palisadesk & Steve H on foldables & inclusion

from palisadesk:

This stuff has been around forever -- well since the early 90's, anyway. This Dinah person may have co-opted the term "foldables" but the activity was already out there in full bloom by 1992. That's the date on a resource book I have entitled Alternatives to Worksheets

I got it back in my former school where most of my seventh grade students read at a third grade level or lower (the top kids were at a fourth grade level).

I tried some of those activities, like the flip books and the lift-the-flap things and various shape books and whatnot in an effort to get the student to produce something -- anything -- related to the curriculum for the grade. Having them write essays or do research was clearly out of the question because their skills were so weak (their self-esteem, however, was sky-high -- interesting).

It was only partially successful. A few kids, mainly girls, liked doing these things, but most did not. AT my current school the emphasis with middle grade kids seems to be to get them to use a computer to produce something. [Catherine here: true at our middle school, which has just purchased Clay-Mation & Virtual Reality software.] At least the computer can read to them and they may learn something.

I think one major reason these things have taken off is because of "radical inclusion." If you have students who are 4-8 grades below grade level and can't read or write independently (and this is not unusual in many places), what are you going to get them to do to "show their learning?" You need a "product." This stuff takes tons of time, keeps kids busy and "engaged," the student may end up with something that "looks nice," and everyone is happy. Have they learned anything? Who knows. Does this go any distance towards boosting their weak skills? Not at all.

However, consultants and administrators oooooh and aaaaah over these things, I kid you not.

BTW, I posted that link about wakawaka but Blogger got ahead of me and posted it before I filled in my handle and clicked POST.

from Steve H:

I'm beginning to see the educational world as a hot market for add-on products, especially if you include seminars. All you have to do is come up with a unique angle or hook. It's good if you can somehow claim that less is really more; that lower expectations can produce more results; that their ed school ideas really can work. Talk in generalities and gloss over the details.

"radical inclusion."

I think our town qualifies for this term, but they just call it full inclusion. It continues mostly through sixth grade, but it's still there in seventh and eighth.

Our town is known for this. People move to our town for its emphasis on the learning disabled. People write letters to the editor about how wonderful it is. I met another parent this past weekend who told me she moved to our town specifically for her autistic son. She loves the idea that he is fully integrated with the other kids and doing the same(?) work. LD kids and their families move in and more kids get sent to private school.

The school claims that with differentiated instruction they can make this work. They can't. My sixth grade son is doing very little writing and direct reading comprehension. Posters, cards, dioramas, artifacts, and anything that produces a "product" that isn't anything like a book report or test. In fact, outside of his seventh grade math, he doesn't get any tests.

I've talked in the past about how they want it both ways, but it doesn't work. Parents complain that they want more for their kids, but all they get is enrichment and not acceleration.

My son got low marks on one assignment because he didn't know quite what to do with a girl on his team who just wanted to cut up tiny pieces of construction paper and complain. They like the social idea of these kids working together, but they give them no instruction on how to do it.

This is a very touchy subject. Twenty to twenty-five percent of our kids go to other schools, but many think that the parents just want an elite education. I've seen both sides. Some in town feel very satisfied that my son is back in the public schools. One teacher's aide commented to me that my son's public school is so good!

The principal is very nice. We have talked about kids who go to or come from private schools. She understands why, but she still thinks that kids "can" get a good education in the public schools. Unfortunately, it's up to parents to make sure that their kids make the transition from very low expectaion K-8 schools to high expectation honors classes in high school.

Their idea of education is much fuzzier than mine. It's the only way they can make full inclusion work. They know there are limitations and they know why kids get sent to private schools, but they say that they have concerns that private schools don't have to deal with. They say that private school kids are "pre-selected". It's a tacit admission that they should, but can't do more.

Full inclusion is more important than academics, and they redefine education to cover this up.

This is an interesting take, and I'm sure it's true.

I also think there's more to it. My friend told me that her child's high school English Honors teachers recently assigned a paper with two options:

• 5-page paper
  
• 3-page paper illustrated with drawings

That's Honors English, which is quite selective.

My niece, also a high school freshman, recently had to spend 2 days drawing an animal in biology class. Two days. With no instruction whatsoever.

I don't know how many of you have ever sat down and tried to draw an animal "from scratch." I have, and it's not pretty. As far as I know, the only people who can draw without instruction are autistic savants and people with frontotemporal dementia.




drawings of horses by typical 4-year olds




drawing by 3-year old autistic girl

I'm encountering two things:

• "visual learning" incorporated into all subjects across the board [update: having looked into the research on multimedia learning, I think that done right this may be a good idea when the instructor, not the student, creates the visuals]
  
• a complete and total absence of any instruction whatsoever in how to create things visual
  

I wonder whether there is an "absence of instructivism" effect here. Because ed schools teach only constructivism, new teachers presumably haven't learned much if anything about learning theory, memory, distributed practice, etc.

The result -- and I've seen this, at times, in my own district -- is that when students absolutely must commit material to longterm memory, teachers fall back on the memory tricks we all know, e.g. direct memorization and the creation of mnemonic devices. That's what Ms. Peacock is talking about in the WordPOP! videos. She is talking about having students come up with visual images that will help them remember unfamiliar words such as "vex."

Mnemonic devices work, but you don't need a high school teacher to pass out worksheets and tell you to make some up.

You can just buy the book.


visual learning

foldables
why lawyers burn out
Independent George re: foldables
your tax dollars at work part 2
my busy day
not your father's formative assessment
remembering key concepts in math with foldables
south of the border
Steve H and palisadesk on foldables
homeschooling convention: no foldables

you may have to hit refresh a couple of times to load these pages:
21st century skills in Singapore
the master plan
horselaughs are heard in Singapore
more horselaughs in Singapore