled her to learn her multiplication tables so she wouldn't need to use pictures to solve multiplication problems."
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18 comments:
whoa
good one
heh
So what happens when Christina doesn’t get full credit on a test because she didn’t show her work, i.e., drawing clusters?
I’ve encountered something similar since my fourth grader has done Saxon & now Kumon. She has learned her math facts so that writing out the equations slows her down when doing her homework or taking a test. I think if I argued the point the teacher would say she has to demonstrate that she knows the CONCEPT
I would have to agree that there are skills where she does not have perfect & thorough understanding of the concepts. But if we waited until she could write an essay on the concept we might be waiting until middle school or beyond. According to the school’s thinking, that would be when she could finally get around to learning her multiplication tables!
I'm making Ed read this.
I thought we'd reached an understanding with the Spanish teacher on the subject of FWOTs (term coined by Carolyn).
Apparently not.
Last week Christopher came home with an assignment to go through magazines (just supposing we didn't happen to have a house filled to brimming with magazines?), cut out pictures of crazy, mismatched clothes, glue them on paper, and use Spanish words to describe them.
This was the first draft.
When I found out about it I said, "He's not doing it."
Turned out he already had done it, and was awaiting a green light on the second draft.
So I said, "He's not doing a second draft."
Ed said he was doing a second draft, then Christopher said he was doing a second draft, and, bottom line, he's doing a second draft.
Just in case we have any newbies lurking about, Christopher is 12.
He's in 7th grade.
He's a boy.
His fine motor stinks and more importantly his Spanish stinks.
Stupid makework projects annoyed me when I was in grade school. Now they make me angry.
All that time cutting and pasting could have been better spent on something that might actually be related to learning Spanish. I suppose you can make an argument that this would be age-appropriate for 7-year-olds (I wouldn't agree, but it's not obviously insane), but for 7th graders such activities belong in art classes.
(And don't even get me started on mandatory art classes.)
Tex said..
"So what happens when Christina doesn’t get full credit on a test because she didn’t show her work, i.e., drawing clusters?
I’ve encountered something similar since my fourth grader has done Saxon & now Kumon. She has learned her math facts so that writing out the equations slows her down when doing her homework or taking a test. I think if I argued the point the teacher would say she has to demonstrate that she knows the CONCEPT
..."
I home school, so pardon me if my mind works a bit differently from most here. I wish I could understand the worry parents have over their children's grades.
Why do you care if your child doesn't get full credit on a test? Is any fourth grade teacher going to hold your child back over not showing his/her work? Is drawing clusters an acceptable practice among mathematicians? Why are parent's at the mercy of the report card? Are teachers the gatekeepers to your child's future? If so, they have way too much power.
If you are afterschooling your child, then you know what concepts your child has mastered. I wouldn't look twice at my child's math scores if they were based on flawed curriculum.
But, as I said I've never had children in ps and I don't assign my children grades. I teach to mastery. They KNOW it before we move on. None of this spiraling bs.
I know teachers. They would not like MY red pen dancing across homework assignments with comments like "busywork", "child has proven mastery of this topic - no further practice is needed", and "child hasn't been instructed on this concept and will not be attempting it until he/she is instructed." Those comments are are based on standards I use when evaluating assignments within my own curriculum.
My form of parental involvement is the kind that they don't want. If they are so punitive that they (teachers) would hold a child back based on incomplete homework - then, I think the whole system is broken and their needs to be an uprising.
oh boy did we get hit with it tonight
huge assignment from Home Ec (yes, NY kids are required to take Home Ec; no, they are not required to take shop; shop is gone)
Christopher's been home throwing up for two days & tonight he's supposed to cut out and fold up a "cootie-catcher"
something like that
Ed can't figure it out
so we did that instead of Ms. K's worksheet on trigonometry
one year from now these kids will be required to compete head-on with each other for admission to Honors courses
arguably one of the effects of our system is to ensure that only kids who don't need teaching take hard courses
one parent told me about her kid taking an AP comp course
the teacher rarely showed up for class & apparently didn't assign (or comment on) many papers, but parents were scared to complain because they needed her to write letters of recommendation
finally the mom bought her kid the AP composition test-prep book and the kid figured out how to write from the book
kid got a 4 on the AP test
this is what we pay the big bucks for!
Are teachers the gatekeepers to your child's future?
I'd say the problem here is that parents have no idea how much power teachers hold over their children's future - how much power they have to influence subsequent placements, etc.
The other issue is that by fourth grade kids are very social and can spend a HUGE amount of time wounding and shunning each other over grades
I know teachers. They would not like MY red pen dancing across homework assignments with comments like "busywork", "child has proven mastery of this topic - no further practice is needed", and "child hasn't been instructed on this concept and will not be attempting it until he/she is instructed."
I am envisioning this!
In my mind's eye!
I like it!
We're having a bit of a parent uprising here.
At the spelling bee the other night Ed was talking to parents he'd never met before, all parents who'd been in the system awhile.
He said they were seething.
Seething.
Seething is bad.
Wow, that is soooo far behind where third graders need to be in math at this time in the year. I hope the afterschooling is going well.
Catherine: my kid has the parade of subs this year for espanol...I bought the textbook publisher's CDs to give him the appropriate instruction and practice since the homework has been rote memorization of words ..one CD has simple games that give good practice, the other has the actual lessons in a format much easier than the book. Would suggest investigating that possibility.
Other similar free resources:
http://conjuguemos.com
http://www.classzone.com/cz/books/avancemos_1/book_home.htm
and a telenova called Destinos that is enjoyable for Spanish I about this time of year: http://www.learner.org/resources/series75.html?pop=yes&pid=366#
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