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Not only is Christopher better at fraction computation than whole number computation, he also scored better at solving multi-step problems than single-step.
Ed says the entire message of the ITBS scores is that across the board he's got good conceptual knowledge, so-so skills.
Which is pretty much the mission of his school.
Understanding without know-how!
That's the ticket!
The ITBS scores also clarify the limits of learning at home. I had an email the other day from a dad who said that most of the learning kids do happens at home, anyway, so what I should do is just focus on getting Christopher into classes with the best teachers and forget about the tracking & gatekeeping & politics.
I didn't have a succinct answer to that, apart from "He's not going to learn physics at home."
The succinct answer is that a child living with educated parents will acquire quite a lot of knowledge at home through incidental learning.
What he will not acquire is skills.
If your dad just so happens to be a historian, you can learn a lot about history talking to him about geography and history every night before bed. (Christopher scored in the 99th percentile on social studies.)
You can't learn how to do decimal computation rapidly and accurately by hanging out with your folks.
Nor can you learn how to punctuate a sentence.
So - workbooks!
Anyone know of a good punctuation workbook? (percentile rank: 68)
p.s. We are redoubling our efforts on spelling. (percentile rank: 64)
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3 comments:
I'm very foggy on what the difference between knowledge and skills is supposed to be. What, exactly, is meant by skills?
off the cuff I'd say it's the difference between "declarative" and "procedural" knowledge
both are knowledge, but procedural means "doing" - it's "how-to" knowledge
you can have very good knowledge of history without actually researching and writing history
you can't have very good knowledge of math without acquiring procedural knowledge as well as declarative knowledge
I remember "declarative" knowledge by thinking of it as "I declare George Washington was the father of our country."
Declarative knowledge is something you can declare.
Hey Catherine,
Does the book Steps to Good Grammar have some punctuation sheets? I think the giant Hake books do.
I'm about ready to pull them out again.
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