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a comment left by Tracy:
I mean, here I sit, not doing what I'm supposed to be doing (writing Wildlife Chapter), not managing my time well (or at all), not maximizing these my Peak Years of Productivity.....and, meanwhile, over in the parallel universe that is a public middle school, kids are receiving grades of F on their notebooks for poor organization.
I don't get it!
There are so many disorganized adults abroad in the land that "Professional Organizer" is a job.
Does it seem reasonable to anyone outside a public middle school that a sixth grade child:
a) can competently organize his math notebook
b) will promptly learn to organize his math notebook just as soon as he receives a grade of F for not organizing his math notebook?
answer: No.
It does not.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
11 comments:
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concernedCTparent said...
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No, it does not.
One of the reasons I really like the History Odyssey curriculum is that the first thing the student does is set up a notebook. It goes through exactly how this should be done. Each lesson explains to the student what is expected and then tells them where to place it in their history notebook. This is do-able for a ten year old. She can be successful at it every time. Children (and adults) need to learn to be organized and work very hard at it everyday. Yes, some people are naturally more organized than others, but there's still a method and series of steps that should be followed.
A sixth grade child can competently organize a math notebook if there is explicit, detailed and clear instruction as to how to do so for each and every lesson involved. -
February 19, 2008 at 6:21 PM
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LynnG said...
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Tip from dog/horse training world:
Always set up the training situation so that the dog must succeed.
Sometimes this entails breaking down the task to such a minute level, that you feel you are making no progress. (One day spent "teaching" the horse to move his head in the same direction as the lead rope. "Give to Pressure") This is the same lesson I will repeat for the rest of his life -- give to pressure.
OK. But the schools set up their situations so that a huge number of students fail. They don't know what is expected, so when they make an attempt, they might fail. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that repeated failures result in fewer attempts. There aren't that many Edisons out there after all.
In the end, a kid should be able to "get it" or the teaching isn't successful. Maybe they are attempting too much at once. But that's the teachers fault. Learning is rarely intuitive.
But I love the rational profit maximizing analogy. I'd never thought of it like that before. -
February 19, 2008 at 6:50 PM
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concernedCTparent said...
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Sometimes learning is even counter-intuitive. Keeping a notebook organized is not intuitive, it must be taught well. You reap what you sow and all that.
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February 19, 2008 at 6:57 PM
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Concerned Teacher (Happily Retired) said...
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And while we are teaching students how to organize any kind of notebook, it is important to "check", often at first, to see that students are following the proper organizational procedures.
Don't expect a disorganized student to learn it quickly or to even know if he is not doing it properly.
It will come easier for some, who are just "natural organizers", but we must not fail to help those for whom it is not easy.
I read that it takes doing something 30-35 times for it to become a habit. And it must be done properly every time for that habit to be formed.
Teaching students how to organize is like laying down tracks to guide them through the year. But tracks are no good if the student doesn't stay on them. And for some students, if they get off, they won't know where or how they got off or how to get back on. -
February 19, 2008 at 8:41 PM
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Anonymous said...
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Concernedctparent,
What's the History Odyssey curriculum? Sounds intriguing.
Susan -
February 20, 2008 at 5:41 AM
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Catherine Johnson said...
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Each lesson explains to the student what is expected and then tells them where to place it in their history notebook.
Oh, that's wonderful!
I have no idea how to set up a notebook; I'm constantly struggling to reinvent the wheel.
I'm a very poor teacher of organization (obviously) -- I need my kids' school to teach this 21st century skill.
Here's an interested factoid.
Last year C.'s grades in Spanish dropped as low as a C. That is utterly ridiculous.
This year he's been getting A+ and it shows: he's learning Spanish.
The teacher this year teaches organization. She tells the kids, directly, where to put each paper in their notebooks.
She's fantastic.
Unfortunately she's now out on maternity leave. -
February 20, 2008 at 5:53 AM
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concernedCTparent said...
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History Odyssey is published by Pandia Press. Here's a link:
http://www.pandiapress.com/history_odyssey.htm
You can view sample course outlines, lessons, book and supply lists here:
http://www.pandiapress.com/history_odyssey.htm#ancients
We've been very happy with the materials and the suggested reading lists are wonderful. -
February 20, 2008 at 8:25 AM
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Anonymous said...
