Dear family,
Welcome to ________________. I wait for with illusion a successful year in ________________. In order to prepare to our students for future challenges in mathematics, we have chosen a program that includes an active approach to the learning of abilities to solve problems.
Our text book, published by Prentice Hall, is a program centered in the student. Its style takes to the students to the discovery of mathematical ideas. Soon, once they discover those ideas, they communicate what they have learned and they apply what they know. The program requests to them that they solve problems individually and in equipment. One focuses to situations of the real life to help the students to appreciate the power of the mathematics in its daily life.
Our goal is to form an association with the family and members of the community. United we can create a learning atmosphere that really helps our students. Throughout this scholastic year, we will invite you to participate in scholastic year, we will invite you to participate in scholastic events and projects of the home and the school. His son or daughter will take to the house, periodically, activities that you will share and experiment together in family. All the suggestions or commentaries are welcomes that they want to do to us on our program. If they have questions on the activities of his student in the class of mathematics, them request that leaves a message me ________________. In its message tell me which is the best hour to give back its call to them. They can also write to me to ________________.
It excites the idea to me to work with you to manage to have a satisfactory and successful scholastic year.
Kindly,________________________
Just imagine receiving this letter in your child's backpack. Now you have an idea of how that Spanish speaking family member is feeling when they read that funky student-centered waste of trees from the good folks at Prentice Hall.
On the positive side of things, this type of computer translation is precisely why it will be awhile before my work as a translator is easily replaced by technology. It's nice to feel I still have a purpose in the 21st century.
The sad part about this is that it's just as incomprehensible in English to English speakers.
ReplyDeleteNot sure how EM does things but in my district, which is Investigations for k-5 and CMP for 6-8, it is entirely possible for kids to reach ninth grade without ever having seen a real math book. I mean a book with explanations reasoned out with the language and syntax of math (which is a language on its own).
Certainly parents never see such a book. The only place you'll find such written material is in teacher guides (what's that all about if they know math). It has always seemed more than a bit odd that math (a language) is being taught without putting anything written in front of kids. Everything is work sheets and story vignettes.
I'm in a master's (math) program and I've noticed that the youngsters (without my grey hair) can solve problems but have no clue as to how to properly document their solutions and the professors seem to be OK with this lack of rigor. BTW, for the most part they don't have grey hair either.
Could this be a result of an entire generation brought up on fuzzy thinking with fuzzy output? Do you need to send letters home so that parents are able to recognize that the subject at hand is really math?
They may not be able to document their solutions, but they can tell you how they feel about the problem.
ReplyDelete