Grr. We just did a Connected Muck homework project on box-and-whisker plots. The kid is supposed to look at a huge sheet of data on the length of arrowheads from several different sites (each having maybe 40 arrowheads), then derive box plots from each one of them, then derive two more box plots from new sites and compare them. Then he is supposed to do the same thing all over again for the widths of all the arrowheads, and this time the widths aren’t even in an ordered list! You’d have to be obsessive-compulsive to be willing to do all that by hand.
Do you remember how people were always talking about how adults who were taught math the old-fashioned way couldn’t understand the CMP homework? We-he-hell. I understand exactly what they’re getting after in every one of their assignments; the trouble is the goal is STUPID. What they’re usually getting after is making some connection to calculus or higher math that the kids aren’t ready to take in yet, or they are trying to get kids to think flexibly about a topic they have just then been exposed to, and haven’t learned much less mastered yet. It’s stupid. It flies in the face of cognitive science studies.
3-11-2008
In person, Carolyn always says "We-he-hell." I can hear her saying it now!
We need to beseech Carolyn to come back and write beaucoup posts on Connected Muck and sundry.
Is Connected Muck a middle school math program? Or is it k-6? I can't remember where I heard about it. I'm hoping it isn't in our middle school, but I'll have to find out, now that my daughter will be headed there next year.
ReplyDeleteConnected Math, also known as CMP,
ReplyDelete(connected Math Program) is 6-8.