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Thanks,
I'm going to look into it. I already see a slide in his knowledge since I stopped teaching him history.
Susan -
February 20, 2008 at 9:02 AM
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Anonymous said...
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Well, I actually believe people are far more rational utility maximizers than most, and I believe kids are too. They just have different utility functions, and different prior probabilities.
People function by having assumptions in their head about how reasonable something is. These are their "prior probabilities". Then they do rational inference on their current data, and based on their prior probabilities and come to conclusions.
If your prior probability for the existence of aliens in the galaxy is close to 1, then it makes sense that you would listen to someone talking about a UFO and consider it an alien spaceship. If your prior probability for the existence of aliens is zero or close to 0, you would listen to that same person talking about a UFO and consider it an airplane.
re: Jane Austen: well, the most famous book is called Pride and Prejudice, not Confusion and Irrationality. The characters make perfectly rational decisions given their prejudices. The point of the story is that the prejudices are wrong--i.e. the prior probabilities. But being prejudiced does not necessarily or usually mean irrational. -
February 20, 2008 at 11:12 AM
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Catherine Johnson said...
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They just have different utility functions, and different prior probabilities.
That's for sure.
I go back and forth between these two positions, and I generally think that the nutty things people do usually make perfect sense from their perspective.
Nevertheless, people do -- and then carry on doing -- a lot of things that bring them grief.
Then they carry on being surprised that they are experiencing grief.
I include myself in this category. -
February 20, 2008 at 12:18 PM
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Andromeda said...
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Organizing notebooks:
1) I teach middle school, and it's just scary how much of success at this level is linked to organizational abilities and work habits, not intelligence. I've got crazy-smart kids who do terribly because they do the homework and can't find it, or (more likely) never did the homework because they don't have some consistent way of writing it down, or couldn't do it correctly because they didn't have the notes, or, or, or...All organization. I don't believe in notebook grades, but that does put me in a bit of a bind...
2) Joan Sedita's book on study skills is the bible. I don't remember if it touches directly on organization, but it does a great job identifying and breaking down study skills things that students may be having trouble with, and its general approach is illuminating.
3) As a basic template for organizing notebooks, you can seldom go wrong with this:
Get a three-ring binder with as much looseleaf paper as will fit. (Notebooks where you tear out paper are the devil; paper, once torn out, cannot be put back in any helpful way.) If at all possible, get one which doesn't have folders in the front or back, because then all the paper will end up *in* the folders, getting dogeared and disorganized.
Make four sections: notes; homework; tests and quizzes; handouts. Or maybe five: blank paper.
Everything in those sections is to be chronological. It doesn't matter if the most recent is first or last, as long as it's consistent. This gives you an easy organizing principle: whatever you are working on should be placed *directly after* the last page with writing on it (or as the very first page of the section, depending on whether you prefer chronological or reverse). Actually, having all the blank paper segregated in a blank paper section will probably benefit the very disorganized (who tend to have random quantities of blank paper interrupting stuff).
Also:
HAVE A HOLE PUNCH which lives in the binder. (You can get little thin three-ring punches which have holes so they can live in three-ring binders.) If the teacher gives you anything unpunched (which I think is unacceptable but no one made me god), hole-punch it immediately so you can put it in the appropriate section.
The virtue of the notes/homework/tests and quizzes/handout layout is that pretty much every paper you will ever get in class goes in one of those, and it's generally obvious which. There are a couple of odd cases like syllabi, but they are rare.
As long as we're on the topic of notebooks, rereading your notes within a day of taking them is also a great habit to be in -- it's spooky how much that aids retention (and especially the retention gained/time spent ratio). -
February 26, 2008 at 6:12 PM
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I regularly participate in a website devoted to the discussion of Jane Austen books, and it is surprising how often someone posts saying they don't understand why one of her characters made some decision that was not rational. A surprising number of people apparently expect everyone to act like the economists' stereotype of a rational utility maximiser and are confused when they don't.
And of course, if you think everyone is a perfectly rational utility maximiser, when you encounter someone doing something bad, the likely explanation is that they fully intended it, and therefore are bad people.
It's a hard process to raise some awareness in a person that they themselves are probably flawed as well.